Lisa B.

I was a teacher looking for something to keep me busy and to make a bit of extra money over the summer because the summer program I used to teach for was cancelled due the pandemic. I found Rev on a list of "summer jobs for teachers," and I am sorry that I ever did. I am a 55-year-old English professor who has taught writing and editing for nearly 30 years. I Googled "summer jobs for teachers" and "editing jobs," and Rev came up. I took a grammar test and experimented with the software and thought transcription, while not "editing," might be a good fit for me.

Little did I know then that a transcriptionist has little to do with proper language, grammar, usage, and so on, and everything to do with good hearing and the ability to decipher gibberish and unintelligible audio submitted by people who are too lazy to type their own notes.

Rev is also the antithesis of every teaching philosophy I've ever read or used in my own career. For example, Revvers are "graded" by freelance Revvers who are apparently good enough at transcribing that they can judge others' work. The scale is 1-5, but you have to maintain a whopping 4.5 to continue working for Rev. In the teaching world, that's a B+ average. Keep in mind that this is just to keep the job. "Grades" are cloaked in useless comments called "feedback." One grader gave me a 1 because I – following the customer's lead – labeled a speaker by his shirt. This same customer had labeled speakers "dark green polo," "dark blue button up," and so on in a video I had just finished transcribing. But when I labeled a speaker "male short sleeved shirt" on the next job for the same customer, I was given a 1. My "metrics" obviously fell below 4.5.

Rev graders will tell you that all grades are based on Rev's "style guide." I have taught copyediting for years and I can tell you that Rev's guide is not a style guide. MLA, APA, AP, Chicago, etc. all publish style guides. Aside from telling Revvers when to spell out a number and when to use a numeral, the Rev guide is 20 pages of rules and Rev policies that will then be used to grade Revvers harshly and, eventually, to deactivate (aka "fire") them.

In my case, my metrics fell below Rev's coveted 4.5 on a Thursday and I received a warning email. I worked most of the day Friday to bring up my metrics. However, late Saturday night I received another email that I had been deactivated. That means they fired a 30-year veteran English professor. In all, I worked for Rev for two weeks. The constant emails with my "grades" were demoralizing and humiliating, and anyone deserves more than two days to improve their work.

If all of this was a trade-off for decent pay, some might think the process worthwhile. Our parents taught us that if something sounds too good to be true, then it is too good to be true, and nowhere is this more so than with Rev. Don't let them fool you with the glamour of working from home in your pajamas. We taught through a pandemic, so we know how much fun it is to work from home. Don't let them fool you, either, with promises that as you become a better Revver you'll make more money. After my 45 minutes of training, hundreds of jobs did open to me. However, many of them paid 50 cents or less per minute of transcription (as low as 31 cents) and much of the audio was so bad that I couldn't possibly transcribe efficiently. And when they say they pay by the minute, they mean the minutes of the audio recording, not the minutes that you spend working. Most jobs took me between twice as long and four times as long as the audio because I constantly had to pause, rewind, listen again and again, and try to decipher who was speaking and what they were saying. So a 10-minute project suddenly became anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half of my time. When my accuracy rating fell to 4.4, below Rev's minimum of 4.5, my account was deactivated and I was no longer able to work for Rev. At that point, I had worked a total of 250 minutes and 55 seconds and had earned $158.32. Keep in mind that those four hours (250 minutes) were the length of the audio files, not the time I worked. So if I worked, say, 12 hours, I made $13/hour, which is less than minimum wage in some states.

The quality of the audio was another problem. One audio I transcribed was two heavily-accented people talking while a crew was felling trees in the background. Yes: felling trees. In other cases, people talked over each other, talked through noisy locations like a boiler room, or talked so fast that I couldn't understand them. Rev's software can't transcribe these poor audio files, but Rev expects human transcribers to be correct 90% of the time. It's worth noting the good work that I did. Of 24 jobs, 18 were graded. Of those 18, I earned 10 perfect 5's; five rankings of 4; two 3's; and a 2; I earned the 1 on "formatting," not accuracy. Accuracy is why I was deactivated.

My fellow teachers (and anyone, really), all of this is to say: if you want to occupy your time and make a bit of extra money over the summer, then tutor. Or just apply for a job at your local Six Flags amusement park. You'll have a wear a silly uniform and they might (though it's unlikely) assign you to the most degrading of jobs like cleaning the restrooms. But you won't be "graded" (aka, demoralized and humiliated) by an invisible "Revver" and you can go home feeling good about yourself and your value in the workforce.