Good people in a bad machine - Language Specialist Innodata Employee Review

Great place to work with consistent communication.

Days can get repetitive and dry

Some flexibility Work from home

One thing I really didn’t enjoy about the guidance: our client sets a bench mark of having 85% “utilization”. Basically stating that of the 40 hours worked, 85% of that must be in “production code”, so about 35ish hours a week. The rest of the time can be spent reviewing emails, guidelines, etc. The project manager basically had management tell people that they could be 2.5 hours in other codes, and about 37.5 should be in production. If this is a decision from a client, then great, but it seemed to me the project manager was just trying to get every little bit of production possible out of people. I’m under the impression that if employees are treated like people and given proper breaks, the quality of work will be way better. If you force them to sit for 7.5 hours or a 8 hour day in front of a screen, the quality will be worse. The client says it’s 85% utilization, so why are we telling our employees they need to be in production for 37.5 hours out of the day? It just seems dishonest. Data annotation work can be tough and some of the tasks are repetitive and can take a lot of concentration. Half of the admin, forgets what it’s like to work in the queues, and drive these numbers blindly. Meanwhile, half of their job consists of chatting on teams all day.