Pros
Work from home whenever you want. Work isn't especially difficult. $13.50 / hr.
Cons
• 20-hour-per-week max (usually). Sometimes they let you work extra hours. • Subjective work. They give you instructions and pages of manuals. I've disagreed with the score conclusions of their senior raters, but at the end of the day, after 2 years with Lionbridge, I was never able to successfully contest one of their decisions that docked me points and resulted in later pay (see below), so I stopped trying. • Payment is awkward. If you get 85% or higher and work 40 hours in the month or more, they give you "early pay," which means you get paid around the tenth of the month after you did the work, but if you don't get advanced pay, you have to wait until the first of the following month. For instance, if you get 85%+ in June, you get paid on July 10th or so, but if you didn't, you get paid on the first or second of August. If you need a steady income, Lionbridge is not for you. • Frequent career-pausing emails: If you score below a certain percentage, your account gets suspended and you can't work until they've reviewed your work and concluded that, with reasonable training, you can be resuscitated. Then they email you training to complete, you complete it, and hopefully you're back to work inside of three weeks. Meanwhile, no work - and no pay. • Training is time-intensive to start. When you do the first round of training, you don't even know if you're going to pass their test. It's time-intensive, and if you don't get the job, you've wasted at least the better part of a day, and if you do, you still don't get paid for doing the training. • Training is ongoing over the course of your time with them (you're invited to at least one hour-long webinar per month to understand why you scored so badly), and, because you're an independent contractor, all training is unpaid. • You now have to file quarterly taxes.
