Do Americans actually find small online side gigs worth it?

Posted by timstiefler@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 5 comments

Hi everyone,

I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion online about side gigs and small remote tasks, and I’m curious how Americans feel about them.

Do people actually find these kinds of gigs worth their time, or are they mostly not worth the effort?

What makes something like that appealing vs. a waste of time?

Just trying to understand the general perspective.

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KagakuNinja@reddit

I'm not sure what gigs you are asking about. If the job requires local presence (like Uber drivers), maybe. If not, then we are competing with much cheaper third world labor.

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I held contract gigs while working full time; that's actually very normative for some fields like academia. Most universities pretty much openly tell their faculty they can go find people to pay for up to 20% of their time and there's no consequence. Consulting gigs are everywhere for the successful in their respective fields. I haven't done it in awhile because the options for that kind of work for me right now simply aren't valuable enough for me to get involved or are something that is obviously not in my best interest like AI training.

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UglyInThMorning@reddit

I looked into them when I was broke in like 2013 and they were very much not worth the time even then. The payouts just weren’t worth the time and there were a lot of hoops to jump through for the ones that would pay anything approaching actual money.

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thickjamaicanuncle@reddit

UberEats was the biggest fucking waste of time of my entire life. But I did see some very impressive houses and yards.

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OhThrowed@reddit

Not even slightly. I have a job.