tutor

program manager

sales and marketing manager

recruiting specialist

education specialist

Brainfuse

This position can be rewarding when working with students that are willing to learn and are generally polite. Some students can be very rude and demanding. The ratio of rude students to decent students is higher (compared to face-to-face interactions; that's a very rare occurrence). Rude students can be pop up once or more during one shift. I worked in the science and math section. The tutoring in those areas can involve higher level questions and responses to their questions can be involved. One major downside is that tutors are expected to manage multiple students online, 2-3, and sometimes 4 students at a time. I rarely worked with only 1 student. Working with multiple students can go reasonably well, but most often that was not the case. That aspect of the work can be very stressful, especially if you have rude and impatient students. Sometimes time is needed to formulate a response and communicate it to the student. I find balancing more than 2 students unreasonable. And the expectation is that tutors are to respond in a speedy fashion, even when working with 3 or more students. In addition to that, tutors are told not to tell students that they are working with more than one student (if tutors could do so, that would explain delays in responding to students and perhaps pacify them a bit). Also, my perception is in general, the administrative office staff at headquarters could care less about what tutors think of the job in general. Not once did they ask how things were going. I received positive and negative feedback. When given negative feedback I notice they don't ask you to account for what happened (in essence they don't open the door for discussion on your thoughts or perceptions about what happened-sometimes there is a reasonable and brief explanation), and they don't tell you what you should or could have done. That is not helpful at all. They have general tutor guidelines, which are basic and easy to follow, yet don't encompass most/all real life situations you may encounter online with students. And I noticed at least once, their feedback went gone against their tutor guidelines. I have done private and in-school tutoring for about 5 years, and this has been the worst experience I have had tutoring. The pay is low and the workload is high. Bottom line is if you work for this company and work in the Instant Access staffing area, it's most likely you won't get much guidance and support as far as feedback is concerned. Dealing with impatient and rude students is a common occurrence. And you will be expected to manage more than one online student often. Easier said than done. I have been working there less than a year and simply put, I'm burned out. I don't plan on returning after the summer.

There is almost zero interaction with any management at my job.  I don't "need" supervision, but no one ever checks to see if we have concerns or complaints.  If I have a question about the job or forward concerns that I feel need to be remedied (which I've done on more than one occasion), no one ever responds.  I DID get a "no" response when I asked for a raise because I wasn't eligible after six months (it's a one-year minimum before a raise kicks in).  I have no idea how much they'll give me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was insulting.  What's also frustrating is that the only time I ever hear from the company is if I screw up - that sucks, but they haven't canned me yet.
Also: "$13.00" per hour isn't really how it works.  You get paid to tutor a student's work and you're only allowed a certain number of minutes to do it (and they prescribe different increments of time).  However, to properly tutor some students, you have to exceed what you're authorized by Brainfuse to charge.  This means that sometimes I'll spend 25 minutes on a task that is prescribed to only take 20, but if I stop working at 20 and turn in a 90% completed task, I get a complaint from the student/client...thus I spend 5 minutes working for free.  The time limits Brainfuse sets for their tutors to work is ridiculously mismatched for the combination of the initial administrative duties required after accepting a task, addressing all of the required comments, and (oh yeah) the ACTUAL tutoring that we need to do for the students.  In addition, some client colleges have special instructions about how to tutor their students that other colleges don't have.  As a result, I have to spend a few extra minutes making sure all of their needs are met in addition to the other administrative stuff I'm doing.  But do I get paid for that extra time or is there any provision for me to charge overtime?  Nope.  So I personally limit how many "actual" hours per week I work for Brainfuse each week to about 12 (3 days, 4 hours per day).  While that should be over $150 per week, in reality it's between $100 to $120, and that's all I can justify because the pay is just that bad...but I need the work.
I'll close by saying that there is no sense of "company culture."  I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't care if I got hit by a bus, let alone if I'm limiting how much I'm willing to work for them because the pay doesn't really match expectations and also because they can't be bothered to respond to any of my queries.  If they'd give half a darn when I speak up, or if I didn't find myself working so many minutes "for free" in a day, I'd probably be willing to work harder and more hours for them, reducing the number of employees they'd need to hire.

I worked as a tutor for Brainfuse for a few years but ultimately had to leave for my own sanity. There are some good things of course; being able to work from home and help students was my biggest motivation for working here. I did build some very rewarding relationships with my students because I actually cared and put in a lot of work to teach and tutor them. The company, however, clearly does not care about anything but money. Tutors are expected to work with multiple students at a time, are paid the same whether they are working with 1 student or 5 students, are expected to respond to each student instantly, are not allowed to reveal that they are working with other students, and of course are still expected to actually help the students. Unless you happen to be a robot, this is simply impossible especially when you are teaching complex subjects and working with multiple students on different types of topics/assignments that require careful thought and explanation. Students are left waiting, become impatient, and most importantly they are not receiving the level of one-on-one help they need, which results in angry students who take out their frustration on YOU (the tutor) and leave you bad reviews. This has always been a problem but became much worse post-Covid as more students were learning from home and student volume increased significantly. There is also nearly zero communication between you and the company, they will change your hours or remove you from the schedule without notice, and very rarely do they reply to emails or requests as there is no direct point of contact for tutors. Brainfuse: I'm really disappointed because there is so much potential to be a great learning platform, but PLEASE step it up and remember that your tutors and students are people. Hire more tutors, pay them fairly, and/or only allow one student per tutor at a time.

The worse part of this job is you work a lot for getting nothing in return. For example, you are forced to claim that you only spent 5 minutes on a poorly written one-page, a single-spaced essay that actually took you an hour to read through and critique. For a two-three page paper, you are only allowed to claim 10 minutes. Five-page paper? 15-20. Many of the writers are English-language learners, and you end up writing two pages of comments because every single sentence contained an error. This leads me to the redundant forms to fill-out. Some of the forms become longer than the essays themselves when you are finished filling them out. In reality, you are really only making 3 dollars an hour.  Also, students complain over the silliest things, and by the way, those complaints can cost you your job. The manager was very sweet; however, and the job itself would not be that bad if the pay was more realistic. Getting paid 6 dollars for critiquing a 15-page essay that takes two hours to review is not fair, especially because after 9 pages everything is only given half an hour credit. 

There were times I wanted to cry knowing that I should have been paid 24 dollars because it took two hours to review an essay and fill out all the required review forms, and based on their claim that they pay 12 an hour. Instead, I would only make 6 at the most for one task. 

Let me just say, I often worked full-time and over-time for 80 to 100 dollars a week. Do not expect to make much money or have visions of making a difference. Also be prepared to have students complain about you no matter how detailed you are in their reviews. In addition, be prepared for slave wages. The only reason I worked here was that I was desperate for money and had just gotten laid off from being a teacher. People who work here need to be highly qualified, but we are not paid as if we were. In fact, you're better off working at a fast-food place. At least you can make minimum wage.

I ended up resigning from this position because they kept getting the most number of contracts with Middle Eastern organizations. That seems like it wouldn't be a problem, right? Well, when you are trying to help students who you would assume have a grasp on basic grammar with higher level college writing, it is more than a little challenging.

Enter the writing lab:
So, a great deal of my time was spent picking up essays that students submitted to have reviewed and giving them guidance on how to improve in the areas where they asked. Most students were not bad at writing, most were terrible, absolute disasters. So, you have an ethical issue. If I were an instructor, I would fail all of them, but you still have to give some feedback in your allotted time and wish them the best, even though you knew the little changes took terrible writing to bad.

The live whiteboard sessions:
Apart from the language barrier with a lot of the students, the live sessions were not too bad unless the cuckoo got crazy that hour (the cuckoo is the sound the software makes when a student requests you). I enjoyed the fast pace of juggling many students at a time although I did find the shift monitors mostly derelict (not helpful with tech issues etc.). I was like, "I would love to have your job all y'all do is direct traffic." With the monitors, I just assumed they had to know someone who knows someone to get those easy jobs.

Culture:
Bottom line, I quit because I didn't feel supported and wanted higher pay. And, I did not feel like the students I helped regularly even wanted to learn. They just looked for corrections to change and submit their papers.

I love tutoring and helping students succeed. However, Brainfuse does not care about their tutors. Many of the students want you to do their work and give them the answers. This is against policy. However, if you stick with policy the student gets rate you. They can rate you unfairly, because they do not want to do the work. Brainfuse does not look at any of the reviews (good or bad) that you get from a student and they do not go over and help you learn what you did right or wrong. If you get a bad rating from a student you are sent an email what the student had an issue with (sometimes). Other than that the student might not give a reason and just say you were not helpful because you did not do the work for them. There are some good students and I have some that really need the help and I enjoy seeing them and working with them, however, those are too few and far between. There is no support from the company. The tutors that work on brainfuse want to help the students, but it is demoralizing when the company does not care about tutors as they can easily replace you if they wanted. A downside to tutoring students is that you only get an hour and a half from any student. Once that 90 minutes is up the student gets kicked. From my experience that student needs that assistance and then that student can get upset and rate you poorly by that. Only bright side is that there are students who want to learn (not many), direct deposit, and can make my own schedule monthly. 

The pay is low for what you have to do with papers and the expectations of people on live tutoring. There are teenagers that push for you to write their papers for them and people try to use your responses instead of their own. For the time allotted to review papers depending on size is not adequate to give the student a good review but to make it half-hearted. There are some who need real writing assistance and are not able to receive it. To get the full pay per hour you have to be able to review the papers very fast because the time you get paid for does not include the time it takes to write the review after you make in-text recommendations. So you are basically writing the reviews on your own time and they have to be informative. This would be more fair at $15/hr with what is expected and $28 for live-tutoring due to what the tutors have to take from the clients, such as some being very disrespectful and persistance to have us do their work for them. There are some that expect you to do their research for their paper with them and if you do look up a resource they will state it is not what they need and they will wait until you find another, meaning they are not even trying to do their own paper. This can be a place for decent income as it is 24/7 but not easy to manage with a family and going to school because of how time consuming it can get reviewing and writing a review.

You will consistently be doing more work than you are compensated for. You are given specific amounts that you can log for each paper you review depending on page number. Some papers are one page and the form you have to complete to go along with it may end up longer than what you actually reviewed. 

Some papers are in terrible shape when you read them. You will easily spend triple the time allotted to complete it if you are reviewing it well. Be prepared to work for free at times. Additionally, all you will ever receive back is negative feedback from administration. This is especially frustrating when you know for sure you have had many positive reviews. Negative feedback can be for anything the “client” is not happy about. You edited too much...not enough editing....not enough details. Of course you will not be instructed on how to correct this in the future. Some “clients” want you to correct their paper for them and leave negative feedback when you do not. I would seriously consider feedback employees have given before taking a job here. 

During peak times in the semester there is plenty of work. During the less busy times, it is nearly impossible to obtain any work (which is to be expected during breaks from school).

I have worked at Brainfuse for many years, and I'm very happy with it. In the beginning I only worked a few hours per week, but over the years I began to get scheduled more and more, so now I am mostly able to work 30-40 hour/week.  I tutor only instant access sessions, which are fast paced and keep me on my toes mentally. I also review papers and answer 24/7 Homework Help questions. The middle school and high school students can be really rude and disrespectful at times, and there are no procedures in place to remedy the situation.  Misbehaving students notwithstanding, I tutor a lot of students that really need the help and are grateful to get it; especially at the college level, as well as ESL students.  I also like that taking time off for medical issues and such isn't a hassle, I just have to let them know a few days in advance.  Granted, it's not paid leave, but that isn't a big concern for me. As for the pay itself, I started out not making much per hour and not getting many hours, but I have consistently been given raises and more hours.  If you want to work from home and keep mentally active, and don't mind working minimal hours in the beginning, while you hone your skills,  I highly recommend Brainfuse.

The biggest complaint I have deals with the pay scale in relation to time allocated for essays. According to their time allocations,  a tutor should only take 5-8 minutes for correcting a student's paper and include a detailed review. Many of the students are learning to write in essay form and have multiple errors through out their work. It takes much longer to correct and respond to submitted papers. The only relief from this would be if the student is in an under-graduate or graduate class and the review is mostly content driven with few errors within their papers. These papers are easily read and reviewed in the allotted time barring large works over 20 pages. But in those cases, it is allowable to stop after 35 minutes. I think they should either increase the pay or page schedule  as well as include writing the review to fairly compensate tutors for their work. 

As I am disabled and it is difficult for me to commute and work long hours at a traditional job, this type of work is good. It keeps the mind sharp and home based. However, I feel that the pay system takes advantage of its tutors and should be changed to compensate their tutors accordingly.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Tutor 3 salaries reported	$14.00 per hour
Program manager 2 salaries reported	$73,500 per year
Sales and marketing manager 1 salary reported	$55,000 per year
Recruiting specialist 1 salary reported	$67,500 per year
Education specialist 1 salary reported	$60,000 per year

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