english teacher

Engoo

Work anytime you want for how long, but it is advisable to do it in peak hours which, if you live in the same time zone, would probably be hours outside your typical work or school schedule (early morning and late night).

I learned that this is a side job that you only do to get extra money. NEVER ever apply with the goal of going full time, especially for people that aren't built for teaching like me.

Management responds to questions fairly quickly, announcements are on time, and salaries are never late and always secured. The only issue is that they follow company-mandated policy to always advise tutors to suck up to students and try not to complain further.

This is considered self-employment so the culture is whatever I want it to be. The only time it changes is when you have to entertain a student's story or need for conversation.

The hardest part of the job is being helpless against ratings. It doesn't matter whether they're warranted, deserved, or not at all. You get what students give you and your livelihood is at their mercy. Engoo/DMM never bothered screening their potential students the same way they did with their tutors. You don't even get the same respect. Some students would show up dressed like whatever or have no functioning camera at all. The company also doesn't let you enforce your preferred kind of student. You get ANYONE and you have no say in it. Even if it is some snotty toddler, a moody teen, or an entitled adult.

My only good memory of this job is meeting one good student who unfortunately stopped taking my lessons. Other than that, it's all problem.

*A typical day at work consists of the following steps: log in, begin working, deal with mostly "pleasant" students, open the schedule for the next day, rinse, and repeat.
* what you learned: Japan is pretty cool, except when it's not, and then it's the worst 25 minutes of your day.
*management- eh. They're there, but not for you.
*workplace culture: no idea.
the hardest part of the job: The most difficult aspect of the job is knowing that no matter how much the cost of living rises, your salary will remain stagnant for YEARS. 
The "students" (customers) are always right- even in extreme cases of harassment and irrationality. Their ratings WILL have an impact on your booking rate, which WILL have an impact on your income. When it's brought up with the support team, you get told that ratings are subjective and that there's nothing that can be done about it, deal with it.
Students can rate however they like—if they're having a bad day, you're the one who suffers for it.
The pay is ridiculous- US$10 an hour for Native Tutors, and Non-Native tutors get US$2.4.
Lesson cancellations are penalized and taken off your salary. They demand proof of the incident if you want to avoid this penalty, which means you're left in a tight spot if it's an act of God or your ISP never gets back to you. Good luck if you have sudden power outages, or if somebody dies. Depressed? Prove it.
*the most enjoyable part of the job: the flexibility, most students are well behaved (or so you think—until they tank your rating behind your back), it's worthwhile if you live in a country with a currency that is weak to the dollar.

That's it.




The money is so bad.
I don't expect it to be great but I've been with the company for over 3 years and the price of lessons for students has increased but the tutors pay has not.
$5 for 25 minute lesson. You then have a few minutes after the lesson to write lesson notes which you are NOT paid for but if you don't write them, you don't get paid for your lesson... 
Naturally you're not guaranteed work. You can put your availability and they either get booked or they don't.  It is what it is.
They've finally fixed their rating system, too.

Thankfully I have a 5 star rating and many regular students so I can't complain about not having enough work from them.
But it was very difficult to get booked when I fist started out nearly 4 years ago.

My biggest irk is the pay.
Not only is it very low and you're not paid for lesson notes, but you have to pay a conversion fee via PayPal. So you're losing MORE money. 

And your pay also depends on your current currency strength. 

**Just fix your pay for your Tutors. It's not fair to charge students more so that some can't even afford to take lessons anymore. We lose students/regular bookings, they get cost increase and our money doesn't change. 
Make it make sense.




You can create your own schedule but it is not as flexible as you would think. The pay is very low per lesson and there are virtually no job advancement opportunities. 

This job is great as a hobby if you have like 5 to 10 lessons a week, it is a nightmare if you want to do it over 4 hours per day. If this is your only source of income it is extremely stressful to keep your students happy at all costs so they would not give you a bad rating.

The students can rate your lessons based on their personal opinions and if they simply do not like you, your score will go down and you will have very low booking rates. 

I would not recommend this as a job to anyone and I actively try to dissuade any of my friends who ask about joining this company. The amount of exploitation this company is doing should be illegal.

However, this is a great experience if you just want to talk to someone from another country a couple of times a week. If you are not doing it to make a living you can meet a lot of great people from Japan, Taiwan, Italy, Spain etc. You can hear about their experiences and learn about different cultures, which is amazing.

This company is a total rip off. You go through so much and invest a lot of your time and effort on their malfunctioned system for a very low pay and a lot of deductions. 

They would cancel the class when the student when the problem is from the student's side because of their malfunctioned system that disconnects the calls. You'll penalized for any cancellation with deductions.  Their instructions are not clear whatsoever. So if you might get a stupid trainer that hands you wrong info so you might as well read the instructions and ask the support team about them one more time so you would make sure you got it right. 

There's no option for you to raise a complaint against a policy or someone in the company. If they're wrong/unclear with their instructions, or made any sort of mistake they'll never admit it. 

And i just want to stress one more time that the pay is very low. I also get paid by month unlike any other freelance company that pays usually by week or two. 

They're truly one of the worst companies to ever work at. I seriously don't recommend it for anyone.

Salary is miserable for non-native speakers, people are mostly nice but can get rude/invasive/overly friendly. If you're a woman expect some middle aged men to make jokes at your expense or brag how they get to learn from "a beautiful young lady". It can get pretty repetitive and therefore exhausting, you repeat the same thing every day, and people usually expect you to go above and beyond with friendliness and encouragement. The pros are the working hours are entirely up to you, and there are some genuinely nice people that allow you an opportunity to learn more about different cultures. But the cons are too great for this to be important, if you're looking for a full-time job, look elsewhere. If you're a teen, this might be for you to earn some (let's be honest) pocket cash, but if you're a teenage girl be careful to make sure your students know your boundaries. Some people are just rude and disinterested for no reason as well, which then badly reflects on your reviews as a tutor. There are better ESL companies.

Students are mostly pleasant but the low pay and lack of classes makes it not worth the effort. Most online tutoring companies are like this nowadays. Completely over saturated and not enough pay to cover the effort it takes to work for them. Engoo has very strict policies as well that do not favor the tutor. For example, they allow last minute bookings but won’t notify you if  you get booked last minute but WILL charged you if you miss the class. They also flat out won’t pay you if you ever forget to submit lesson notes regardless of if you conducted the class or not ( feedback time-not payed of course). The way these type companies do business needs to change. They are really getting over. I would recommend freelancing over wasting energy getting into these companies. You’re basically an employee that has to abide by whatever ridiculous rules these companies come up with but you’ll recieve  absolutely NO “employee benefits”. 

It is an easy job if you speak English, you basically have to communicate with the Japanese about their day, hobbies etc. Unfortunately the payment is a joke. Also the system is very complicated and if you forget to do basic processes which don't play any role and look like they are put there just so they could pay you less you can lose a big part of what you earn. Also you can encounter students who demand inappropriate things and all you can do is sit there and smile, pretend nothing happened and do on with your lesson. I think all the processes you have to do on your online account before and after the lesson are more tiring and stressful than the actual lesson. Also you have to always be in front of the computer because student can cancel classes whenever they feel like. You have to stay in front of the computer all day if you want to make a decent salary.

The hours are very flexible, but the pay is not enough for what you are doing if you are a native english speaker. Students at engoo/DMM pay three times more to meet with native english speakers, but native english speakers are paid the minimum of $10 to teach. 

I have had a mostly 100% booking rate which is great as far as that goes. I love most of the students I meet, but there are occasionally middle aged men that are inappropriate and make me very uncomfortable. The company is able to block those kinds of people so that is a positive thing about the company. 

Hard to say if it is worth $10 per hour with the pros and cons. Wish the pay started higher for native english speakers, especially with how much money we are making for them.

I've been with Engoo for about 2 years now. If you're looking for a job that's unbelievably flexible, this is the one for you. The students are, for the most part, great. Of course, you get the occasional awkward class, but it's not all that common. 
The onboarding process was a little bit annoying because they are pretty picky about minor things like the way your pictures are taken. However, thankfully, once you're hired, they pretty much leave you alone. Also, the rating system can be a little unfair for the teachers, but I've never had too many issues with it. I wish I could teach with them more often, but, unfortunately, the pay is so low I can't really afford to do it as much anymore. It's past time for the tutors to get a raise for sure. 
If you love talking to people from around the world and want some side income, I do really recommend Engoo, though!

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