linguist

data analyst

quality assurance tester

quality rater

speaker

Welocalize

Welocalize was a decent place to work for a few months, albeit I will admit I was probably one of the lucky ones. They advertise this job as you're able to make your own hours, but fail to mention that the data they receive for your tasks is slowly being reduced to a trickle. Many have to sit at their computers for 12+ hours to do enough tasks to constitute a full 8 hour day.  You aren't paid for the extra time waiting for tasks, of course. 

That doesn't even scratch the surface of the problems with this company though. To start, the entrance exam they make you take is at least 3 hours (unpaid). You're tested on the training they provide you (which in itself is a couple of hours of studying, also unpaid) - and get this, that training only covers two of the various task types you will face. You have to learn on the job how to do the other task types while being timed and penalized if you repeatedly go over the estimated time they give you, which sometimes is not an adequate amount. If your ratings do not align with other raters, they're able to restrict access to your account which prevents you from working for a set amount of time - while at the same time failing to inform you until a day or so after access was restricted. They provide you no feedback on how you can improve your ratings; they even went so far as to tell multiple people that feedback is impossible given the amount of raters. Instead, they offer a guide to a handful of tasks placed on their learning platform, but these guides are almost always posted late - and even if you change your ratings based on them, there's no guarantee that you'd be doing the tasks correctly. 

There is rarely any further training after the initial exam. Other companies who are in the same industry offer their workers paid training often and appear to be much more communicative. The management at Welocalize is pitiful. The only communication you will receive is notification of account restriction and the occasional newsletter they send out, which is rarely helpful or informative. If you want to ever try and make some sense of what you're doing wrong, you'd have more luck reaching out to other raters rather than management. 

These were all (and still are) major problems before this week. This week they decided to randomly let go many raters based on their quality. No one was informed that they were doing so badly that it risked their employment. Some of these people were even new hires who technically were supposed to have a grace period, as mentioned in onboarding.

Overall, my personal experience with Welocalize has been okay due to my flexibility, but the way I've seen other people treated tells me I am an exception, not the rule. This company has a lot of work that needs to be done in regards to communication and adequate training. If you choose to pursue a career as a SQR here, I wish you good luck. Luck truly feels like the only reason my experience hasn't been downright horrible like many other raters. 

Pros
You get paid on time. It is a real company
Cons
The work is very boring and monotonous. A lot of positions don't have any kind of raise, so the longer you work there the less money you actual make when you factor in inflation, and rising cost of living. Many positions don't have any kind of paid time off, leading to wide spread burn out throughout the company. The healthcare plans aren't that great, leaving many employees under insured or picking the cheapest option and hoping they don't need to go to the hospital. The work is client based, which is fine, but the client has an outsized role in day to day operations. Welocalize will not stand up to its clients for its employees. I sympathize for my local managers. I've had conversations with them, and I know they have advocated for us employees, but when they are stuck between what the client and upper management will allow, there is very little they can actually change. The biggest problem is upper management. These issues and many other have be brought up time and time again to them, and they will either ignore the issue, lie to you, tell you how you (the employee) needs to fix it, or "like it or leave it." My coworkers and I work very hard and deserve respect, yet upper management always acts like employees are an inconvenience. This is a company that is able to buy other companies, and yet when issues about raises, or pto are brought up they suddenly act like they don't have any money. When the only people (upper management)are the ones who can change the system and they are the problem, I see little reason why it will change.
Advice to Management
Upper management take the issues workers bring up seriously, stop writing them off. This company makes money, you don't have to wait for a client to start giving raises or pto. You should do more to keep the talent you have, banking on high turn over is a bad idea.

There are no raises here and there hasn't been one for 3 years. We have been told if we want a raise we have to advance within the company or look elsewhere. There isn't really any upward mobility within the company and when there is, it's generally younger employees who are promoted while older experienced employees are overlooked many times over. We finally achieved two paid holidays but then forced to take off without pay whenever the client we work for decides they are giving their own employees a holiday. We are also forced to take off two weeks without pay during the holidays. Vacation pay is out of the question. We are treated like contract workers but then told we aren't. There is much confusion about our job status. The company cries poor when we bring up vacations and holiday pay but since it's an international company, how are they managing to comply financially with laws in other countries? 


If we had paid time off for holidays, vacations, and raises, Welocalize would most definitely be getting more out of their employees. This is all part of a happy employee and their mental health. Looking at what other countries expect from Welocalize makes Smith's excuses for not having the money for these things fall short. We see through this. We can Google and look at what is expected of this company in other countries and know it can be done here in the United States. If Welocalize really values it's employees and considers us family, concessions would be made. 

I worked in Data Transformation. This job started out fun, but it soured over time. Constantly increasing performance expectations, shady practices, and the worsening of benefits and pay make me regret working here. Health insurance is very expensive, and is increasing in cost every year. The cheapest health insurance plan is good ten percent of a month's pay, and most can't afford it. In my years working here there are never any raises, not even for cost of living increases. Only two federal holidays are paid per year, and you can only accrue 3 sick days a year. There are lots of limitations on when you can use your floating holiday if you choose not to use it on one of those two federal holidays. The only way to move up in this department is to become management, and those positions are very limited in number and rarely open. The work from home compensation isn't enough for what it's supposed to cover. Worst of all, management will lie to people's faces. Co-workers have been verbally promised pay raises and then have not received them. Co-workers have been moved to projects that were being deprecated, were promised that the assignment would in fact continue, and then were let go anyway during the holidays when it ended. Job security, or even adequate notice of termination, is nonexistent. The CEO claims to care but refuses to even discuss these issues in meetings, let alone share any meaningful plans to address them. Very demoralizing place to work. If you want to work at this company, I don't recommend working in DT. Corporate employees appear to be treated much better.

I have been with the company two years+ and at first it was great! The flexibility was amazing, and the team environment was amazing, you had training and even fun things like contests (which I won once and received a gift card for which was fun!) But then into my second year suddenly things started changing. One day I realized randomly that my original Manager was gone and now replaced, they stopped doing a lot of the fun things, no longer responded to our emails quickly when we needed help, and the CEO changed. The whole job took a huge flop. The company does constant tests which they use as a reason to penalize or fire you if you get even one answer wrong, things are ambiguous and confusing, they cut off the community that allowed the raters to communicate with each other so now we are left alone in the dark, and the worst part, THERE IS NEVER ANY WORK CONSTANT NTA (no tasks available) We spend HOURS at our coputer staring at the screen waiting for scraps (literally just a couple minutes worth of work if you are lucky) This week I have only received half an hour worth of work, the week before 3 hours and the week before that just 2. Welocalize does not care about its Raters, The CEO does not care about any of us at all, and the client also does not care. Yet this company keeps hiring?? Make it make sense. DO NOT WORK HERE

I want to share my experience with Welocalize's onboarding process. The initial training is unpaid and can take several hours or even days. You are expected to study a 181-page manual before even being hired and complete a series of buggy practice tests that repeat the same material without offering new examples for better understanding.

The application process was frustrating. Technical issues delayed my ability to start by nearly two weeks, and customer support was slow to respond and often unhelpful.

After completing the training, I encountered more technical issues during the actual assessment, including a malfunctioning mobile app and confusing instructions. Even after reaching out for help, the responses came too late to resolve the problems.

The final part of the test was unexpectedly difficult and time-consuming. Despite spending hours on it, I received a generic failure email with no explanation or feedback. Although I was given another chance to retake the test, the same issues occurred, including unclear time limits and an almost instant failure notification.

Overall, the process felt disorganized and left me feeling frustrated and discouraged. I recommend researching others' experiences before applying, as many candidates seem to face similar problems. The lack of transparency and reliable support is a major concern.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The work was very interesting and engaging, and I felt like I could help a bigger system while still having a solid work/life balance.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The inconsistency of hours. Wen tasks were plentiful, you could absolutely choose when to work and for how long. When there were dry spells (which got more common as time went on) I would literally have it up waiting for tasks for 12+ hours trying to earn enough to be sure I could pay my bills.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Distant, but for the most part efficient. Basically all communication went through email. Supervisors were responsive and efficient, but personal connections weren't really a thing. I didn't mind it, but it could sometimes make finding an answer to a problem difficult.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
I'd usually spend an average of 6 hours a day doing tasks. There were a variety of kinds, involving videos, images, sound clips, etc, but primarily text-based or still images. I would follow the prompt on screen to evaluate the task, and then answer the required questions. Very simple work, but the variety kept it interesting.

The role as a linguistic tester is ok, the problem is that QA is constantly changing the rubric and every time  there is a certification we as employees have to appeal QA because they  score us wrong. If you have any questions and you ask direct management, each one of them has a different answer, or doesn't know, making it almost impossible to find a right answer, management also is over worked and are hardly there for the employees. There is no PTO, so forget work life balance, even thought they promote a flexible work schedule, if you dont work you dont get paid. The manager who i am under is at times very rude,  its difficult to want to reach out to him because of this, you never know how he will react towards you. They also have you bouncing from project to project with minimal instruction. The computers they give you to work with are ancient and take long to work, so you have to account for that if you like coming in at a specific time. Payment is just u
cuz of the schedule perk and not dealing with customers but it is at the lower end of the spectrum.  The only good things about this job are that you are able to set your own schedule and also change it if you need too, its a 100%  wfh job, there is no customers to deal with and if you like working alone, it is a plus as well. 

I have been working for this employer for over six months and have had mostly positive experiences – although with some limitations.

After a one- to two-week, manageable onboarding phase, you work on various tasks in the field of AI learning, both in English and, in my case, German. Payment is not hourly but based on the number of tasks completed.

Most tasks are somewhat monotonous but generally easy to complete. Others require significantly more preparation and concentration. Although each task is compensated based on an estimated time requirement, the actual effort for more complex tasks often seems higher – making the payment somewhat unbalanced, especially when working consistently accurately.

A more balanced level of difficulty or a more uniform structuring of tasks would, in my opinion, greatly improve the overall work experience.

Another point is task availability: it fluctuates considerably and cannot be reliably predicted. For this reason, I consider this job more suitable as a side gig, where you are not dependent on a steady income.

Review:
This job should only be used as a side gig, something to get supplemental income. Most of the complaints that come from this job are people treating the part time job as a full time, and expecting it to cover rent. When in reality you likely won't make more than 20 hours a week with this job, let alone the maximum of 29. Some weeks there is a flood of work available, others there is a drought, and you'll be lucky to make the mandatory 10.

Job Summary:
As far as work goes the tasks are simple enough, sometimes they are annoyingly difficult or complicated, other times they are super easy.  But for the most part everything you rate will be done on the computer or on your phone.

You won't get a pay raise unless your city has a mandate for higher minimum wage. You likely won't get promoted to a Full-Time position, and the contact with middle to upper management is about as non-existent as possible while still being able to function as a company.

Tips:
Best bet is to view this job as a way to make some extra cash on the days you are not working your main job. Just make sure you have afternoons open since early mornings and evenings can usually have no work meaning you'll waste your time waiting on the computer.

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