The company overall is kind of a poop show. It's clear they don't have a clear goal or strategy for attaining it but feels a lot more like throwing as much spaghetti at the wall as possible and seeing what sticks. We were writing for supposedly AP exam students but they wanted us to focus on ranking for general SEO terms, which probably 80+% of the time was fine but in that other 20% lots of weird stuff. For example, an article on the US Navy during WWII had to be an article about the entire history of the US Navy because that's what people search for on google for US Navy, never mind if that's the most relevant for the supposed purpose of the article. Also, when I interviewed and signed on, I was told there was only 1 required meeting at a certain time when starting and it was all work on your own time. Once starting, there was a biweekly meeting and then a weekly meeting. While you could miss it and they do pay for the time, it speaks to the larger lack of clarity and organization at the company. Also, they started requiring more and more quick turn around things. For example, they wanted us to plan our next two weeks but only made that available to do during a short window, which for me was usually outside the time I actually set aside for my part time work week. Also, they would frequently, after stressing how important it was we planned the two weeks ahead of time, decide they needed us to do certain assignments during that two week period. Granted all of this was a mild annoyance to the work. Some others like that such as requiring that we backup photos and articles, which seems like something a tech company could take care of in a more automated way (for goodness sake wordpress keeps an image archive for you). However, the reason I wouldn't recommend this company outside of an extra side gig is a complete and utter lack of awareness and transparency. Two weeks after an invoice period they decided to change the payment method, took more than 6 weeks for payment to be issued. About half way through that time, they laid off over 70 contractors with no previous warning. I can only speak for myself on this one, but in 6 months I never got the supposed once a month 1 on 1 feedback and the layoffs didn't seem to jive with the company's own rating system for writers (also, seems very weird to be grading writers on an arbitrary rubric with score like 4.7, but I guess that speaks to a larger issue in education so maybe it fits). Meanwhile, while numerous contractors brought up the fact they couldn't pay bills or were running up credit card debt to do so, they offered basically nothing in the form of explanation other than presenting it as doing us a favor to avoid fees. I was even banned from slack for a while for asking pointed questions about why they changed the payment method after the fact they said they would not. There were also numerous excuses for delays about bank holidays at first, then the story changed to we are changing the payment method and that's why it was delayed. All very fishy, and no one from leadership ever cared to explain or seem to express much embarrassment about their inability to do the most basic an employer can do, pay on time. They did end up paying and my next final payment was more or less on time. Still, I wouldn't recommend this as a full time thing because I'd question the company's actual solvency. I'm not sure if there was actually anything nefarious, because it may just be gross incompetence and lack of planning which would follow with the general impression I got from the company. However, there is definitely questionable ethics at work there. So, it may be ok as a part time extra income gig that could end at any time, which is how lots of similar writing jobs go, but I would avoid relying on them for a full time income.
