Brainfuse Employee Reviews about "flexible hours"

Pros

The work hours are flexible

Cons

Low pay Brainfuse deactivates your account without an explanation and cuts off all communication. Students expect you to do their homework for them, and if you refuse, they leave a bad review. When students are not in school, opportunities for work are low.

Pros

Flexible hours, Make money easily, You can choose what subjects you would like to tutor , Easy to start working,

Cons

Poor pay, lack of support, you only receive negative feedback, Mostly only evening and weekend hours, They allow the students to speak to you in any manner--without correction

Pros

Flexibility in desired work hours. Schedule yourself or work whenever you want.

Cons

Terrible work style. Impatient and belligerent students. Can't file complaints about students but students can file complaints about you.

Pros

Very flexible hours if you work Writing Lab You get paid for live tutoring if scheduled even if you don't have a student Ability to work from home (or anywhere with internet) is nice Some students are genuinely nice and eager to learn

Cons

Many students are lazy, rude, and/or unintelligent -- they expect you to do things for them and give them answers Pay is low , and you don't get paid extra when tutoring multiple students at once If you are lucky enough for Management to respond to one of your emails, it will take a week minimum for the response You get email complaints from "clients" for minor and trivial things Brainfuse policy and what students actually want directly contradict each other, so it is impossible to avoid complaints (either you do what the company wants and students get upset, or you do what the students want and the company gets upset) Tutors are expected to lie to students (not allowed to tell them you are tutoring multiple students at once) Many papers have so many errors that it would be faster to rewrite the entire thing than to go through and fix them As mentioned in the title, the company does not care about its tutors, they see tutors as expendable and only care about the morons who need help with their 7th grade English homework

Pros

Working from home and flexible hours

Cons

No training - There is little to no work at different times of year Working with multiple live students at one time decreases the quality of the tutoring.

Pros

- Purely work-from-home. You will never need to worry about on-site visits for this job. You just need a computer and internet as well as Microsoft Office. - Extremely flexible: You can work any amount of hours you want to, at whatever time of day or night that you want. You are not trapped in a schedule; you create your schedule, you manage your schedule. It just depends on you and your tenacity/reliability in taking up work from the queue. - No management, supervision, or micromanagement from higher-ups: You are totally and entirely independent. No one is checking in on you, adding pressure, or judging your schedule, or the fact that you worked X amount last week less or more than this week. - Useful/quick/polite communication: You can email their main email address with any questions, concerns, etc. you may have about tutoring/student papers/tasks/pay/etc. and can expect a both timely and polite response with helpful information during their business hours, 5 days a week. - This good communication also translates in general; BrainFuse will email all tutors with information about the flow of work available, new opportunities for different things, warnings about summer and winter break being slow for work, etc. - No pressure: BrainFuse does not pressure tutors into any particular schedule when it comes to reviewing students' papers. There are certainly times of year, such as during finals, that they will send general emails addressed to all tutors communicating that there will be a large influx of students needing paper reviews, but you'll never be individually pressured. - Thorough context and information given: When you start, you are given a wealth of guides, FAQs, and links to help you familiarize yourself with all the formats, response forms, and different rules you will encounter as a BrainFuse online tutor. The Writing Lab guide they give you is a sizeable PDF that's easy to navigate and is very thorough in how it shows you tutoring. It basically acts as your manager to turn to if you have questions on knowing WTF you need to be doing or not doing. This guide also includes links to OTHER guides that are comprehensive and detailed, including everything you'll need to know in both guiding students and brushing up your knowledge on things like MLA 8th Edition vs 9th Edition formatting, all picky APA 7th Edition formatting rules, what to do and say when a student is plagarizing, etc. - No unfamiliar equipment or cameras: If you are doing paper-reviews and not live (video, not in person) sessions, you don't need to worry about Zoom meetings or unfamiliar software/shipped hardware. You just need Microsoft Office, internet, and a home computer that is not a potato. Even if you do run your setup on a potato of a PC, it won't have trouble running BrainFuse's uncomplicated website/tutor's queue. - Bi-weekly pay, direct deposit available. - Contextually competitive, mid-range pay: I've seen other, similar jobs pay $10-11 an hour, and one or two others higher at $13, where BrainFuse pays $12/hr. - Flexible for deadlines: Once you pick up a task, the majority of the time, you have one full day to complete it (24 hours). Some clients differ (one clients' tasks have three full days in which you can comfortably complete and submit the task, though you can't bill more time), but this is the general rule. So, you can pick up work from the queue the night before and then get them done the next morning or afternoon rather than have to complete them right away. However, you can get kudos from clients if you immediately complete tasks that you pick up, as it makes the student's life easier (they can revise their essay quicker/maybe get it turned in on time if they submitted their paper to the Writing Lab late). - Feedback from clients! You will sometimes receive automated messages from the BrainFuse system, letting you know that a student gave feedback on your review. It will be specific in which task the feedback was from (so it's wise to keep your own records of the papers you review) and what their feedback is, whether it's positive or negative. This is the main way in which you learn if your way of reviewing is working or not. Unfortunately, receiving feedback is not consistent, nor is it on any kind of schedule; it just happens when clients feel like sending it. - Safety: There are a lot of set rules in place to protect tutors from students and vice versa. You never have to use your real/full name in paper reviews; you do not have access to direct-messaging with the student nor do they have access to message you directly. I cannot speak for live-session rules, as I focus solely on reviewing student papers, but there are also strict rules for those sessions as well (live meaning through a Zoom-meeting like structure, not in person), such as no discussions of personal lives or beliefs, personal contact info, etc. - You can make this job work for as long as you want. You may be considered a contractor officially, but there's no point in which your contract with BrainFuse expires and needs renewal; once you have the job, you can keep it. Due to this job's extreme flexibility and lack of pressure, you can work it as a part-time for extra pay outside of your main job or even for fun.

Cons

- This job is not viable as a primary career. The pay is too low, and there are stretches of time in which you aren't paid at all, as pay/workload depends on the school year. - Low pay. $12/hr is hard to live on by itself, and this is especially hard due to how you cannot make this full-time all year (see next point). Additionally, it's difficult to live on this as it's contract pay, and not the kind of hourly pay where you clock in and are paid for whatever you do during a measured stretch of time; you are only paid for the specific times you bill that you are ALLOWED to bill for the tasks you pick up and complete. - You are a slave to the school year in terms of working. Winter break and summer are rough; you may want to work full-time or even part-time, but during these times of year, tasks are few and far in-between, and often no work is available in these stretches of months. Tutors compete to grab tasks the moment they show up during these times, as well, forcing you to be not only constantly looking, but hyper-vigilant in grabbing them. This makes setting BrainFuse tutoring as your main job very difficult as it's obviously difficult to pay your rent when you were unable to work much or at all, all month (or summer). - You don't get paid for the time you spend watching the queue, prepping your files and organizing the FAQs, reading up on FAQs and studying new MLA editions, etc. Whatever time you use setting up a paper is also generally not paid: you are paid by the amount of minutes you spend on papers only, with specific time amounts allowed and allotted for certain lengths of papers. For example, a 3-5 page paper means you are allowed to bill a maximum of 25 minutes for the task in total. If you are trying to be efficient, that means you complete setting up the paper with the response form/correct file name/task details etc. within that time frame, which eats into the rest of the time that you spend actually delving into the paper and focusing on helping the student/pointing out mistakes and teaching them how to avoid making that mistake/etc. You need to learn MLA/APA formats/grammar rules/etc. thoroughly and have an organized file system you make on your own PC that works for you if you want to be efficient with your time in completing your paper reviews. Even when organized, it is difficult to bill 8 hours a day if that's what you want to achieve, even during the busiest parts of the school year. - The complete lack of direct supervision is also a mixed blessing. Though there's no pressure nor micromanagement, there's also a sense of freefall, especially when you are new to the job: no one to turn to for advice, to ask if you're doing this strictly right or wrong, etc., but the one email direct to BrainFuse (mentioned above). You need to be good about answering your own questions and investigating the Writing Lab Guide resources that BrainFuse gives you at the start of the job or you may struggle. - No warnings about certain BrainFuse clients. Some clients (colleges, etc.) are MUCH more picky about how they want you to tutor their students. Some even provide their own specific response forms, guides, and even a specific set of highly finicky rules about what to say and not to say to their students. Studying these rules, making sure you have the right picky response form, and generally being careful to navigate these particular clients' rules is a huge pain and takes a lot of extra time that you are not paid for. In short, picking up tasks from these clients is advisably avoidable for efficiency's sake (unless you're a veteran in handling them) -- but BrainFuse's site is probably intentionally vague in that you aren't told who the student's college is until AFTER you have already taken up their task to complete, at which point it's too late to back out unless you want to directly email the BrainFuse email address and explain why you need to drop the task, etc. - No way to connect with coworkers. For a hermit like me, that's just fine, but being unable to commiserate/communicate with/befriend fellow tutors can also be a drawback: you don't know if you are being given fair pay, you don't have a way to ask advice without having to directly contact your "bosses" at the main contact address, and you also can't trade work with someone else in an emergency. Overall, this job is a fantastic part-time job that allows you to work from home, get extra pay, teach students, and learn some things along the way. The lack of pressure and extreme job flexibility allows you to make this a very low-stress source of income -- and it's far preferable to food service or retail. However, it cannot be considered a good option for a primary source of income, due to the low hourly rate and lapses in the year where you cannot get any work.

Pros

Flexibility in working hours. Work any time you want.

Cons

Low compensation. Lack of organization from the management.

Pros

I have been working for Brainfuse for about 2 months and it has been a decent ride so far. Pay is very good and hours are very flexible. Students have been very nice for the most part and don't expect you to give them answers. The whiteboard is useful most of the time and I love the fact that we don't have voice options.

Cons

The biggest issue I have is that for almost every session, the majority of my time is spent helping 2 or 3 students at the same time. This does not help me as I franticly bounce from student to student making sure they are helped and it does not help them as I can't devote the amount of time and effort as I would like. Another issue is that there is no outlet to discuss issues with higher-ups.

Pros

Flexible hours according to your schedule

Cons

Company makes you feel dispensable

Pros

Woke from home and flexible work hours.

Cons

The administration is rude and unmotivating. They never use their names. The send canned messages. The students expect you to write their papers, and when you do not they complain. Low pay for detailed work.