It is interesting that the Homejoy entry is gone. Typical analysis is that they lost business to their own pros and the class action lawsuit regarding the contractors or employees argument. My own experience in the industry suggests that bad treatment and pay for their contractors resulted in ongoing defections and that when a competitor offered just four dollars an hour more all the best cleaners left at once.
$4 an hour is I guess in the region of a 10% to 20% raise. Not sure about you but I wouldn't turn that down when the difference is working for one faceless online platform versus another.
The funny thing about salaries that many companies don't understand is that those extra few dollars can make a huge difference to workers.
There's this kind of narrative going around recently that beyond some magic figure (pick a silly number like $70k or whatever) extra money doesn't make you happier etc.
What this totally misses out on is that to have a financial future you have to make money over expenses.
If it costs you $20/hr to live and you make $24 then $28 actually doubles what you have left at the end of the month.
This is a valid point but it is worth pointing out that in this specific case most Homejoy cleaners were making $11-13/hour working usually 4-6 billable hours a day in big cities and as such could not afford $100+ a month for wireless or cable.
