Wow. I registered for this site because I wanted to see if there were any alternatives to the Tutor.com job which is slowly destroying my mind and soul. Or maybe not so slowly.
I'm surprised by the number of people who say that they're Tutor.com tutors but think that the students pay the bills. That's not so. There are a handful of individual students who pay, but the vast majority of paying customers are institutions -- primarily schools and libraries. These are the paying customers, and everything about Tutor.com is designed for the pleasure and convenience of those paying customers. You don't really think that the time limits or the constant urging to "tutor" more than one student at once is for the student's benefit, do you?
If Tutor.com learned that you played an an online game while also tutoring, you'd be fired -- yet they push and shove us to shortchange the students by teaching more than one at once, and want us to lie about it. We're supposed to use prescripted messages saying things like "I'm thinking" or "I'm researching this" to stall one student while tossing a bone to the other, and thereby tutor two students poorly. The tutors hate it and the students hate it, but the institutions love it because the official number of students tutored goes up.
If the student is IAH (Individual Account Holder, one of the handful who actually pay for tutoring themselves or via their parents), then many of the worst policies don't apply. There is no time limit. It is not eligible for multiball tutoring. You get what you pay for, I guess.
If you understand that Tutor.com is never about the tutors and only indirectly about the students, you're well on your way to understanding the entire thing. Tutor.com is not about tutoring; it's about selling the idea of a tutoring service to educational institutions.
Cons:
Unbelievably low pay. They require not only memorization of a thousand Byzantine policies and encyclopedic knowledge of fairly large fields but also a deft and caring touch, yet they pay burger-flipper money. It's depressing to spend hours leaping from one subtopic to another, teaching each with ease and grace, handling the gifted college student and struggling middle school student with appropriate expectations and encouragement -- only to realize that in all those hours you've earned less than a basic survival salary.
Constant carping in the form of "feedback" from the supervisor called a mentor. Promotion (which would slightly increase pay) is supposed to come when certain standards are met, so petty policy violations are cited or just plain invented as an excuse to block promotion. Even though this device is transparent, it's still disheartening to be told what a terrible person you are every six weeks or so. [In fairness, the mentors are being micromanaged by their own "senior mentors," who may ream them for failing to ream the tutors. The system could use an overhaul.]
Inflexible policies which are senseless or just plain bad.
Policies, including firing offenses, are subject to change without notice. You may first learn of a new policy when you're tongue-lashed for breaking it, when the change wasn't even buried in the newsletter (much less announced properly).
I recommend Tutor.com only if your expectations are very low. If you don't expect more than a pittance and have the detachment not to worry that most students aren't actually being helped much, it may work well for you.
There are worse jobs. At least I'm indoors, protected from the weather. There is no way anyone could live on a Tutor.com wage, though. I don't just mean that one couldn't maintain a middle-class lifestyle. One couldn't rent a studio apartment and buy food without some other significant income.
