Comment by fellowniusmonk
4 years ago
Yeah, my experience is that they really don't follow directions with precision and they seem to always identify themselves.
The quality/cost of service have dropped off imo, I used to rave about them circa ~2017 but the intelligence of the service really dropped off.
The idea is great, I still use them once in a blue moon, but the execution is in this uncanny valley of not being cheap enough for rote work (like compiling expense spreadsheets from texted receipts) and not intelligent enough for complex research tasks.
> The idea is great
What about the idea is great? There are few economies of scale, no automation, no long term edge, and it is completely dependent on the existence of cheap labor.
They were offering a service that people have a need for, at a price point that makes it affordable to people, who previously could not have afforded it (the alternative being hiring a personal assistant).
It's simple enough to argue that's not enough to make it "great". I would say just about as simple as it is to argue that it is.
Yeah in the end when you recognize that they just try to be middlemen, you realize you're better off finding a remote personal assistant that remembers prior context.
I guess that makes it less like a valley and more like a plain of negative value.