I went into full-time freelancing career as a graphic/web designer in 2007, then came the financial crisis and by mid-2008 I was struggling to feed myself because of the lack of work.<p>So in my desperation I tried mechanical turk.<p>I worked very hard for 8 hours tagging stuff, correcting text and selecting things with boxes. It was horrible, repetitive, mindless grunt work. And I earned like 5 dollars. That was not going to work.<p>So instead I advertised my very limited PHP and JavaScript skills and I started working as a programmer instead of a designer. It turned out there was still a demand for those.<p>I am very thankful that I had some coding knowledge because I don't know what else could I've done.<p>(I also tried 99designs, which paid better while still being dehumanizing, but that's a story for another day)