[HN Gopher] LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace
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LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace
Author : ArtTimeInvestor
Score : 370 points
Date : 2021-02-24 06:40 UTC (16 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (aimgroup.com)
| steve76 wrote:
| Take bailouts. Don't hire anyone. Make them pay you to work for
| you.
|
| And I thought I was tough.
|
| Have fun when your kid turns into a junkie and bricks you on the
| street.
| atleta wrote:
| They've been developing it for 1.5 years and still no results, no
| visible MVP? I guess that's how it looks like when a startup
| matures and loses it's core values.
|
| I still remember hearing Reid Hoffman at a conference (well, the
| online stream) in 2013. It was just a few weeks after my first
| startup flopped and my ex-co-founder was blaming it on not
| building a better quality product, for which I was to be held
| responsible as the CTO.
|
| So then I hear Reid Hoffman of Linkedin talking at this
| conference about saying that "if you're not embarrassed by the
| first version of your product then you were releasing it way too
| late". Seems like they have forgotten it as an organization.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| They were bought by Microsoft. There is no quick innovation in
| a large corporation.
| adolph wrote:
| Github sees to be staying reasonably nimble (maybe an
| exception that proves the rule. . . ).
| rossdavidh wrote:
| ...especially given that they bought an already functional
| product (aimed at the legal profession).
| mouzogu wrote:
| 5-10 years a lot of development work will be considered blue-
| collar work
|
| started with all the bootcamps, learn to code stuff, plus
| gameification of hiring process, covid-remote work and an
| increase in automation and ml tech i can see it as a plausible
| future
| grumple wrote:
| I see this take a lot. It couldn't be more wrong.
|
| Firstly, let's talk definitions:
|
| > A white collar worker is a person who performs professional,
| desk, managerial, or administrative work.
|
| > A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs
| manual labor.
|
| But I know what you're trying to say - that we'll suddenly find
| ourselves as the contemptible lower class of workers. Just FYI
| though: many manual laborers make quite a bit of money and are
| unionized. Many make over 100k which is good living outside of
| the bay.
|
| But as to why you're wrong: There's still an enormous demand
| for devs - far more than the supply. The minute that changes,
| people will stop going to bootcamps and pursue other fields.
| And even bootcamps don't help much: someone has to then take on
| that junior for a few years to make them useful, and nobody
| wants to do that. Not just anybody can be a dev. I used to tell
| people learn to code, but the truth is the average person could
| never handle even the simplest dev tasks. Even people with CS
| degrees seem to struggle for their first year (some struggle
| for their entire careers).
|
| ML isn't quite snake oil, but it's sold like it. It does some
| things well but it's falling short and in need of a
| breakthrough.
|
| Not to mention our work is very important to these companies.
| Small mistakes can kill the company. Good work can make 100x+
| our cost. And the better devs are several times more valuable
| than the mediocre ones. If developers were under real threat of
| being commodified, you'd see unionization happen so fast.
| There's a reason companies move from outsourcing to insourcing
| - if the cheaper devs were working out, it wouldn't make any
| sense.
| mouzogu wrote:
| Good points. I think we are slowly becoming commodified or at
| least there will be greater stratification between different
| types of developer with much higher salaries on one and and
| much lower on the other.
| grumple wrote:
| Who's on the low end? Even junior positions are paying
| close to 100k in some areas, with juniors in the bay making
| more than that. There are some true-entry level positions
| and areas (midwest, less urban) that pay less. Academia as
| well. But if you're talking about overseas devs, even they
| are charging more these days (40+/hour) for any sort of
| quality work. You don't want anybody touching your app (or
| having access to your code) if they don't have a high level
| of skill and professional accountability. Outsourced teams
| are often used for MVPs or prototyping - but then these
| companies call on devs like me when they get serious about
| their product. If teams of poorly paid devs could compete
| with highly paid devs, they would already be doing so -
| outsourcing of development started decades ago and the
| trend has reversed. You get a much better product with
| someone who has an intimate understanding of your business
| and your application, so "gig economy" type of work is
| generally limited to wordpress-style sites for your local
| pizza shop.
|
| As someone hiring devs, the push is always towards higher
| pay. Even with competitive salaries, it's hard to find good
| senior devs. That tells me that our pay isn't competitive
| enough (or our recruiters suck, but probably both), which
| is just going to push our salaries higher.
| DC1350 wrote:
| In the future your boss will assign work by auctioning JIRA
| tickets off to the team with a price ceiling set by freelancers
| on the LinkedIn marketplace. Payment will be through a bounty
| system. Salary is such an outdated payment structure
| adolph wrote:
| I've been thinking about this, only using Etherium contracts.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| You may be joking, but this is already how my team has been
| operating for the past 6 months. Theoretically it sounds great,
| because you can scale up or down your engineering needs just
| like you scale anything on the cloud. Have 100 Github issues to
| fix this week? Scale up to 20 freelance devs for a week and get
| it done.
|
| Practically, it doesn't work. We're going to go back to hiring
| full-time engineers again.
| thebiglebrewski wrote:
| Why doesn't it work? Genuinely curious!
| marcinzm wrote:
| I'd guess because:
|
| * It takes months for an engineer to be properly ramped up
| on a new codebase and even longer for business domain
| expertise. Until then they might actually be negatively
| productive due to onboarding questions other devs must
| answer.
|
| * Enforcing any coding standards is difficult so you get a
| lot of technical debt over time.
|
| edit: Also, a good engineer on a well functioning team will
| push back on bad or inefficient feature requirements. If
| you're just getting paid by feature and feel no ownership
| of the product then you have little incentive to do that.
| bitbuilder wrote:
| I'd add to that, team dynamics can't be discounted.
| Feeling part of a team is good for morale, and in turn
| productivity.
|
| People tend to produce better work, on a faster timeline,
| when the respect of their teammates is on the line.
|
| Also, with any given team and codebase, team members will
| tend to carve out unofficial roles that best fit their
| abilities. This of course increases the net productivity
| of the team.
| easton wrote:
| You'd run into Brooks's law pretty quickly, that is,
| "adding manpower to a late software project makes it
| later", since you have to spend a bunch of the current
| engineers' time to get the new people up to speed.
| Especially for one issue, which maybe doesn't require a lot
| of domain knowledge, but being neck deep you sometimes
| can't estimate that properly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
| rank0 wrote:
| I can't tell if this is a joke or not. Sounds like an easy way
| to develop horrible documentation-free, semi-functional
| systems.
|
| The future is gonna be filled with disinterested one time
| contractors and employers who fraudulently refuse bounty
| payout.
| biohax2015 wrote:
| That sounds awful.
| loceng wrote:
| Why?
| codewithcheese wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
| the_snooze wrote:
| That's a great incentive structure to build unmaintainable
| systems.
| acd wrote:
| Gig economy = no job security.
|
| No job security harder to get a mortage.
|
| I guess the word comes from music gigs. Looking at smaller bands
| I would say that is not making stable income.
|
| I guess it could mean easier to find jobs for self employeed but
| that the compensation might get lower.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| It will be interesting to see a third public company building a
| work marketplace. Upwork and Fiverr are already a godsend when
| you build a startup. But they still leave a lot to be desired.
|
| From a buyers perspective, Upwork feels more solid than Fiverr.
| In terms of freelancers and system functionality.
|
| One thing that is annoying on both platforms is that they send
| you an invoice after every gig. The first one that will offer to
| send you one combined invoice per month will win my trust in a
| big way.
|
| In my opinion, the weakness of both, Upwork and Fiverr is that
| they focus too much on the demand side. It is really hard to find
| real experts. For example developers, who are writing clean code
| and refactor their stuff before they deliver. You usually get
| something that works but is a bunch of chaos under the hood. I
| think it is telling, that Fiverr's affiliate program only pays
| when you bring them buyers. They should find a way to pay for
| talent as well.
|
| Speaking of affiliate programs: I think it is a mistake on
| Upwork's side to not have an affiliate program at all. Look at
| the biggest market place in the world: Amazon. Search for any
| product name on Google and you basically get a search results
| page full of links to pages that promote Amazon. Affiliates bring
| in qualified visitors so much cheaper then advertisements.
| bawolff wrote:
| > For example developers, who are writing clean code and
| refactor their stuff before they deliver
|
| If you want that you probably shouldn't be outsourcing to
| freelancers in general. People aren't going to make clean code
| if they know they are never going to see it again and arent
| being paid for how clean it is.
| dgellow wrote:
| That's a bold statement. I personally do care. I do
| contracting work and care about the code I write. And
| companies I work with seem to appreciate.
| jamil7 wrote:
| > People aren't going to make clean code if they know they
| are never going to see it again and arent being paid for how
| clean it is.
|
| You realize freelancers often have ongoing relationships with
| their clients, right? As well as relying heavily on
| recommendations and referrals. Why would I risk putting
| shitty work out there?
| hnarn wrote:
| > arent being paid for how clean it is
|
| To be fair, a lot of full-time developers in big companies
| also do not get paid for how clean the code is, because no
| one cares.
|
| I'd probably lean more towards personal character deciding
| this than just looking at people behaving only and always as
| incentives tell them to in any situation. Some people take
| pride in their code and some don't.
| robjan wrote:
| The difference is if you are an employee you are more
| likely to need to make changes to your own messy code so
| there is an incentive to keep it clean
| hnarn wrote:
| All I'm saying is that I don't think it's as simple as
| "you either have incentive or you don't", because if it
| was, then developers writing bad code that they
| themselves had to go back to wouldn't exist, but they
| clearly do. I'm one of them and I talk to a lot of them
| daily.
|
| To say that "of course this freelance code is garbage,
| they're paid peanuts" is naive, because it implies that:
|
| a) Well paid engineers always write beautiful code, and
| the more they get paid the more beautiful it becomes,
| which obviously isn't true.
|
| b) Badly paid engineers don't care about code quality if
| they don't get paid for it, which isn't true because open
| source is a thing.
|
| Reducing everything to economical incentives is, in my
| opinion, not very useful.
| varispeed wrote:
| Fast - cheap - quality, pick two. That rule always apply.
| atleta wrote:
| Nah. Besides professional intrinsic motivations (some people
| just can't convince themselves to produce shit) it also
| matters what the client wants and requires.
|
| Of course, a clueless non-technical client, esp. if they are
| inexperienced on top of this, will not care and thus my hire
| someone who works like you suggest. A bit more sophisticated
| client will find someone who's experienced in managing and
| hiring developers, a tech lead, and help them pick and
| sometimes giude/check-in on their freelancer. Though very few
| people actually do this.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I agree this could be a space to watch. With global trends
| there is definitely demand for quality freelancers that are
| cheaper than my local network. Linkedin is very well positioned
| to serve both sides of this market.
| varispeed wrote:
| Do you know why those companies like Fiverr didn't get the same
| treatment as Uber? In the end it is a pretty much the same
| business model.
| tyingq wrote:
| If you mean the California law, I think the big difference is
| that under AB5, workers can only be independent contractors
| if the work they do is _" outside the usual course of a
| company's business"_.
|
| There's no way driving for Uber can ever meet that criteria.
| Fiverr, on the other hand, often meets that definition.
|
| The US federal rules are more subjective, but more generally
| about "control". Not as stark a difference as the AB5
| example, but it does feel like Fiverr workers have more
| control over things like "picking their tools", "exactly how
| to do the work", etc.
| varispeed wrote:
| In the UK this type of work would get caught by IR35, which
| I understand would be similar to AB5. As an employee you
| can also pick your own tools or figure out how to do the
| work by yourself - these are not determining factors at
| least here where I live. What tips it over the IR35 is
| having to log your hours and work to the specification
| given by the "client". This is no different than normal
| employment except you and the "client" don't pay the right
| tax and you don't get any employment rights. Probably
| nobody has seriously took a bite into it, but after Uber
| precedent this may change.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" As an employee you can also pick your own tools or
| figure out how to do the work by yourself"_
|
| That hasn't really been my experience doing software
| development as an employee. They mandate lots of things
| like methodology (scrum, scaled agile, etc), tools like
| their standard IDE, coding standards, style guides,
| mandatory use of JIRA or similar, SCM standards, which
| languages are allowed, and so on. I'm aware some places
| might be highly flexible, but I assume that's less
| common.
| varispeed wrote:
| If I was commissioning a project I would require it to be
| implemented using this and that technology and adhere to
| industry standards and so on. There is not much
| flexibility, and what IDE you are using are immaterial
| when it comes to whether you are employed or not.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" what IDE you are using are immaterial when it comes to
| whether you are employed or not."_
|
| It's not, though. It's one aspect of behavioral control.
| For US Federal purposes, for example:
|
| _" Type of instructions given, such as when and where to
| work, what tools to use"_
|
| _" Degree of instruction, more detailed instructions may
| indicate that the worker is an employee"_
|
| _" Training a worker on how to do the job"_
|
| https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-
| contr...
|
| An IDE could come up in all three of those. And the law
| isn't black-and-white...it's the cumulative pile of these
| things that drives a ruling. So an IDE is absolutely
| material as one of many mandated tools, processes, or
| training subjects.
| varispeed wrote:
| In my country for example Upwork would fail for these
| reasons:
|
| Substitution - I understand that you cannot subcontract
| the work without the client knowledge and approval. That
| means the service is most likely personal. Even if the
| client agrees etc. and the subcontractor is only allowed
| to be from the Upwork pool (e.g. the client could hire
| them directly) then that also doesn't count as
| substitution.
|
| Control and direction - if the client is directing the
| worker from the outset and on an ongoing basis and if the
| worker needs to comply with any standards adopted by
| client's organisation e.g. the language, coding
| standards, APIs, then that counts as employment.
| Especially if the worker does not have final say about
| how the work is delivered.
|
| Control and direction - if you ask the worker to attend
| meetings or work on a certain schedule e.g. to align with
| the organisation or even if they are allowed to have
| flexible hours - then that's no different from
| employment. Basically you can only get around this if the
| work is done to a certain deadline and you have no
| meetings after the work commenced.
|
| Provision of equipment - things like a laptop and most
| software are excluded from consideration in my country.
| So if you need to buy a laptop for work, it doesn't
| count.
|
| Financial Risk - basically it will only count as
| freelancing if you risk severe penalties for missing
| deadlines. Having to work on a project after hours fixing
| bugs or making amendments does not count as financial
| risk. The same as having to buy equipment or software
| just for that project unless the value is substantial.
|
| Business on own account - this one is not so important -
| but basically you need to have a registered company,
| office, accountant, stationery, website, working with
| multiple clients (but employees can do multiple jobs too,
| so there is not much bearing)
|
| Business on own account - if project takes majority of
| your time, so that you cannot work on other projects at
| the same time, then that also suggests employment.
|
| Essentially for work to count as freelance it should look
| like this: you negotiate what needs to be done, rough
| specification is being made, you agree to milestones and
| possible penalties and then you only talk to client when
| a milestone is reached. The most granular way of payment
| is per milestone - e.g. hourly billing is employment most
| of the time.
|
| There are exemptions, for example if you work for a
| private person or a small company.
|
| Here is more comprehensive guidance with case studies.
| IR35 has been tightened so that from April pretty much
| any work will be considered as employment.
|
| https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/taxcofe-prod-
| storage-e5g3...
| praptak wrote:
| Being a commodity sucks. If you are an expert you have better
| options than putting yourself for sale as commodity.
| antupis wrote:
| yeah it is business model problem because those mystical 10x
| programmers are not commodities and Fiverr and Upwork are
| tuned for commodity business like logo design etc.
| Frost1x wrote:
| If you've ever tried logo design, I'd argue it's not really
| a commodity either. I've attempted it multiple times and
| it's non-trivial to create a _good quality_ logo for a
| business. A lot of experience and creativity come to play
| in those tiny little ubiquitous graphics, not just the
| technical execution skill (anyone here can probably slop
| together a vector graphic logo in a pinch).
|
| None the less, graphic designers lost this corner of the
| market and were out leveraged and forced to work in an
| environment that wants to treat good logo design as a
| commodity. Personally, I see the logo contract work example
| as a cautionary tale of how to not let businesses push
| software into the same world. Any profession driven by a
| lot of underlying passion (software development falls here)
| is vulnerable to such exploitation leveraging the passion
| aspect. The gaming industry is a great example of this.
| Highly complex, highly technical, yet there are many
| slaving hours away in burnout conditions at rates below
| what their skills could obtain but their passion holds them
| in place.
|
| Fortunately I think most developers worth their salt are
| intelligent enough to recognize this sort of exploitation
| and simply shift away from these situations and realize the
| costs they've paid not to undermine other developers in the
| process. I'm not sure if that will maintain forever though.
| There will always be demand for talented and experienced
| developers but the market may be able to do 80% of what
| they can achieve at a fraction of the cost and simply push
| the remaining 20% cost as a lack of quality onto the
| consumer--it wouldn't be the first time.
| praptak wrote:
| I'd say that shifting away from these situations is fine,
| but it's a crappy way of dealing with exploitation. Quote
| RMS: "All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend
| people's rights with one hand tied behind our backs,
| using nothing except the individual option to say no to a
| deal. We should use democracy to organize and together
| impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us.
| That's what democracy was invented for!"
| Frost1x wrote:
| Agree with RMS on this point, but I think that battle is
| nearly lost. Opting out ("cancel culture") seems to be
| the only powerful choice left for your average citizen in
| the shambles of democracy we have left. It could just be
| the orchestration problem that a large population can't
| self organize well enough to create a healthy democracy
| whereas a smaller ruling class is at a scale it can
| orchestrate and holds the upper hand.
|
| We currently have a system that not only enables
| exploitation of people but _celebrates it_. If you can
| get someone to do something for you for nothing, you 're
| rewarded and regarded as brilliant.
|
| Exploitation (essentially optimization) is fine when it's
| applied to a mechanical technique or process to gain
| efficiency (general technological growth), but not so
| fine when it's exploiting people and their lives to reach
| these growths. We seem to have lost the technological
| growth rate options that satisfy the appetites of the
| most greed driven (where US capitalism has historically
| been fantastic and deserves celebration, back when labor
| rights were strong and the industrial revolution was
| steaming ahead with no end in sight for technological
| growth) and moved on to exploiting people to eek out
| these never-ending appetites for growth (where US
| capitalism, I believe, has more recently begun to fail).
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| None of the platforms will ever send you a single invoice for a
| group of contractors for legal reasons. Each contractor needs
| to invoice you directly due to US employment law. Other
| arrangements are possible if you pay an agency instead of an
| individual, but upwork isn't and agency, they are a
| marketplace.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| this doesn't make sense. THe freelancer is not invoicing you
| directly; the payment contract is explicitly 2-sided. There's
| no reason they could not send you a single line-item invoice
| other than they want to extract their cut but not be viewed
| as the middleman.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| This does not hold true for Fiverr.
|
| On Fiverr, the identity of the seller is completely concealed
| from the buyer. Usually the seller does not even tell you
| their full name, let alone send you an invoice.
|
| This is actually a big plus of Fiverr. You only get invoices
| from one company in Israel (Fiverr) instead of invoices from
| all around the world.
|
| It just sucks that they send you an invoice after every gig.
| They should have an option to send you one each month.
| Payment could still be after each gig. Just the invoices
| should be combined.
| fergie wrote:
| > the weakness of both, Upwork and Fiverr is that they focus
| too much on the demand side.
|
| Yes, they only attract marginalised developers. Any "good"
| developer will be working full time in a well paid job. In the
| unlikely event that they want to choose to be a contractor,
| they probably have the capacity to set up their own gigs.
|
| The whole business model of Upwork and Fiverr is predicated on
| some sort of unhealthy combination of wishful thinking,
| technical illiteracy, neo-liberalism and mild racism.
|
| For this sort of thing to work in a satisfactory way, we have
| to look at the other, more established professions- law,
| medicine, accountancy, architecture, etc. For a guarantee of
| quality and supply of well-qualified software engineers, they
| have to be organised as a profession with guilds, partnerships
| and some sort of gatekeeping.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Neo-liberalism I'll give you, but I'm having a hard time
| finding the mild racism. As a buyer in fiverr, I know the
| country the contractor is in and I think that's it. It's been
| a few months since I bought a logo there.
|
| I suppose I could think "I don't like people from country X,
| so I won't offer any work to someone from there", but if I
| thought that way, it seems my preferences are _easier to
| enforce in other contexts_ than in these gig platforms.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Not sure what your parent meant, but I know plenty of
| companies who hire on Upwork and Fiverr a lot and
| immediately filter out people from India, Pakistan,
| Bangladesh because of prior experience with (extremely) bad
| quality.
| konschubert wrote:
| Well, LinkedIn also has stories.
| Ayesh wrote:
| I used to be a freelancer, finding work mainly on Upwork, and I
| loathe them now.
|
| What started as a 10% commission was upped to 20%, and they tried
| to do various tricks on both clients and freelancers to a point
| that I stopped doing freelance work altogether.
|
| It was a great platform, and I don't think a 10% clear cut wasn't
| enough for them for an organic growth.
|
| Another thing I loathe is LinkedIn. I'm sure many people find
| their next job through LinkedIn, but it baffles me why LinkedIn
| would even exist today, being an social network, communication
| platform, a portfolio, and all of them in a very awkward
| position, and not being very good at any of them. Now they want
| to be a freelancer market place too?
| wsc981 wrote:
| I work through Arc.dev [0] and I like them. From what I
| understand Arc asks no commission, so I am not sure how they
| actually make money. You set your own rates and that's what
| clients pay. Perhaps clients pay a one-time fee upon finding a
| suitable contractor?
|
| There doesn't seem to be a race to the bottom on Arc.dev with
| regards to rates. There's a vetting process, but not as
| difficult as TopTal imo.
|
| You can get an idea on the rates of freelancers on Arc by
| reading the following: https://arc.dev/remote-developer-salary
|
| ---
|
| [0]: https://arc.dev
| scrollaway wrote:
| Arc takes ~15-30%, they just take it from the client's side
| instead of the freelancer; but your rate isn't the one the
| client is paying.
|
| I do like them a lot though and have gotten clients through
| them (and codementor; though that last one is, too, getting
| polluted with very-low-level coders just randomly accepting
| jobs they do not have the skills for; having used it as a
| client recently, I've been less impressed)
| mcenedella wrote:
| How specifically, do the commission fees work on a per contract
| basis?
| Ayesh wrote:
| I'm a bit hazy on details. Their commission is per-client. If
| the total payment between the client and freelancer is less
| than $500, the commission is 20%. It gets lower to 15% and
| 10% when you earn more. But it never teaches zero, and that
| is in addition to payment fees. You pay a fixed fee for
| withdrawals, or the bank withdrawals offer 3-5% low rates
| compared to market currency buying rates.
| knuthsat wrote:
| Yeah, what I dislike about Upwork is that after they take
| thousands of dollars from me for their service, they still want
| me to pay for applying for new work.
|
| I'm the one that spends time filtering through their cluttered
| job list, I'm the one trying to convince people to hire me, I'm
| the one doing the work, they process the payments and they
| still milk me massively. Eventually I deleted my account and
| went working just on Toptal.
|
| There I have no idea how much they earn from my work but at
| least I get dozens of offers every time I become available.
|
| I think Upwork just has to deal with too many disputes on low
| budget jobs and because of that their processes alienate high
| earning devs.
| anovikov wrote:
| They just wanted to weed out small time freelancers. The fee is
| 5% for >$10K customer-freelancer relationship... My average fee
| is about 7-8%, or about 10% including what the customer pays.
| Ayesh wrote:
| Yes. But that's what market places are for, to reach out new
| customers. If you have a relationship with a client for more
| than 10K, why continue to pay 5% on top of payment fees?
|
| They messaging software is not very useful, and time tracking
| feature is hostile for many.
|
| A more comparable feature would be for the client to pay a
| fixed fee to post, and allow them to work outside upwork.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| > why continue to pay 5% on top of payment fees?
|
| Because without Upwork weekly charges clients might
| "forget" and "postpone" and "delay" payments. 5% is ok to
| know that money will be paid by the schedule.
| anovikov wrote:
| Messaging part is indeed absurdly awful. Here i agree with
| you.
|
| Otherwise, Upwork is just great, to the point that i
| wouldn't even talk to a client coming from outside of it
| just because all of them turned out to be little but spam.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| They take 20% for up to $500. Then between $500 and $10K they
| take 10%. Anything above $10k is then charged as 5% only. And
| this applies to same client spanning multiple contracts. That
| means once you get paid $10k, regardless of current or future
| project(s) from same client they only take 5%. Upwork
| encourages long term relations between freelancers and clients.
|
| On the other hand Fiverr takes always 20%, regardless of how
| long the relation between freelancer and client is. That's why
| Fiverr is 10 times smaller than Upwork.
| esperent wrote:
| This always struck me as really unfair. If you're taking
| projects that bring you <$500, you probably really need that
| money and 20% is a large chunk of it.
| marcinzm wrote:
| The platform overhead is much higher for those jobs I
| suspect due to disputes, fraud, etc, etc.
| atleta wrote:
| It's interesting, ~20% now seems to be the norm. (Not just for
| developer platforms.) 10% is pretty reasonable. I also used to
| work for a few years through upwork, sill when it was elance. I
| kind of remember that the rate was around 10%, maybe higher for
| smaller projects. Again, pretty reasonable.
|
| A few years ago I've co-founded a platform for remote psych
| counselling and I remember my partner was pushing for a 30%
| commission. I told him that's how you motivate your users to
| try to get around you and not keep paying in the long run.
| ryannevius wrote:
| Sounds like we are/have been in the same boat. Are you working
| full time now? If so, was the pivot motivated by your
| dissatisfaction with the client acquisition process?
| e_commerce wrote:
| Linkedin is a sewer
| cute_boi wrote:
| I remember most people working on fiverr and upwork just to find
| better client. Later they will talk on private channels to avoid
| paying fiverr 20%. Fiverr is not good anyway they take 20% from
| workers (as well as some amount from sellers) creating a illusion
| that they only take 20%.
|
| I guess more competition on gig marketplace would be nice.
| asperous wrote:
| There are actually quite a few of these sites:
| https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer
|
| There is a new chart of how the ranking of these sites have
| shifted over time:
| https://public.tableau.com/profile/andrew.chase#!/vizhome/th...
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| For IT dev work, how on earth are people in UK/US/Europe/OZ/NZ
| going to compete with low-cost devs based in India and Africa ?
|
| I see this problem in quote offers on Fiverr, and I have no idea
| how people in the 'western world' can compete.
| jtdev wrote:
| I've worked with many offshore devs over the last decade and
| really do have a great deal of respect for these folks. That
| said, in my experience you get maybe 1/10th of the useful
| output from cheap offshore devs as compared to mid-level U.S.
| and Canada based devs.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Native same language communication skills and same time zone
| are a big deal for some companies/people.
|
| Similar to why there are a variety of options for most
| services.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Have you ever actually tried using the low-cost option on
| Fiverr? They results are, quite frankly, un-usable. The good
| ones know their worth and charge accordingly.
|
| Simillary, I worked for a Swedish-based multinational that
| nearshored some of their dev-work to Poland. Well guess what,
| so did Hertz and Deutche Bank and Ryan Air and a bunch of other
| multinationals and suddenly the 50% cheaper dev work was down
| to 10% cheaper.
|
| People won't settle for peanuts just because they're living in
| a low-COL area, they'll want to get paid what they're worth as
| well.
| gajus wrote:
| We are building one too
| https://www.producthunt.com/posts/contra-3
| amir734jj wrote:
| Awesome. Looks nice. You should share/post it as "Show HN"
| paulie_a wrote:
| Will it be as terrible as their job listing service they already
| have?
| KDJohnBrown wrote:
| It will be garbage, just another spam avenue. I've received over
| 3,500 "InMail"s and connection requests in my last year of
| unemployment.
|
| Maybe 6 of them were worth accepting. The rest were just
| incompetent headhunters, mostly from one of four or five spammers
| in India (esolutionsinc is the most prolific).
|
| I don't see how anything LinkedIn can do will be anything but
| trash.
| varispeed wrote:
| It is only a matter of time that members of such services will be
| declared as employees and will have to be paid minimum wage and
| get other perks (and also have the correct tax collected at
| source). Otherwise how this case is different from Uber? Just
| because someone is not sitting in the car for hours it doesn't
| mean the suffering is any different.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| the freelancers will likely "set their rate" on LinkedIn. Uber
| drivers can not set a rate. Being unable to negotiate rate is
| one of the primary reasons Uber is being considered an
| employer.
| varispeed wrote:
| As an employee you can also set your rate and it is always up
| to employer to take it or leave it. There is no difference
| between "freelancing" and employment with that regard. I
| think this will be a clear case of evading employment laws at
| least in my country. The give away is having to use the
| tracker which means that employer is exerting direct control
| over the worker and also you don't have control over what to
| make (e.g. you have to work to specification set by the
| client). I think they didn't catch on that because nobody has
| reported this, but after Uber there is a clear precedent set.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| LinkedIn is horrendous - they could actually make it somewhat
| better by having two views "Colleagues" and "Recruiters" and
| never the two shall be in the same view.
|
| It would make opening LinkedIn at least not wildly stressful!
| [deleted]
| thedogeye wrote:
| I hope they offer my friend a unicycling gig since I recommended
| him for this skill. He has no idea how to unicycle.
| [deleted]
| kumarvvr wrote:
| I dont know about the US, but in India, a lot of private
| companies do not allow freelancing during off time.
|
| The value of Upwork is that it is separated from the real world,
| as in you could form a company and use that front to earn money.
|
| That will be hard to do in LinkedIn. Who wants to advertise or
| showcase their freelance work to their colleagues and family?
| kube-system wrote:
| It varies in the US. Both in company policy, in what is
| protected by law per state, and in how people feel about it. I
| know some people who openly moonlight, and some who keep it
| quiet because their employers frown upon it.
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| Do you mean you can work anonymously or pseudonymously?
|
| Because as far as I'm aware you have to use a real name backed
| by govt. ID and an accurate and verified profile picture to
| have your account enabled.
| ecmascript wrote:
| LinkedIn is really a disgusting place imo. The only people who
| are active on LinkedIn is people that sells bullshit and
| recruiters who spam everyone.
|
| I have no trust in linkedin and I am sure this new feature will
| be as low quality as usual, on par with the low quality stuff on
| fiverr and upwork.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Even worse, many large companies now monitor employee LinkedIn
| activity as a measure of "market eminence" and "thought
| leadership" for performance reviews and promotions. Like
| everything else, it gets distilled down to a single metric like
| activity count. Which is why you see so many people sharing the
| same articles with a comment like "Really good perspective Joe,
| could not agree more". Do that a few times per week and you are
| demonstrating serious thought leadership to your management, as
| opposed to doing something like creating and publishing
| original content.
| StreamBright wrote:
| Upwork is horrendous. Slow, search is broken and there are no
| incentives for contractors to do well. The quality of people
| widely varies and has no correlation to the feedback scores.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I wonder if this is big enough for Fiverr stock to take a hit.
| We'll see.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I think the problem with monitoring workers' screens is you are
| trying to ensure that they are "working". Instead the client
| should have managers who are trying to figure out WHAT the
| workers are working on. To understand whether useful work is
| being done you need to understand the structure of the
| application, and then understand what kind of progress is made in
| terms of that.
|
| Manage the development of the product, not workers' time.
| Lammy wrote:
| * Microsoft are building a gig marketplace under their LinkedIn
| brand, taking on UpWork and Fiverr
| spoonjim wrote:
| This is a decision that the Microsoft CEO gets briefed on, and
| can veto, but largely an independent subsidiary doing something
| like this doesn't come from the mother ship.
| cheschire wrote:
| I hope you're that forgiving by default to all leaders who's
| organizations / countries make controversial decisions, and
| aren't just being a Microsoft apologist.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Why an apologist? I don't even think this is a decision
| that Microsoft or LinkedIn needs to apologize for. Is this
| already a scandal somehow?
| XenophileJKO wrote:
| LinkedIn largely is independent. Especially on smaller
| product decisions like this. We already had something like
| this for years as a limited release product. It was called
| "ProFinder".
| Lammy wrote:
| > independent subsidiary
|
| I hope you will forgive me if I refuse to believe in such a
| thing having worked at large companies (non-Microsoft, tbf)
| spoonjim wrote:
| With a lot of large independent subsidiaries, the main
| company CEO's decision is firing and hiring the subsidiary
| CEO and not a whole lot more. The parent company's
| management often doesn't have the bandwidth to get deeply
| involved so will just veto major decisions.
| k__ wrote:
| Will it be like Upwork/Fiverr or like Toptal/Arc?
| mark-r wrote:
| I go to Linkedin to find a job, not a gig. I don't know if it's
| possible to do a good job with both, it seems like opposing
| goals.
| peter303 wrote:
| I dislike the games LinkedIn plays with hiding your phone number
| and email address. Then you need some level of linking and/or
| paid subscription to communicate with someone.
| techbrofounder wrote:
| LinkedIn would be better served to buy Upwork, than compete.
| mcenedella wrote:
| I've been on Upwork as a buyer for years. It's tremendous for
| getting great talent on a short term basis. Top rate I've paid I
| think is some close to or just over $100/hour, so it's definitely
| not just for low-end stuff.
|
| I've learned (the hard way) about being very, very clear with
| deliverables and expectations. Based on the average response I
| get on Upwork, it would seem the median buyer is much more
| susceptible to contractors blowing smoke. So one has to be
| careful.
|
| But overall, as several hundred thousand dollars client over the
| years, it's been a godsend.
| bawolff wrote:
| > $100/hour, so it's definitely not just for low-end stuff.
|
| Maybe not low-end, but that's still probably the lower end of
| mid-end.
| gppk wrote:
| On a global marketplace? $100/hour is a ridiculously good
| rate for a large % of workers. Maybe not in SF or Tech Hubs
| but for a graphics designer in India, or Eastern Europe?
| jtdev wrote:
| You get what you pay for.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Take the very same individual and place them in India or
| US, or even in a high or low CoL area in the US and they
| would charge differently; but their work is still the
| same. So you're not really getting what you paid for,
| you're paying for many externalities.
| jtdev wrote:
| I've encountered offshore devs that are actually quite
| good... they are by far the exception, but they also
| charge much more than the run of the mill folks that
| you're likely to encounter.
| bawolff wrote:
| High-end, by definition, is not a large percentage of
| workers. High end is the workers on the high end of the
| compensation scale.
|
| Those type of people arent going to be on a site like
| upwork, but they make a hell of a lot more than $100/hr.
| young_unixer wrote:
| They are the high end in the global market.
|
| Only in very rich countries $100/hr could be considered
| "normal" or not high-end.
| newswasboring wrote:
| You are conflating price and quality. If there are two
| top level people equally good one will undercut the
| other. And if one lives in Bangalore and the other in SF
| the first will undercut massively. SF living expenses are
| an exception on a global market place.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Come again, $100/hour is the "lower end of mid-end"? The
| median wage is around $25 in the USA, the minimum wage
| averages around $10...
| pault wrote:
| That's an apple to oranges comparison. You should be
| comparing it to the median freelance hourly rate for each
| respective industry.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| We're talking about compensation for a specific type of
| work whose market value is above $100/hour.
| offtop5 wrote:
| I've only used Fiver, and only as a client. Absolutely amazing,
| for my passion video game project I've been more interested in
| the journey of getting my artwork made, and working on the video
| game then finishing it. Once I get all the custom models done, I
| might go ahead and shoot a trailer video but it's already been a
| blast.
|
| One thing I would advise entrepreneurial people to do would it be
| to just hire people who know what they're doing for some stuff.
| For example if you want to build a website but you don't know how
| to design a ux, hop on Fiverr pay $200 for some UX mock-ups and
| go from there.
| [deleted]
| cheph wrote:
| How is LinkedIn still online after hosting racist content
| disparaging people for their skin color and telling them to be
| less white? https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/course-urging-workers-be-
| less-whi...
| ElectricMind wrote:
| How about for God's sake do what you suppose to do ONE thing in
| first place- a place to find a job - that is it.!
|
| But no "smart visionary" leadership think "follow facebook" turn
| it into doomscroll . Have you seen what kind of shit people post
| there? And how come girl with pretty picture has zillion
| connections - okay ignore I asked last question. What was I
| thinking !!
| barrenko wrote:
| T'will be a colossal failure, but I welcome any steps that will
| bring LinkedIn to it's end.
| GiftCard2021 wrote:
| 7 Most Common Birds That You Can Find In Singapore
| http://bit.ly/3shBg7U
| chovybizzass wrote:
| excellent. fiverr is nothing but trash and upwork only has tops
| 25/hour jobs in usa.
|
| need a legit gig site.
| bawolff wrote:
| I used upwork when i was between jobs and wanted some side work
| before i found something more permanent. I managed to get a
| ~$100/hr gig. Although honestly it still didn't seem worth it
| in the end. Freelancing sucks.
| vmception wrote:
| LinkedIn isn't going to better
|
| Anyway, I have good experience with Fiverr. Definitely has alot
| of amateurish people building a portfolio quickly though.
| ohazi wrote:
| I am 100% confident that whatever LinkedIn manages to come up
| with here will also be trash.
| oblio wrote:
| > upwork only has tops 25/hour jobs in usa
|
| Honest question, but for IT stuff, why would it have stuff over
| $25/hour? It's going to be remote work, anyway, so there will
| be someone, somewhere, in a country with a lower cost of
| living, that will work for that money or even less. It's only
| normal that Americans won't be able to compete, over time :-)
| bawolff wrote:
| Well you have to compete on skill, niche and reputation. High
| skill workers in poor countries still can make $$$ online if
| they have the appropriate skills and especially if somewhat
| specialized. Doubly so if they have a strong reputation for
| doing a good job.
| codesuela wrote:
| not really, in my experience on Upwork for 25$/hour you can't
| really find someone who is a competent engineer and also
| speaks solid english (no matter the country).
| kube-system wrote:
| Yet, Americans still compete at the high end of contracting
| work. Sometimes it's not the code itself that ultimately
| matters, it's the solution as a whole.
| ulucs wrote:
| short answer: signaling has enough power to stop freelancers
| from competing on price until zero
| josephjrobison wrote:
| Fiverr - best turnaround times and least hassle, you can see
| all the gigs, pricing, and expertise up front. But have to do
| hard filtering.
|
| Upwork - Biggest range. Can get a lot of crap, but the volume
| means a few diamonds. Better for open ended or larger
| engagements than Fiverr.
|
| Individual freelancers - great if you find the right one that
| delivers. The downside, is without the middleman platform,
| there's more risk to the buyer of them disappearing or
| delivering late with now. BUT once you find indie freelancer
| they are gold.
|
| Agencies - more expensive, but if the owner is in growth mode,
| they may end up being cheap for what they deliver. If already
| established, you get a risk-free transaction but more cost. Go
| to an agency if you have a big problem you want solved and
| handed off.
|
| Manage collective of freelancers - if you're a killer project
| manager that can assemble and manage, go for it. Fiverr has a
| new Fiverr Business that seems to add a layer on this to help
| manage. Haven't tried.
|
| TopTal - trying for the first time. Uncertain if worth it. They
| are good at sales, the floor seems much higher than Upwork. But
| if you're really good at filtering and interviewing, then you
| maybe should find your own as TopTal overcharges for the
| quality you get. Perhaps, still TBD.
| algo_trader wrote:
| > Fiverr - best turnaround times and least hassle, you can
| see all the gigs, pricing, and expertise up front. But have
| to do hard filtering.
|
| I certainly get a "fast and simple" vibe from the app. But
| what is the experience in practice? Do you get
| (semi)functional work or just a 3rd country bot trying to
| upsale u ?
|
| I agree you need to in a "good PM" mode for these services
| gexla wrote:
| Just because you haven't found a way to make money on Fiverr,
| that doesn't mean people haven't found ways to make Fiverr a
| valuable platform for their business.
|
| The same is true of Upwork. I guess you're being sarcastic,
| because obviously many people do make more than $25 / hour
| through the platform.
|
| There are good arguments against using Upwork, though these
| arguments are more for beginners who haven't yet found their
| footing as a business offering services.
| bredren wrote:
| Upwork can pay really well. You just have to find the right
| gig.
|
| That said I loath upwork, the company has squeezed contractors
| for every possible drop, added subscriptions and all kinds of
| bullshit around communications.
|
| I am no fan of LinkedIn, but would be happy to see Upwork have
| its lunch eaten.
| 23B1 wrote:
| What'd be sweet is if Linkedin worked on linkedin sucking less. I
| have better luck hiring in HN threads.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| Hopefully cryptocurrency payments is an option. ZK-Rollups now
| enable Visa scale throughput for payments on Ethereum so crypto
| is primed for widespread usage.
|
| Linkedin could stick with USDC, which is an FDIC insured USD-
| backed ERC20 token, to avoid the volatility associated with
| crypto-assets, while providing a more seamless globally
| accessible alternative to the legacy banking/payments system.
|
| EDIT: privacy is still a big issue though. Linkedin's payment
| graph would be published to the blockchain with no obfuscation,
| which would undoubtedly create significant liabilities. Privacy
| is data and computationally intensive, so ZK-Rollup throughput
| capacity would decline from 3,000 tps to 300 tps with
| confidentiality added.
| patrickk wrote:
| I've hired someone for a short term, low-price contracting gig
| recently (not on the marketplaces mentioned here) who
| specifically requested to be paid in cryptocurrency if possible
| and even offered a discount for that. The reason was that after
| converting USD into his local currency he would get robbed by
| Paypal fees.
|
| So I support efforts to enable faster, seamless global commerce
| which will help gig workers to get more gigs and avoid paying
| middlemen ridiculous fees.
|
| Those downvoting you probably don't have experience with gig
| workers from poorer parts of the world, where middlemen like
| Paypal are a barrier to commerce.
| KDJohnBrown wrote:
| Normally I would scoff at this, but having had to physically
| chase down customers before over bounced checks, I could really
| get behind something unreturnable like cryptocurrency.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Good luck reversing a bank transfer.
| KDJohnBrown wrote:
| You would be surprised how many American companies still
| prefer to pay check. I used to consult for a payments
| startup which would only pay by check (and always at least
| 45 days late). It's a way to abuse vendors.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| Wire transfer fees can be prohibitive for small contracts,
| and making an international transfer is quite time
| consuming, in that it typically requires visiting a
| physical bank branch.
| kube-system wrote:
| Of course, people on the receiving end of a payment love un-
| reversible payments. The same is not so true for people who
| are sending said payment and expecting that work gets done.
| bawolff wrote:
| If only someone would make a gig marketplace website that
| could act as an escrow, collecting money upfront and
| distributing once the work is done.
| KDJohnBrown wrote:
| Trust is difficult. How do you programmatically define
| "done" so that the customer cannot screw you?
| TargetedVictimm wrote:
| The crypto anarchists have been trying to kill me for 3 years
| now. They have been gangstalking me and trying to drive me to
| suicide. F Elon Musk F Barry Silbert NEMESIS
| altairmn wrote:
| LinkedIn has a clear advantage here over the other freelancer
| marketplaces (Fiverr, and Upwork) especially in the unsaturated
| specialized knowledge sub-fields of technology. Although this
| feature will be gamified, in the first year at least, the
| freelancers (assuming they are existing LinkedIn Users) available
| on the platform will have: 1. Somewhat reliable
| employment history 2. Similarly reliable educational
| credentials 3. Code contribution metrics available via a
| Github integration 4. Reviews provided by authentic
| customers who also have LinkedIn accounts
|
| A simple verification process here will ensure that the reviews
| are authentic, thereby ensuring trust in the ratings of each
| freelancer.
| notahacker wrote:
| LinkedIn's network is a massive advantage for the sort of gigs
| the other sites don't offer. Want to find an mid level
| executive with expertise in X in the field of Y to spend a few
| hours solving a problem? They're almost certainly not on Fiverr
| or Upwork, but almost certainly have a LinkedIn profile, and
| some of them will have them time and the inclination to do a
| bit of consulting work if LinkedIn presents the opportunity to
| them.
| tgiba wrote:
| Given how LinkedIn quality of network plummeted over past ~5
| years I don't think they will have great success in throwing
| marketplace into the mix.
| amelius wrote:
| Developers become the new Uber drivers.
| atleta wrote:
| Not really. First of all, most Uber drivers don't have an
| alternative option. At least not to be able to work in their
| job, e.g. as taxi drivers.
|
| This is a huge difference, since developers are in huge demand.
| Then there are some of us, who actually like working with
| clients. So instead of sitting in a large (or sometimes small)
| company and doing what you are being told to do, you can
| discuss it with a client, sometimes convince them to take
| another route, etc. So for some of us the point is that it's a
| more versatile role. (And I'm not saying that there's anything
| wrong with wanting to work in a larger company or not wanting
| to talk to clients directly. It's just different.)
| pbalau wrote:
| 15 - 20 years ago there were RentACoder, oDesk and others.
| Doing contract work on some online platform was a thing way
| before Uber was even in basic idea phase. Fivver and the likes
| are just the current iteration.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I'm a bit skeptical. Development work usually lasts months to
| do anything meaningful, it's pretty hard to call them "gigs".
| Building a website of reasonable complexity (not some Wix
| template) is not like designing a logo, which can be done in
| under an hour.
| abdo2023 wrote:
| 7 Most Common Birds That You Can Find In Singapore
| http://bit.ly/3shBg7U
| seanwilson wrote:
| https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211064098-Log-T...
|
| > It's easy to bill your time using the Upwork desktop app. ...
|
| > When you have logging turned on, the app takes random screen
| captures six times per hour--once per 10-minute billing segment.
| Anything visible on your screen will display in your Work Diary,
| but you have the option, in Settings, to choose whether the
| screen captures your entire desktop or only the active screen.
|
| Are people aware UpWork encourages monitoring freelancers like
| this? I would never work for a platform that promotes this or
| want to subject someone to being monitored like this.
|
| Can you really not ask the client questions before submitting a
| proposal either?
|
| Is all this just taking advantage of freelancers who don't know
| how to market themselves, or am I missing something?
|
| For all the freelance projects I've found myself, some detailed
| discussion was required beforehand to check what the client
| really needs, and I aim for terms that don't lead to being
| micromanaged (like fixed price projects based on results not
| time) so I can't see the appeal.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Used to be optional, so the client could require this or not.
|
| Yeah, if you take a job on Upwork, you'll never be able to do
| work with that freelancer off-site ever.
|
| It seems they actually enforce this too, I've read of many
| that's been either banned on suspicion.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| > Yeah, if you take a job on Upwork, you'll never be able to
| do work with that freelancer off-site ever.
|
| Why? That happens often a lot. There is not too much that can
| be done against it I think. I like the ease of hiring people
| and not having to do paperwork, so I see little reason, but I
| do know companies which do it a lot and have not been banned.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| Not so. My biggest long-term client started with me on
| Upwork. We did three projects and then moved away to dealing
| directly. Upwork may have tightened its T&Cs since then, so
| that a kind of 'Eye of Sauron' clause applies, though I'm not
| sure it would stand a legal wrangle.
| m12k wrote:
| Agreed, if a company trusts me little enough to want to
| constantly monitor me like that, they trust me little enough
| that they shouldn't hire me in the first place.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| As someone who worked on Upwork for a long time and literally
| owe them my career, it was great and I would do it again in a
| heartbeat. A long time ago I made a living on that platform
| exclusively.
|
| Thanks to Upwork I got to work with US clients and save enough
| money to migrate back home to the US with my wife and children.
|
| By using their time tracker I was guaranteed to get paid for
| work, they take the doubt out of the equation. Track time and
| you will get paid. It was 100% a worthy trade-off for me. The
| results speak for themselves.
|
| Now today I have no idea what the platform is like. I haven't
| worked there for in quite some time.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Presumably you went in early when the platform was still
| decent.
|
| I tried it in ~2013 and again recently and it's a shit-show.
| There's no quality control on the demand side so you waste
| hours sifting through crap like unreasonably low rates or
| unclear/nonsense requirements, then spend ages writing a
| proposal just to be outbid by some Indian sweatshop because
| the rating system has been gamed to death and there's nothing
| to weed out low-quality suppliers.
|
| Maybe it's good enough if you want to compete with third-
| world, bottom of the barrel developers and can afford to live
| on that, but otherwise you'd make more money on average just
| working at your local fast food joint.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| That was not my experience working up until 2016. My rates
| at their lowest was $45/hr. Double or more towards the end.
| [deleted]
| f8 wrote:
| I work full-time and get monitored like this. Ever hear of
| Hubstaff? It's an unfortunate reality for some remote workers
| and I don't agree with it but it happens. There can be an
| inherent distrust from employers when they're unable to see you
| physically working. It's more of an assurance thing, but I've
| gotten used to working exclusively in VM's.
| 3np wrote:
| While I think it's stupid and would never dream of going in
| that direction with my staff (the most talented would
| probably bolt fast), in principle I see nothing wrong with it
| as long as:
|
| 1) The employer has paid for all necessary hardware
|
| 2) If anything goes through third-party services, I can work
| on the tracked environment in a way that doesn't expose my
| personal information in any way (e.g. I shouldn't be required
| to open my e-mail inbox or any other online accound not
| strictly tied to my employment there)
|
| 3) The employer accepts the time wasted on any friction with
| moving information back and forth (and/or sees to minimize
| need for that)
|
| If it means running a VM, up any workstation with 16GB RAM.
| jeltz wrote:
| I don't feel any of that solves my main issue: that I would
| not want to work for someone who does not trust me. That
| does not seem like a good environment where I can be
| productive and work on things which benefit my employer.
| The privacy issues is not the only issue.
|
| The only case I would accept something like this is if I
| was working at eg the NSA, a really high value target for
| state actors. Then I would get why nobody can be trusted.
| matz1 wrote:
| The use of monitoring doesn't mean they don't trust you.
|
| Its a way to verify your trust, otherwise it just blind
| trust.
| serverholic wrote:
| Let's not sugarcoat it. If you need to verify trust then
| it's not trust.
|
| "Oh hey honey, mind if I look at your phone? Oh it's not
| that I don't trust you, I just need to verify my trust."
|
| _eyeroll_
| matz1 wrote:
| That is called blind trust.
| jonfw wrote:
| I think there is a step between actively monitoring and
| blind trust, where you build trust through a
| relationship.
| 3np wrote:
| Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't want to work like that either.
| Just saying I see it as a bad decision, not ethically or
| morally wrong.
|
| As opposed to, say, controling employees bathroom breaks
| as is routine in retail and industrial jobs in some
| places. Or prohibiting/preventing unionisation.
| nojito wrote:
| It's not a question of trust, it's a question of time
| tracking for hourly employees.
|
| I agree that if you are a salaried employee this type of
| tracking software makes no sense.
| fabbari wrote:
| In my head when I tell a client that a project/job is X
| hours it means that that is the market value in hours for
| that project.
|
| There is an old Italian story - I'm sure it's common in
| other places - about a TV repairman that goes to fix a TV
| at someone's house. He looks at the TV and tells the
| owner: "It's going to be 100$ to fix it". The owner
| agrees. The repairman walks up to the TV, hits it with
| his fist and the TV starts working again. The owner
| complains: "What? A 100 bucks to hit the TV with your
| fist?" and the handyman: "Yeah, because I knew where to
| hit it!".
|
| The idea is, say that you are a 10X performer: you have
| two options in front of you. Option one: you charge 1200$
| for ten hours of work - this will make clients happy,
| even if you are only working an hour. Option two: you
| charge 1200$ for an hour of work: none is going to hire
| you because there are people that are only charging 120$
| an hour.
|
| The funny thing is: even if the math always ends up the
| same - 1200$ - people will almost always choose the 120$
| an hour because in their heads they are getting the best
| deal.
|
| Back to the topic at hand: if I say that a job is 10
| hours at 120$ per hour I don't want to be monitored
| because trust doesn't enter into it. It's a simple matter
| of what's the worth of the job. If you don't think the
| job is worth 1200$ no amount of monitoring will fix it;
| if you think the job is worth 1200$ then if I do it in
| two minutes or 10 hours should not be an issue.
|
| The Speed-Cost-Quality triangle is lost in translation
| the moment the invoice hits the printer.
|
| * Edit 1 - Fixed some spelling.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > Option two: you charge 1200$ for an hour of work: none
| is going to hire you because there are people that are
| only charging 120$ an hour.
|
| The solution is to find clients that are prepared to pay
| for quality + reliable results and to avoid discussing
| work in terms of hourly rates then?
|
| Upwork sounds like it encourages hourly projects for
| clients that want the cheapest price. As a freelancer,
| your goal shouldn't be to win over every client.
| mdocherty wrote:
| Where do you work?
| cpach wrote:
| There are probably lots of companies like this. Fortunately
| there are also lots of other companies who trust their
| coworkers!
| Kaze404 wrote:
| This is complete insanity to me. So now you're not only
| selling your knowledge and your time, but you're also selling
| your complete undivided attention with likely no changes to
| your paycheck. How do you employ someone and give them access
| to your company's systems but not give them the absolute
| minimum amount of trust? It makes no sense.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Name company please
| curryst wrote:
| Glassdoor should add a field for whether the company uses
| software like that.
| yolo3000 wrote:
| Crossover is an example of this -
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/06/workplace-
| surv...
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| I use a client like this for new freelancers/employees that are
| working full time or larger jobs. It is intrusive but 100% is
| needed for some people or they take the piss. I'm too busy to
| follow their workload and sit there estimating times of jobs
| match hours.
|
| I check it one a week for ~10min to see hours logged per day
| and quick random to check its not loads of time wasting.
|
| It feels intrusive but there is little difference than people
| walking past someone in an open plan office + they can turn it
| off anytime they want to do personal.
|
| For me I see this as really useful for managing Jr remotes. And
| personally would have no issue running it if I was working
| remote. I think the pain points would be more about how
| management use it, and in its worse its little different from
| having a micro manager in a on-site office experience.
| dgellow wrote:
| > It feels intrusive
|
| It IS intrusive!
| seanwilson wrote:
| There isn't a way you could track results instead of the time
| they're sitting in front of the computer? That way you don't
| waste time micromanaging and the freelancer is rewarded for
| working smarter rather than longer.
|
| With time tracking, the freelancer earns less if they find
| shortcuts and you'd probably rather the work was finished
| sooner rather than later so the incentives are all mixed up.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| Not really. We do a really wide range of jobs and its too
| time consuming to dive into the detail of peoples work.
|
| Many people are taking this like its some micromanagement
| its my job to watch them but its literally the opposite. I
| can quickly check in for 5/10min every week or so and see
| that things are working. The alternative would be hours of
| reviewing tasks and output. And this quick check saves me a
| bucket of time + I leave them alone to do their thing if
| all seems good.
|
| I do get why people dont like it. I was quite hesitant to
| bring it in originally but I've found it a really useful
| tool for the way and employee structure of how our business
| works.
| randomchars wrote:
| > little difference than people walking past someone in an
| open plan office
|
| > in its worse its little different from having a micro
| manager in a on-site office experience
|
| That itself is a pretty horrible thing, and I'm glad I don't
| have to work for people like you.
| woko wrote:
| Yes, it sounds like someone is being paid as a "micro-
| manager" to check whether others are working. It is very
| dismissive towards the other employees, and it is very
| troubling to pay someone at a management level to do such
| work. Someone whose job only consists in checking over the
| shoulders of the people doing the actual work should be
| paid less, not more, than them.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Yes, it sounds like someone is being paid as a "micro-
| manager" to check whether others are working. It is very
| dismissive towards the other employees, and it is very
| troubling to pay someone at a management level to do such
| work. Someone whose job only consists in checking over
| the shoulders of the people doing the actual work should
| be paid less, not more, than them_
|
| I hope the "silver lining" of everyone having to WFH due
| to COVID is that companies realise how little
| contribution middle managers make to getting work done
| and hence the bottom line. They are just dead weight, get
| rid of them and share the spoils between workers and
| senior managers, it's a win-win.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Do you understand that typing the code and staring at IDE is
| just a small % of work? To think what and how to solve
| something you don't even need a computer. People who spend
| hours in the IDE do this mostly because of lack of
| experience. You interpret quality work as taking the piss...
| tartoran wrote:
| How about assessing their work and thats that. Did they
| finish the tasks on time? Great, no need to snoop on them.
| Are they bad at the job then maybe try another person. I
| personally work in spurts and when im active I run through
| the work very fast then I need lighter tasks to put the work
| in the back of my head. Im still working on it even if looks
| like in not. It isn't anybody's business how I use my time as
| long as the work gets done. This reminds me I had a boss who
| was nosy and micromanaging. I followed his orders and became
| a lot less productive. It's like this, you want control? I'll
| give you 0 creativity back, no initiative and passion. I work
| on task and give 0 thoughts about it when done. Well, Im a
| lot older and would simply not accept to work like this and
| luckily i don't need to.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| > How about assessing their work and that's that
|
| It doesn't work well in our enviroment. The guys we use
| this for tend to do a real mixed bag of tasks from a day of
| small fixes to days on a job. Its not realistic time wise
| for me to go through their days jobs lists and see all
| that's done in a day and if it seems right volume wise.
|
| > Are they bad at the job then maybe try another person.
|
| That's what this does. In 10min a week I can see if someone
| is putting hours and turning over work in a reasonable way.
|
| > It isn't anybody's business how I use my time as long as
| the work gets done.
|
| Absolutely - peeps are free to turn this on and off. I'm
| looking at the total work, how they break up the day is
| irrelevant. In that way they are very flexible. Its not
| like this runs when they are not working.
|
| > This reminds me I had a boss who was nosy and
| micromanaging. I followed his orders and became a lot less
| productive. It's like this, you want control?
|
| I think your putting a bunch of your experience in here
| that isn't fair. Our enviroment is very hands off and from
| my end I try to follow what a mentor told me "Tell people
| what you want, not what to do". You may have another
| experience but I find this tool helps us achieve
| independent work while offering that coverage from people
| that are looking to do less than reasonable.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| What is the value of micromanagement?
|
| Just set expected result and output and when this should be
| met by.
|
| It doesn't matter how the person has achieved it.
|
| Isn't that a smarter approach?
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE and
| https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/autonomy-mastery-
| pur...
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > How about assessing their work and thats that.
|
| That's not so simple with time and materials billing. If
| somethings taking too long to deliver or is being delivered
| to a low standard, it could easily be explained by having
| to deal with unplanned problems (which could also be
| entirely the clients fault), or it could just as easily be
| a contractor being slow and/or useless. I've worked as a
| contractor for quite a long time, and the number of
| complete dead weight contractors I run into is astonishing,
| and so is the number of projects that go way over budget
| due to poor planning from the clients. The metric you
| propose to track doesn't do such a good job of telling the
| difference between these two things. This approach doesn't
| do a terribly great job of that either, but delivering your
| work under the conditions chosen by your client is pretty
| much how it always is for
| contractors/consultants/freelancers. If they take things
| too far they won't be able to attract the high quality
| contractors in any case.
| ThalesX wrote:
| It seems like you're trying to shield yourself from
| "complete dead weight contractors" which should be easy
| enough to spot. Certainly don't need a dystopian
| monitoring system to pluck up their monitors every 10
| minutes, and have months of research on trailing data to
| come to the conclusion that a contractor is dead weight.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I am myself a contractor so I'm not trying to shield
| myself from anything. They are however not simple to spot
| at all. I mean, I can spot them quite easily (at least I
| think I can). But I tend to work for people who hire me
| because they lack the skills that I have (or at least the
| skills I convince them I have). Their ability to evaluate
| the quality of my work, or reason about the problems I
| report to have with their systems, is close to non-
| existent. If I did terrible work it could take them quite
| a long time to notice, and then they'd just get
| themselves stuck trying to figure out if it was my
| terrible work, or the terrible work of a different
| contractor, or the terrible work of some of their
| employees, or simply the consequence of some other
| terrible work somebody else did 20 years ago. All of whom
| have a rather clear incentive to point the finger at each
| other. But don't worry, whenever projects like that fail
| to deliver their planned value, there's always some
| middle manager near by to say that the problem "should
| have been easy" to avoid.
| codesuela wrote:
| If the client does not have the competence to spot bad
| work, how are screenshots gonna help?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| They can give an indication that work is at least being
| done, or perhaps the pace at which it's being done. Which
| as I said isn't a great metric either. But it does to
| some extent help with something which is legitimately a
| problem for a lot of businesses who end up being taken
| for a ride by unscrupulous contractors.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| For most of my contract work I use virtual desktops that are
| entirely controlled by my clients. I presume that they're
| typically able to monitor everything I do in any way they
| choose. I've never had a problem with this, and I don't see
| any practical difference between that system and this one. If
| a client ever started trying to excessively micromanage me I
| think I'd just not take another contract with them. I can't
| remember ever getting any unreasonable questions about
| billing though.
| sverhagen wrote:
| > and I don't see any practical difference between that
| system and this one
|
| Right, cause they're both intrusive. You're essentially
| saying: it's an intrusive system but I don't mind it being
| intrusive. You also show that you have the possibility to
| deny working with a party; great. But the point is
| protecting people who don't like such privacy invasion and
| who, at the same time, do not have the luxury to deny a
| contract.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Contractors have an entirely different set of things they
| can reasonably expect from a client, opposed to what
| employees can expect from employers. It's a different
| kind of relationship all together. You're not an
| employee, and your relationship with your clients is
| exclusively about delivering a service for payment. A
| contractor will typically benefit from building a network
| of clients who highly trust their work, but relationships
| with new clients don't start out that way, and you can't
| expect a client to invest any effort into your
| relationship beyond what's required to deliver the
| contracted work.
|
| While systems like this can be used intrusively, they're
| certainly not a violation of privacy on any level. The
| work you do for your clients isn't a private matter. It's
| theirs. They're paying you to do it for them...
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| What if I sketch out a solution to a complex problem for most
| of the day and then execute it in an hour?
|
| This will only catch the most ridiculous abuse that will be
| visible from results as well and harm everybody else.
|
| And, if it's not visible in the results... why do you care?
| notahacker wrote:
| It won't even catch the most ridiculous abuse. If I want to
| spend eight billable hours reading Hacker News I'll do it
| on a different computer, and just make sure my "work"
| machine periodically scrolls, switches file or opens up a
| new dialog.
|
| Might catch out somebody who deals with a couple of
| interruptions though...
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I think the way you work, even if you produce stellar
| results, in some cases will actually be a worse fit than a
| lower-quality solution that takes longer but involves some
| kind of draconian control mechanism, because it's also
| about feeling in control, not just results. These draconian
| control solutions mostly work as a very crude way to care
| for the mental health of employers, managers etc., with
| disproportionate negative impact on the employed; but
| giving up control is always risky, and feeling risk isn't
| fun, and dealing with that in a healthy way is something
| lots of people who get into such positions have never had a
| chance to properly learn, or even realize it's a problem at
| all. But such people often do have power and leeway to put
| in such controls unilaterally, and the further up you go on
| the food chain, the easier it becomes to isolate oneself
| from the consequences of such thinking, and doing things
| differently on the lower levels may require those further
| up to at least tolerate such an approach; but if they're
| deeply insecure themselves, wouldn't they perceive such a
| stance as weak or soft? Won't that hurt my chances for
| advancement? Will it look like I didn't do my due
| dilligence if I actually do get screwed with? There are
| lots of orgs that work like that.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| exactly this. I usually go for a walk and start making a
| mental model of what I have to do, what order, etc. By the
| time I'm actually in front of my laptop I already have a
| clear image and what,when,where and how and just need to
| write it all down.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| The underlying problem here isn't people taking the piss but
| a system optimised for people taking the piss.
|
| You optimise for time wasted rather than value created.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| This is one more example of terrible management. Mistrust,
| too much control and micromanagement are totalitarian ways of
| push management that do not work with thinking and creative
| working force. Unless what you do is already known pattern
| coding and repetitive work, which does not include the left
| or right side of the brain, the above approach may work.
| Maybe in movies, you can put a gun to a hacker's head and say
| you have 1 minute to crack this, but in reality, that does
| not work. Solving problems takes time, and art-wise, to get
| inspiration, it takes even more time. "Slacking" time is
| necessary to produce a good solution...
|
| So, you give a difficult problem to your employee, he gets
| stressed it is difficult, but now he needs to pretend to be
| busy to satisfy boss, he is even more stressed as he does not
| have time to think about solving the problem, but he needs to
| think about being busy... I can see people spiraling into
| mental health problems.
|
| I just remembered, at the beginning of my career, one of my
| coworkers got a request from a client: we need something, we
| need it urgently, so make it and make it interesting by
| tomorrow noon.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| > So, you give a difficult problem to your employee, he
| gets stressed it is difficult, but now he needs to pretend
| to be busy to satisfy boss, he is even more stressed as he
| does not have time to think about solving the problem, but
| he needs to think about being busy... I can see people
| spiralling into mental health problems.
|
| You're making up some horrible scenario that holds not
| basis of reality to support your view. I cant see that ever
| happening in the enviroment we are in. Maybe elsewhere but
| this tool is going to have both sides.
|
| No doubt some people would be real arsehole managers with
| these type of tools. I also dont doubt these same managers
| would be like that in a physical office where they try to
| overwatch and micro mange there.
|
| In our scenario the 2 main things its given us is 1) a
| massive time saving to management and 2) ability to leave
| freelancers/jr employees alone to do their thing.
|
| Experience may differ with users :)
| godmode2019 wrote:
| What's next, brainwave scanners that only pay you for hours
| that has atleast 20% gamma wavelength.
| sitkack wrote:
| Dammit Jim, we could have sold that to a SPAC after we got
| the boards designed on UpWork.
| nicbou wrote:
| And I thought Snow Crash was far-fetched...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| https://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/memo-from-fedland.html
| Frost1x wrote:
| If there's a way to reduce costs, it will be done. This is
| why we have laws to protect baseline rights because they
| would otherwise be whittled away to nothing.
| lpellis wrote:
| Well, if you believe this article:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7634705/Chinese-
| sch...
| hertzrat wrote:
| I knew somebody working on an employee brain wave startup
| once, except it was to monitor (and help with) stress. My
| readings would probably be pretty high just from having to
| wear the thing
| sdevonoes wrote:
| > Is all this just taking advantage of freelancers who don't
| know how to market themselves, or am I missing something?
|
| I discarded UpWork precisely because of this.
| f6v wrote:
| Imagine proving content services. The competition is so fierce,
| you have no choice. Especially if you live somewhere outside
| Southeast Asia. Someone from Philippines can work for 7$/hr,
| and you can't.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| We need to put a stop to all electronic surveillance.
|
| Cheap tech/software is making it appear everywhere. It's just
| going to get more pervasive in the future. I already feel like
| the wealthy are watching us everywhere.
|
| I would like to see most electronic monitoring made illegal.
|
| I think we need to set up laws over employer monitoring, even
| having cameras at work for any reason, even for loss
| prevention. If they decide they need to bring us in--so be it.
| If an employer doesn't think you pull your weight, they can
| fire.
|
| All public, police electronic, license plate scanners,
| including ankle brackets, and alcohol monitors should be
| illegal. Yes--even alcohol monitors. Go back to "If he passed
| the field sobriety test" let him go. In certain rare
| situations, a blood test could be obtained. In my county, Marin
| County, I'm pretty convinced most DUI's are marginal, and give
| our officers something to do? (Yes--I see you cops on Sir
| Francis Drake Boulevard salivating for something to put on your
| shift reports, especially after 10 pm. Don't bother driving
| through Marin County after 10 pm, especially if your drive an
| old car, or had a glass of wine at dinner. Sorry--I walk at
| night, and have been seeing way to many traffic stops. I know
| one know my neighborhood, but I bet they are seeing the same in
| their neighborhoods.)
|
| I would like to see all cameras in public settings removed. I
| would even put back the Toll Takers.
|
| All this cheap tech, and surveillance will just get worse in
| the future.
|
| We got by for decades without it?
|
| We seemed to have a better society back then for the most part?
| Worried about security, hire a Security Guard? Worried about
| ethics/morality of your hires, maybe show up in church, or set
| an example for your employees?
|
| The only form of surveillance I was excited about was Police
| Cams, but most are easily disabled by the officer. The only
| worth while video seems like it from a passerby who has a
| phone?
|
| I don't want to get into a big debate, but feel like we are at
| a point where the we are all being watched/photographed way too
| much.
|
| To all the nervous nellies out there, whom believe surveillance
| makes society safer/better; everyone has a nice camera at their
| fingertips.
| sdoering wrote:
| You say a lot of "I would like" and "We must" - without
| providing any evidence of what this would entail - positively
| or negatively.
|
| I lack the factual basis here to judge the wishes/demands put
| forward?
|
| What would be the consequence of banning all such measures?
| Are there any studies, comparisons, etc. here?
|
| > We seemed to have a better society back then for the most
| part?
|
| Now here the question is, how do you define that? At least in
| Germany, the statistics say that society has become less
| criminal and much safer. So what is a "better society" in
| your definition?
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| > "I would like to see most electronic monitoring made
| illegal."
|
| What does this even mean? Does it mean no logging of anything
| you do online?
|
| If you go to a website, it creates an HTTP log. The
| administrators of those sites usually review HTTP logs for
| valid, not-scary, security related issues.
|
| If I have see a spike in error codes, then there might be an
| availability issue on my website. I can also look for
| indicators of SQL injection attacks and other malfeasance.
| These are all valid reasons to review logs you, the person
| visiting my website, generate.
|
| What about CCTV cameras? Can I not put one in my business?
| You're entering _my_ business.
|
| > "All public, police electronic, license plate scanners,
| including ankle brackets, and alcohol monitors should be
| illegal."
|
| This is silly. If we ban things like radar guns, police are
| just going to fall back to the less-accurate eyeball test.
| Ankle bracelets and alcohol monitors are ways to keep people
| out of jail. You're not typically forced to wear one unless
| it's a condition of your probation or parole. Don't like
| them? Stay in jail.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| > What does this even mean?
|
| In most European countries intrusive monitoring is illegal.
| For example, you are not allowed to snoop on your employees
| email unless there's a very good reason for that (suspected
| fraud, stealing information, etc).
|
| Even more intrusive tools are outright illegal.
|
| > What about CCTV cameras? Can I not put one in my
| business?
|
| You can. What you can't do is use them to snoop on your
| employees indiscriminately and you better have a clear
| retention policy for the footage and make sure that it's
| deleted after a specified period.
|
| e: small clarification
| matz1 wrote:
| electronic monitoring is just a tools, it can be use for good
| or bad, it would be sucks if that made illegal, I would
| certainly oppose it.
|
| What you want to prevent or make illegal is the usage of
| electronic monitoring that is harmful, not electronic
| monitoring itself.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| Since I learned what upwork was the hard way, I not only stay
| away from it but also reject any other consultant who says that
| this is usually the platform they source their projects from.
|
| At first sight the problem seems to be poor quality
| engineers/skills. The true issue is that its race-to-the-bottom
| pricing strategy (one that gets hand-wavily justified by
| intrusive surveillance / screen recording) attracts the worst
| of the worst employers who do not understand SDLC and
| requirements.
|
| personal anecdote: few years ago I joined a failing company
| which was massively behind and which did everything wrong you
| could possible do wrong, but where I knew its founders and
| investors and believed I could turn things around. We used
| upwork because the boss was convinced it was cost effective ("8
| engineers for the price of 3" the boss liked to say) and so all
| our engineers came from various low-cost countries via upwork.
| The same engineers were also completely lost since nobody
| managed requirements for them. And so the product (an MVP)
| which was promised to be ready 2 years ago was still unfinished
| (with no completion date in sight).
|
| These "contractors" had no agency or motivation to get things
| done. They were all not skilled for what was expected. It was
| the fault of the management not upwork, but still I ended up
| canceling every single contractor from upwork except 1.
|
| I expect any external contractor to think critically of
| requirements they are given and raise flags if something is
| off. Upwork doesn't deliver this. They give you people who are
| stuck between a rock and a hard place and who can't afford to
| ruffle feathers. Both because they need the money but also
| because the management themselves doesn't think they're capable
| (e.g. "how could they be taken serious if their work only costs
| $25/hrs" - "of course they're not important and we can easily
| replace them at any time").
|
| Upwork attracts people who don't understand the pricing of
| their skills. From over 100 people I was forced to engage with
| on that platform not a single one undwerstood what requirements
| and deadlines are. Unless you fully specify what exactly is to
| be done (and also how) you will never get what you asked for.
| The real issue however isn't the engineers but Upwork itself
| who attracts this type of client base.
|
| Since that experience I fared well to not only give prospective
| engineers a pass that say they use the platform a lot but also
| any clients who use upwork in any shape or form.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > At first sight the problem seems to be poor quality
| engineers/skills.
|
| It is. The good ones get better jobs elsewhere. Those who
| can't start competing in the race for the bottom.
|
| > I expect any external contractor to think critically of
| requirements they are given and raise flags if something is
| off.
|
| That's what a professional engineer would do. Costs way more
| than 25$/hour.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Cool story, and sadly not unusual. I wonder if you (or
| anyone) ever managed to convince "boss" that the poor quality
| was due to these deficiencies, and that maybe cost was not
| the most important thing to optimize for.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I wonder if you (or anyone) ever managed to convince
| "boss" that the poor quality was due to these deficiencies,
| and that maybe cost was not the most important thing to
| optimize for._
|
| In my experience, cheapskate employers are almost always
| pathologically cheap, so there is no amount of convincing
| or rationalization that will change their minds.
| staticelf wrote:
| I totally agree with your arguments, I would rather live in a
| fucking shed in the forest than to sell out my privacy like
| that.
|
| Also it seems ridicolously easy to game, just buy a seperate
| upwork computer and when you go afk, just leave the right
| program open.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Upwork is even easier to game it than that. use a virtual
| machine, do the "work" there and minimize it while you play
| games or whatnot.
|
| But in the end is not about true surveillance, it's about
| liability in case of disputes between client and freelancer.
| Source: I work as freelancer on Upwork for 13 years now, only
| hourly projects and always with their desktop app turned on.
| sidlls wrote:
| UpWork primarily connects laborers in underdeveloped regions to
| people having at least some spare capital in other regions
| (mostly developed regions). Each of these groups sees an
| exploitable value in the other. "Clients" see people willing to
| work practically for free (relatively speaking), and
| freelancers/agencies in these regions are quite happy turning
| in marginal work for 1/10th (or less) the wage a person in a
| developed country might charge.
| rtx wrote:
| I live in a third world country and regularly hire
| contractors for USA through Upwork. It saves me a lot of time
| and I don't have to compete with other employers.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| This would be highly illegal in greensand... Wonder if they
| even offer service here?
| mesaframe wrote:
| That's for when you are working on an hourly basis. I don't
| know what's wrong with that. That's only to safeguard clients
| from get billing for hours the freelancer didn't work.
|
| You can work for a fixed price and you won't be tracked.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| How do they record your thinking time, do they take a brain
| snapshot?! As writing new code represents 30% of all time...
| hippich wrote:
| Desktop logging is mostly used for hourly projects. I think
| it is possible (or used to be) to use logging for fixed
| projects as well, but there is little value here.
|
| For what you describe, hourly billing will not work anyway.
| Some kind of fixed type of payment, or perhaps retainer +
| hourly billing for actual typing/research would be more
| appropriate. I think, both can be setup on Upwork (as two
| separate projects)
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Not on these platforms; keystrokes and screenshots. It's a
| horrible thing, but on the flip side, of course many people
| who hire get screwed by people doing nothing but charging a
| lot for it.
|
| I cannot work on upwork as I ponder problems before I solve
| them; I can have quite large amounts of time without
| keystrokes or my laptop might be asleep. I would refuse it
| anyway if it was required though.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| That's the point I was asked in late 1999 to sort out a
| show stopper problem at one of the exbibits at the
| millennium dome.
|
| Took me about 2/3 of a day but only about an hour of
| programming the rest was spent thinking and sketching out
| the problem and test cases on paper.
|
| Program ran first time and ran with 100% uptime for the
| duration
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| FWIW, I have been hiring freelancers on UpWork for some years
| and I never looked at those work diaries even once. I only
| check the output of each person.
| firechickenbird wrote:
| As far as I know, monitoring like this is illegal everywhere in
| Europe
| ciceryadam wrote:
| It's legal, regulated and sometimes required if you are
| accessing production servers, with software like securelink.
| It's just considered as part of the audit trail.
| orangepanda wrote:
| Source?
|
| There are products especially for europe that do monitoring
| like this.
| edumucelli wrote:
| The remote work law in the European Union is here
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/FR/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM...
|
| The specific article in question is:
|
| * "If any kind of monitoring system is put in place, it
| needs to be proportionate to the objective and introduced
| in accordance with Directive 90/270 on visual display
| units;"
|
| It is legal but there is a big "if" in there.
| atleta wrote:
| Also, it makes a lot of difference whether you are an
| employee or a subcontractor. These laws protect the
| employees. It's actually explicitly specified in this
| document as well: in the context of an
| employment contract/relationship,
| hef19898 wrote:
| A lot of stuff is more or less illegal. Especially in
| employment, as long as nobody sues, nobody cares. And which
| freelancer would sue? Or which employee, as far as that's
| concerned?
|
| And even if, worst case is a small fine for the employer.
| Unfortunately.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Indeed the UK ruling that Uber is breaking the law and
| theirdrivers are workers, were 5 years (!) In the making.
| Thats a long time to make a profit, go fo IPO, etc.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| You are wrong here. In Europe, the fines after such a
| behavior for bigger companies could be easily in
| millions, even tens of millions of euros. That's why I am
| not aware of a single big company here doing it.
|
| Even those that have US branches with detailed monitoring
| there don't dare to run anything similar here. Once you
| get used to be treated like a human being its hard and
| irrational to accept anything less.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Sometimes even big ones are doing these things, not
| explicitly surveillance so. Also true, smaller companies
| are more likely to be sketchy.
|
| And unfortunately, these large fines are rare, hard to
| enforce by employees. The really extreme US stuff is not
| used, that's true.
| consp wrote:
| IANAL but isn't a breach of privacy a criminal law thing
| and all the other stuff civil? In that case it is also a
| thing for agencies to check up on or to prosecute even if
| there is no real harm.
|
| I'm talking about illegal activity here not the legal
| which is, as already stated, sometimes allowed.
| baxtr wrote:
| It also depends on how the client wants to steer a freelancer.
| I had one freelancer charging _less_ than I was expecting. So I
| asked him why and he said, that the monitoring makes his
| machine unstable so he wouldn 't log all the time he worked on
| the project. I told him to log the hours manually. And the
| problem was solved.
|
| Because, on Upwork, the client can decide whether or not the
| freelancer is allowed to put in hours manually. What I am
| trying to say is: it's an option that you don't have to use.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I signed up for Upwork, a couple of years ago. I knew a few
| people that had used the platform to hire freelancers, and they
| raved about it.
|
| I never got even _one_ legit lead. Not one.
|
| I did, however, get quite a few scammers. One was quite scary.
| It was a local person, with a crazy project proposal, that kept
| trying to get me to meet them in person, in remote locations.
|
| I nuked my Upwork account, months ago. Even though I hadn't
| been on it for months, I would still get occasional scammer
| contacts. Most were pretty transparent. They didn't make much
| effort to hide what they were about. Basically 419 approach.
|
| Cofounders has been similar, but scammers try to get me to
| contact them outside of the system, and Cofounders has been
| quite responsive to my reports. I have kept my Cofounders
| account, as I have received legit contacts (none of which have
| panned out, but that's the nature of the beast).
|
| I did try TopTal, a couple of years ago, but that didn't work
| out. I won't get into it, but I don't think we're a
| particularly good "fit."
|
| Just a few days ago, I had to report a scammer on LinkedIn that
| had declared themselves to be one of my employees. It took LI
| three days to do anything, and they never acknowledged my
| increasingly frantic reports.
|
| Like so many of these types of outfits, they provide no way to
| establish a way to actually contact people. You just have these
| one-way, opaque "Report" buttons, with no acks.
|
| Scammers are very clever. I expect them to game this quite
| quickly.
|
| It's bad times. I pine for the "good ol' days," when there was
| some Honor to be found, but there's no putting the candy back
| in that pinata.
| Softcadbury wrote:
| Can you say more about what these scammers want? Do they want
| you to work for them for free?
| f6v wrote:
| Some want a freelancer account that is registered in US or
| Western Europe. I guess it's easier to get a high-paying
| client if you have a local face behind your proposal.
| servercobra wrote:
| I get hit with these constantly because I'm a US based
| Toptal freelancer. "Hey, if you take the meetings and let
| us use your account, we'll do all the work and give you
| 20%!".
| sitkack wrote:
| So basically some folks just told you how you can be the
| CEO of InfoClone? How big are these deals, how skilled
| are the folks and how many people do they have?
| 7800 wrote:
| That's what I've heard. They may lead you on to keep you on
| the hook in case they need you without even getting work
| from you. This isn't really a scam; it's just about them
| wasting your time. And there are so many suckers that they
| can be picky about who they do this to.
|
| If you really want to freelance or have a startup, you have
| to be able to differentiate these people from legit
| opportunities. That can be extremely difficult; someone
| that seems like a scammer could be ready to pay a great
| rate or invest in your company; someone else that sounds
| legit could be wasting your time.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yes, for some, but I never followed up enough to find out
| more.
|
| I think the scary one may have been legit (in their own
| world), but they were clearly unhinged, and I didn't want
| to have anything to do with that.
|
| Since the approach is often pretty much equal to a 419
| approach, I suspect that there would be a point where you
| give them some sensitive financial information, or pay
| "licensing fees," or something. Maybe they would send you
| one of those wonderful "more than the agreed-upon amount"
| third-party checks.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Silly question, but if they:
|
| > Maybe they would send you one of those wonderful "more
| than the agreed-upon amount" third-party checks
|
| Then, won't they lose money?
|
| Or the checks would be invalid, worthless?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Or the checks would be invalid, worthless?_
|
| That's the scam.
|
| https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-spot-avoid-and-
| rep...
| gota wrote:
| > 419 approach
|
| What does this mean?
| konha wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam
| bmn__ wrote:
| http://enwp.org/419_scam
| AznHisoka wrote:
| Scams aside, were you using Upwork as a freelancer or client?
| The experience is very different depending on which side you
| are on. It's a client market currently as there a glut of
| freelancers for your picking right now. Lots of competition.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| As a freelancer. All the rave reviews were from clients.
|
| After the fact, I asked around for friends that had tried
| it as freelancers, and they all had similar stories to
| mine.
|
| It seems that Upwork is really a platform for offshore
| work. Some of these folks are undoubtedly good, but it's
| probably a crapshoot, which, to be fair, is also the case
| for local talent. With cheap offshore work, you can try out
| a couple of outfits, and not lose your shirt, if things go
| South. I will say that the people who told me it was good,
| had quite positive experiences (as clients), and they had
| all settled on offshore talent.
| loceng wrote:
| You need to learn to game the system like the most
| popular freelancers and agencies seem to learn to do;
| you're not getting kicked off the platform as a
| freelancer/agency even if you engage in
| blackmail/extortion for 5 star ratings - even when
| there's proof - as I have experienced.
|
| It's like you need to start to create some fake accounts,
| or friends to signup, give you projects - worth a lot or
| not, or hidden, but with a great testimonial left. Then
| you'll increase in the rankings, get more attention from
| legitimate people, etc.
|
| Freelancers on Upwork are mostly always listed as
| available, even if they aren't - the trick being you're
| listed for $x-xx higher than your previous rate - so
| you're getting a revenue increase if you take new jobs.
|
| Personally I'd be too honest to trick people like that,
| but people who are open to dishonest or bad actions on
| the platform seem to do well.
| AJ007 wrote:
| If you are hiring, you have to have tasks of staggered
| difficulty and pay by the hour. Risks still include a
| skilled worker being swapped out later. If you have a
| project with a multi-week timeline, the final product
| delivered at once, you are setting yourself up to get
| fucked.
|
| * referring to software development. Other tasks are an
| order of magnitude easier to hire for.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Personally I 'd be too honest to trick people like
| that, but people who are open to dishonest or bad actions
| on the platform seem to do well._
|
| Yeah...not for me. Personal Honor and Integrity are a big
| deal for me.
|
| It's funny. I'm open and extremely honest. Scammers see
| that as "gullible," but I've been swimming with some of
| the world's nastiest sharks for 40 years. It's actually
| kind of difficult to scam me.
|
| I've just learned that I don't need to use nukes to
| enforce my boundaries. Even scammers react well to simple
| respect, and it's quite possible to discourage them
| without being a prick.
|
| I've also learned that it's not a good idea to antagonize
| crooks. They can often be a bit vindictive.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| >Scammers see that as "gullible," but I've been swimming
| with some of the world's nastiest sharks for 40 years.
|
| This makes me think of the proverb, "You can't cheat an
| honest man". It sounds strange on the surface, but I
| think there's something to the idea that if one is too
| honest to be tempted into dishonesty by avarice that most
| scams fall apart.
| Disruptive_Dave wrote:
| It's been years since I was on Upwork (started w/ Elance)
| and I felt similar frustrations. Then I signed up as a
| buyer, posted a job similar to the ones I was seeking,
| and analyzed the patterns of freelancer pitches and how
| the system was structured.
|
| I started noticing missed opportunities. As a buyer, you
| only see the first few sentences of a proposal unless you
| hit the See More option. Most freelancers weren't
| maximizing this space. NOBODY used video. There was
| minimal personalization. And so on.
|
| So I would make a personalized video for every pitch and
| reference it in the first sentence. Short, nothing with
| production or anything like that. Mostly I wanted the
| buyers to get a vibe for me. I'd do light research on the
| buyer and look at his/her feedback and reviews for other
| freelancers they've worked with, then I used that
| language to demonstrate that I had the same
| characteristics and skills they value the most.
|
| This all increased my interest and close rate
| tremendously. I also learned which gigs to never bid on,
| which is a little art and a little science. You can tell
| by how the project descriptions are written which ones to
| avoid.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _You can tell by how the project descriptions are
| written which ones to avoid._
|
| What makes you avoid a project?
| Disruptive_Dave wrote:
| The same thing that would make me pass over a
| resume/cover letter for a job I'm hiring for: vagueness.
| The more specific and transparent a posting is, the more
| confidence I have in the buyer knowing what they need and
| who they need to achieve that goal. You get a lot of
| amateurs/first-timers on these sites, and that's often a
| recipe for misaligned expectations.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Video messages work exceptionally well. I use it for my
| sales outreach as well.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Hey, that's great advice!
|
| Thanks!
| SilasX wrote:
| In case anyone's forgotten, there was also that story where
| Upwork cut off a freelancer with no explanation, and falsely
| told the client they had to upgrade, on the pretense that
| Upwork had to comply with the California law about contractor
| status.
|
| (Which is indeed an issue with CA's contractor laws, but in
| no way requires them to ghost you or you to use their payroll
| service.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18415367
| smusamashah wrote:
| Some friends work on upwork like this 4 hours a day while being
| monitored as you said. The pay is very good and don't care too
| much about this monitoring now which they might have in the
| beginning. It's tiring but it works.
| sitkack wrote:
| I am a private person, I don't really like working in public.
| But in the end I really wonder how much of it matters. I
| think most people look like they are doing next to nothing
| and are mostly ineffective as well.
|
| I think monitoring is a poor form of feedback, organizations
| where this would be necessary are effectively non-conscious
| entities.
|
| Think an AI that manages the gig-employees the keep the vent
| tubes on the Windy's DeepFriedExtrude units clean. It just
| needs to track cleaner consumed per increment and movement in
| front of the kiosks.
| mhitza wrote:
| Most of the time you can opt out of the monitoring, but if you
| use that monitoring feature Upwork offers payment protection.
| Say that I clock in 20 hours and the client refuses to pay the
| invoice, I still get paid by Upwork (some caveats exist of
| course).
|
| Where there is more trust between client and contractor, the
| later might just enter their hours manually.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| I work 8 years on Upwork and I only work with this feature.
| Initially, I was hostile to it, but later one "accident" helped
| me to realize the whole purpose of this feature: disputes.
|
| When client don't want to pay, they have 2 ways:
|
| 1) just don't put the money to the bound card account, or don't
| pay the bill;
|
| 2) try to say that the freelancer wasn't working.
|
| In both cases, screenshots are the protection for a freelancer.
| In the first case, Upwork just pays you their own money. In the
| second case, you have huge evidence that will help you in the
| dispute.
|
| About micro-management: in 99.9% of cases clients don't check
| the screenshots. I saw how it works from both sides. Also, in 8
| years I had 1 client who turned off the option of tracking time
| manually (you don't get payment protection for manually tracked
| time, so you only do this when you trust your client).
|
| In comparison to never-ending hell in the fixed-price
| contracts, per-hour payment is the most comfortable way to
| work.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| > Is all this just taking advantage of freelancers who don't
| know how to market themselves, or am I missing something?
|
| It is, sadly. Same with e.g. Toptal, they charge clients $100
| for my work and pay me $50-$60, which is still higher than any
| clients I can find myself.
|
| It is frustrating to know they are capturing such a big
| fraction of my worth to the client just because they talk to
| the right people and I don't, but it's what it is.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Standard consulting billable hourly to salary is about 3x.
| But that's accounting for <100% utilization as well.
|
| So ~2x for work performed doesn't seem that outside industry
| norms, assuming the platform is delivering value and not just
| matchmaking.
| [deleted]
| ryanSrich wrote:
| I've used and have found great engineers on UpWork. None have
| used that tracking tool. It's all been manually reported time.
| I've also interviewed and have encouraged questions before
| moving on.
| sleepyhead wrote:
| First time using Upwork last week and I was shocked to see
| these screenshots from the freelancer. Not only problematic for
| the freelancer but also a huge potential GDPR issue for me.
| Luckily the project did not include personal data but if it had
| I would have to inform all my customers and the local DPA about
| a data leakage. Having a freelancer work on PII is one thing,
| it would have been solved with a contract, but for the data to
| be stored on Upwork servers is something else.
|
| Yes you can ask questions, both in the job form and in the chat
| before hiring someone.
| Jommi wrote:
| If you don't do this as a quality worker, you're basically
| subsidizing for those that on purpose try to do lower quality
| work.
| onion2k wrote:
| That assumes that the quality of your work is tied to the
| amount of time you're actively using your computer. Time
| making notes in a notepad, or thinking while you walk around,
| or having a work-based conversation with someone, or mapping
| something out on a whiteboard _adds_ to the quality of an
| application.
|
| Heck, I've often found that taking a break to read HN or make
| a cup of coffee or even watch a YT video results in me
| figuring out what's causing a bug in some code. Apparently my
| subconscious is great at debugging.
|
| The converse is true too. I've worked with people who
| _actively_ code for 8 hours and yet have produced very little
| usable code at the end of the day. They needed 8 hours to do
| what a better developer could do in a couple of hours.
|
| You can't judge the quality of a developer's work by looking
| at how much time they spend in their IDE.
| Jommi wrote:
| Isnt the tool more looking at what the dev is doing rather
| than timing?
| Teever wrote:
| If you do this as any kind of worker you're basically
| enabling a hellish dystopian panopticon future.
| input_sh wrote:
| Precisely why I only negotiated fixed price projects.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price contracts.
| Find someone else for this hell.
| indymike wrote:
| I made a ton of money from fixed price contracts. Estimated
| at $100/HR average real hourly was $150/HR. You can't be
| constantly up against unknowns and you have to have a
| predictable cadence. If you stay focussed and can reuse
| deliverables it really helps. I did digital marketing so
| lots of landing pages and integration with crm and email
| marketing.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price
| contracts. Find someone else for this hell.
|
| Can you explain why you think this?
|
| Courses/books on freelancing I've looked at generally
| strongly advise getting away from hourly, so it's
| interesting how both extremes of this advice exist.
|
| My hypothesis is a lot of freelancers get burned on their
| first projects because there's a learning curving in
| controlling scope creep, charging enough, identify client
| red flags, not haven't enough potential clients to be picky
| etc. and react by switching to hourly only.
| OJFord wrote:
| Not GP but presumably because of scope creep,
| disagreement about what the original extent was to be
| that was paid for all in one.
|
| I've seen that recommendation to 'get away from hourly' a
| lot too (I don't freelance) but I think that means
| (certainly doesn't have to mean) get away from charging
| for time entirely. Many professions (e.g. architects,
| solicitors, accountants, tax advisors) charge for time. I
| think the suggestion is usually to move from hourly to
| daily/weekly, some larger unit of time that's a more
| appropriate block for building software, allowing that
| 'thinking time' where you sort of did something else
| ('afk') but were working, since it's just part of the
| day.
| jcims wrote:
| I'm out of that game but for me it depended on the work.
| I mostly did security assessments, which were extremely
| simple to time box and were _much_ easier to sell as
| fixed bid.
|
| Longer architecture or implementation work were hourly.
| detaro wrote:
| Recommend getting away from hourly, or recommend going
| for fixed-price only?
| seanwilson wrote:
| The general recommendation to earn more and not be
| micromanaged is to go fixed or value priced. Hourly puts
| a hard cap on your maximum earnings because there's only
| so many hours in the day and you'll earn less for
| finishing faster (e.g when reusing code or expertise from
| previous projects).
| atleta wrote:
| I guess we're talking about software development. Because
| it depends a lot on the kind of the job (or maybe I'm
| just ignorant and someone else's job seems simpler ;) ).
|
| But if we talk about software only, then estimating is
| hard, creating a strong and stable enough specification
| (that can be used for estimation) is hard, you have to
| sell it to the client - most clients are not willing to
| pay for it, for they don't understand that it would be
| needed in order to come up with a fixed cost. Even if
| they do understand the need and acknowledge the effort,
| they might say that if you create the spec and they don't
| like the final quote then the spec may not be valuable
| for them, because the next freelancer/company may not
| find it useful. (And it has some merit, though there are
| a lot of freelancers and companies who are willing to
| work and quote based on an existing detailed
| specification.)
|
| And if you do the estimation (and create the quote)
| without quoting for the specification work then you'll
| put in a lot of uncompensated hours which you'll have to
| make up for with the paying clients, so you'll be more
| expensive. Especially if you find a client who shops
| around for quotes, plays the "lets do a spec" game (for
| which they don't pay), and then go with the specification
| (or even just the improved understanding) to the next few
| companies where they can provide a detailed spec so those
| companies can quote lower.
|
| Oh, well and the client will compare the price tags
| (obviously and rightly so), so they will more likely to
| be choosing the offer that has the larger estimation
| error (as long as it's an underestimation, of course).
| And you can say that competition takes care of this
| (whoever is constantly underestimating, that constant
| underestimation will actually be their real price), but
| the above points still hold. It's just not worth it.
| Definitely not worth it if you don't have the client
| paying for the specification/planning that's needed for
| the quote.
| seanwilson wrote:
| On the other side, if you ask a lot of good questions and
| give a quote that's within budget, the client is going to
| be suspicious of another quote where similar insightful
| questions weren't asked first.
|
| If another quote is very cheap, the client will probably
| question if that's going to reflect the quality of the
| work.
|
| There's also risk that the developer they take the
| requirements + design doesn't really understand what
| they're getting into and can't execute.
|
| I don't think there's any easy answers, but generally you
| want to work on attracting clients that are more
| interested in high quality work over the cheapest price
| where shopping around like this isn't a good use of their
| time. Chatting about rough budgets first and making sure
| the client is going to profit from the work helps too.
|
| It's great when you get to charge for the planning phase
| though because you're not feeling rushed into committing
| to a quote with too many unknowns that might not really
| solve their problem. If you explain why it's risky to
| quote with so little information, some clients will
| listen and aren't going to go with someone asking nothing
| and offering a cheap price.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| My first project was 16 years ago. I've switched to
| freelance 8 years ago. So your assumption that I'm just a
| crying kid who can not manage his time is offensive.
|
| I'll give you a hint: think how a client can abuse this.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Hourly works really well if you do the admin in enough
| detail. Try to agree, on paper, about number of hours per
| period as you can. And that then actually makes it into
| 'sprints' of fixed price. I used to send over an email at
| least weekly with; 'X is going to take me at least 35
| hours, are you ok with that?'. Of course X has to be
| small enough to not overshoot by a massive amount of
| hours and also you cannot trigger the 'at least' too
| often. Outside that, it works well, as there is a trace
| of agreed-upon hours, which helped me a lot when going
| over 'fulltime'. If the client asked me why 'I charged
| too much', I simply showed them the emails they agreed
| to, tallying up to 90 hours instead of 40 I would charge
| under the contract.
|
| But yeah, this 'screen monitoring' definitely doesn't
| work for me, so I would never agree to it; in that case
| fixed price is simpler.
| seanwilson wrote:
| I'm not completely against hourly and what you describe
| sounds decent as long as the client has a realistic
| budget and is reasonable about estimates. It's hard to do
| fixed price when there's a lot of unknowns or there's an
| unpredictable workload for example. I see people mention
| day and week rates as well, but this forces you to work
| in minimum increments which is less flexible.
|
| I just can't stand getting into scenarios where you start
| considering eating hours from your timesheet so the
| client doesn't get annoyed e.g. because you didn't feel
| you were being 100% productive for whatever reason, you
| got sidetracked by a hard to explain/justify bug, you
| went for a walk to think about a problem, you're going
| over budget, you think because you had to learn something
| new you shouldn't charge for the time, because part of a
| meeting included some casual chat. It's a lot of stress
| to the client too having to keep track of unpredictable
| costs.
|
| There's such a different feeling to working where you're
| not having to keep an eye on the clock having thoughts
| like "that's 30 minutes up already, I better find a
| solution to this soon or my timesheet will look bad".
|
| Fixed price lets you just get on with things and focus on
| actually being efficient instead of worrying about how
| efficient you're looking.
| sitkack wrote:
| Both strategies are useful. I would be interested to hear
| what the audience and author were in your statement about
| "getting away from hourly". Was that in recommendation
| adding business value and not being hourly labor or
| something else?
|
| I see fixed price being more of a tool in design
| projects, where the goal might be concrete but the path
| to get there is open, or the client wants a basket of
| options.
|
| Where as doing an n-party integration between multiple
| inflight projects at a fixed price would be poor idea,
| UNLESS, UNLESS the fixed price is some high multiple of
| the P99 and some low multiple of the P99.9bar
|
| In the first case, the value is in the answer, not the
| difficulty in which it was arrived at. In the second
| case, the actual work is what is needed and being paid
| for.
|
| But at a high enough level, all contracts are fixed
| price.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > Was that in recommendation adding business value and
| not being hourly labor or something else?
|
| A combination usually, with benefits to the client too:
|
| - Client + contractor aren't both wasting time with
| micromanagement that could be put into adding business
| value instead.
|
| - Contractor is incentivised to work smarter, finish
| tasks quicker and keep the business goal in mind.
|
| - Client can budget because they know the final price.
|
| - Contractor is happier and less stressed because they're
| not being micromanaged.
|
| These are all flipped with hourly.
|
| Fixed price will be horrible for the contractor if
| they're not charging enough and controlling scope creep
| though, but with hourly the client is taking the business
| risk instead.
| sitkack wrote:
| What you are describing is a healthy client relationship.
| The pricing model has certain affordances, but fixed
| price doesn't make everything better.
|
| As I have aged, I am less likely to do fixed price work
| unless it has a lot more headroom.
| fecak wrote:
| I can't speak for all freelancers, but I do think you're
| missing some things. I've completed 1000+ projects on Upwork
| with a 95%+ success rate over the past few years (mostly resume
| writing and executive bios).
|
| As a freelancer, you can simply refuse the monitoring feature.
| I would never accept a project where the client wanted screen
| shots. I use Google Docs so my activity is tracked there pretty
| accurately as it is, but I think most freelancers aren't taking
| the monitored projects.
|
| I'm not sure what you're asking about the 'client questions',
| but you are able to ask questions before accepting an offer or
| even making an offer. I have had clients make me an offer
| before any dialogue took place, but that's rather rare, and I
| always clarify my work process with clients before accepting
| offers.
|
| Upwork is not my primary source of income - I have a private
| resume writing business that I run - but I use Upwork because
| it's brought me quite a bit of business without having to do
| any marketing (at the cost of 20% of my earnings). I'm happy to
| give them 20% based on the volume of business that comes my way
| there.
|
| I primarily have used fixed price projects as well, but mainly
| because time tracking in Upwork is a bit cumbersome. You need
| to track in 10 minute increments, and my workflow often finds
| me in documents multiple times per day, but for short periods
| of time. That's not conducive to time tracking, so I try to set
| fixed price agreements.
|
| I've been pleased with my experience on Upwork, but I know part
| of that is because I've had the benefit of being one of the
| higher ranked writers there for a few years and I have a larger
| stream of income from other sources, so I have the luxury of
| turning down quite a bit of work there if it doesn't meet my
| preferred criteria.
| AJ007 wrote:
| You are doing a tasks that is very easy to evaluate from a
| success/fail standpoint.
|
| Upwork tends to perform really well for these sorts of one
| off tasks. Hiring good technically talent is really hard.
| BillyTheKing wrote:
| tbf, hiring good technical talent is generally very hard
| and pretty time-consuming. You won't find great talent by
| just looking at 1-2 proposals and speaking to 1-2 people,
| just as you wouldn't find good talent by just interviewing
| 1-2 people. It's a time-consuming process
| seanwilson wrote:
| > I have a private resume writing business that I run ... I
| primarily have used fixed price projects as well, but mainly
| because time tracking in Upwork is a bit cumbersome.
|
| Why would someone getting an awesome resume care how long it
| takes you to write though? Wouldn't some actually want to pay
| you more if you did it faster at the same quality?
| fecak wrote:
| My hourly rate is $100, which is not the highest, but there
| are experienced writers for far less. In part because of
| the cumbersome billing process, my hourly projects are
| often less expensive. A few minutes here and a few minutes
| there adds up.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Why not charge a fixed price though? Simple billing, no
| time spend on time tracking + predictable price to the
| client.
| fecak wrote:
| Most of my work is fixed price. Probably 90%+.
| wyclif wrote:
| Fascinating commentary, especially because I've often
| wondered what it takes to break in to the resume/executive
| bio writing world. I'm fairly well aware of best practices,
| but I don't have any experience.
| fecak wrote:
| My main advantage as a writer is 20 years of recruiting
| experience, mostly for east coast US startups. Being a good
| resume writer (and maybe any good writer?) is really about
| knowing your audience. And when you've written a lot of
| resumes it becomes a bit easier. The voice is tricky for
| some people.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >the app takes random screen captures six times per hour--once
| per 10-minute billing segment
|
| This is horrible. Also easily defeated if you have a second
| computer with which to do non-work stuff or just run the Upwork
| app inside a VM. As a client of the freelancer, I'd be far more
| interested in the quality of the final deliverable than making
| sure they didn't goof off while producing it.
| rdevsrex wrote:
| Well, when you first start out, it's not like you always have
| that many choices. I started working with clients on Upwork
| because I couldn't get any full time programming jobs at a
| company, but I could get contracts on Upwork.
|
| And the way they've set it up is if you use the Dekstop app you
| get paid even if there is a dispute, but if you don't, you
| might not get paid.
|
| So again, it's not like I wanted it this way, but it's that or
| potentially be out of work or loose money in a dispute.
| DigitalSea wrote:
| Precisely this. When I first started out, it was
| freelancer.com which eventually went down the path of
| molecular type tracking. It's invasive and people don't want
| to pay you what you're worth, but you do it for the
| experience and to build up a feedback profile to bolster your
| credibility.
|
| The feedback is what you work for, what you tolerate the poor
| payment for unrealistic work in return. Without it, you can't
| grow on these platforms and the people bidding for cheap
| labour know this and use it to their advantage. Platforms
| like Upwork all but encourage exploitation through fear, the
| lowest common denominator always wins.
| hertzrat wrote:
| Sounds better, when possible, to just avoid platforms like
| that
| atleta wrote:
| This is interesting. I usually advise beginners NOT to start
| freelancing before they get some experience with a full time
| job at a company (preferably a non-remote/on-site position).
| If the market starts to push people into the other direction,
| that will, I think, further decrease the chances of any
| client getting their project finished.
|
| And I definitely don't mean this as a critique towards you.
| (If I want to be honest, I've first tried
| freelancing/remoting after 3 months of FT work, which wasn't
| even really coding.)
|
| But quite a lot of these engagements end in poor quality
| results or simply fail. I've talked to a lot of people, non-
| tech clients, for whom it didn't work out. And obviously the
| reason is that they have no idea how to manage such a
| project, how to pick a good candidate (both wrt to technical
| skills AND management/self-management/product management
| skills). I.e. they don't know what they need.
|
| Now a bit more experienced developers will more often (though
| far from always!) at least have an idea how to work with a
| client, how to push back on stupid requests, how to actually
| manage the project AND the client. Because sometimes clients
| will come up with or slowly navigate themselves towards modes
| of operations that actually make a good outcome a lot less
| likely. And the end result is that they spend too much to get
| too little and the freelancer works too much to get too
| little.
|
| One symptom is wanting to monitor the desktop of the
| developer. That shows that whoever thinks they can resolve a
| dispute this way have no idea about software development,
| they can't judge and understand whether they are getting
| adequate value for their money, so they resort to something
| that they understand (standing behind the shoulder of the
| person they pay). But which unfortunately doesn't work. And
| how it makes things worse: e.g. they scare away the more
| experienced guys.
|
| A similar fallacy is being anal about deadlines and fixed
| costs. Again, a surefire way to shoot yourself in the foot.
| sitkack wrote:
| A FT job is a great jump start into freelancing and
| consulting. You get so much context for free, and frankly
| anyone at a FT job that has a consultant mindset will have
| way more opportunities.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > I usually advise beginners NOT to start freelancing
|
| I switched from product manager to developer through a
| masters, and started freelancing because while I received
| interest for FT positions from very good companies in my
| country, they only offered me junior positions (and
| naturally I cannot blame them), in a country with low
| wages. I ended up clearing over 2x the salary of a junior
| in my first year freelancing (so more or less the salary of
| a decent senior), working with two very large non-tech
| companies and one pre-seed startup.
|
| However, I agree with your comment.
|
| For starters, my situation is fairly exceptional; I have
| proven sales and product/project management skills. I'd
| feel comfortable walking into a room with C-level
| executives, pitching to them, and then delivering on those
| promises (while navigating fairly well the inevitable small
| failings such as missed deadlines, etc.)
|
| But above all I wouldn't recommend this route to anyone who
| has even a remote possibility of getting an FT job because
| learning everything on your own is a gruesome process. It's
| possible, but it takes huge amounts of discipline and
| deliberate practice: you need to force yourself to read
| more code and books to discover patterns and acquire skills
| which would otherwise come naturally by just being present
| 9-to-5. Also bear in mind there's no outside pressure to
| write that unit test or refactor that smelly code - it's
| all on you. And of course you have no one to talk to - you
| have to endure a permanent and extreme loneliness in your
| doubts, only mitigated by making dev friends in real life
| and posting regularly on SO (and don't count too much on
| the latter!).
|
| It's had positive things for me too. It allowed me to work
| all across the stack, from product management, design,
| front-end to back-end, and I am starting to position myself
| (locally, at least) as a product engineer that gets shit
| done, and to a high standard of quality. I also get to
| choose my own stack and technologies at all times (which
| also builds particular skills in research, etc.), and no
| corporate politics or whatever get in the way of you
| suddenly shifting your focus to a different discipline,
| which is what I hated most when I had a career.
|
| Nevertheless, I'd say if I didn't factor the 2x wage (which
| is probably not realistic for a lot of starting devs), the
| cons would clearly outweigh the pros, and I would repeat
| your advice to most people.
| atleta wrote:
| Well, then you had a fair share of what you need as a
| freelancer, for sure. Out of curiosity: why did you make
| the switch? Is it worth it, as opposed to working as a
| solo/freelancer PM?
|
| As an engineer, I feel most of the value I bring is not
| actually writing code but managing the whole process and
| consulting the client on what to do and how to do. (So
| product and project management, sometimes with discussing
| the business side, agile/lean coaching. I.e. explaining
| that we don't want to build all features that sound cool,
| don't want to build every feature to its best version for
| a start, etc.)
|
| Though I'm not sure if I could make a living trying to
| sell this on its own (as opposed to doing it as a full
| stack engineer and tech lead).
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I made the switch because I started coding and studying
| CS in my free time and realized that I loved it, and that
| taking a detour was not so risky since software
| engineering would be a good complement to the skills I
| already had (it essentially meant "closing the loop" of
| the dev cycle).
|
| I've worked as a freelance PM once, right after finishing
| my SEng masters actually, and the experience wasn't great
| - the choice of tech and the team in that particular
| project were terrible, the customers were really clueless
| and it was a fight against the elements.
|
| There are also not that many freelance PM jobs, at least
| where I live. There is a massive market for companies who
| want to build stuff - and in most cases they want
| everything handled end-to-end, so being able to do
| everything responds greatly to this demand.
|
| The projects I've coded have turned out great thus far.
| In particular I have built an internal product for a
| global leader in its industry and it's really taking off.
|
| > I feel most of the value I bring is not actually
| writing code but managing the whole process and
| consulting the client on what to do and how to do
|
| I feel the same. In fact I may need to outsource the
| coding on a couple of my projects very soon... Still the
| SEng experience would be invaluable in this regard as I
| can act as both PM and engineering manager. And I will
| keep coding the projects I'm interested in - I'm not sure
| if I'd like to turn into an agency for the foreseeable
| future, but rather look forward to improving my coding
| skills for at least another 3 or 4 years.
| corobo wrote:
| > Are people aware
|
| Yup. Well, I am anyway.
|
| I signed up and they wanted that installing. I've not been back
| haha.
|
| If the work is done.. you pay me, that's the deal we have. I'm
| not installing spyware for some weirdo to watch me work.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| If this follows the lead of their acquihire and is a marketplace
| for upscale freelancers it could be a neat one to watch. The
| referenced competition has a very different price curve and tends
| to be a race to the bottom, while linkedin (despite their best
| efforts) is (at least for now) a network of real people, like
| facebook 10+ years ago. Their profile is the resume from which
| you would qualify and hire, and it's already one of the best ways
| to find a permanent candidate so it makes sense to push into
| different work arrangements.
| zikzak wrote:
| The same person that can make a living on low balling web
| programming contracts on other sites can make a LinkedIn
| profile and do it there, too.
|
| What I have found interesting while doing some recent
| interviews for full time, remote developers is people are
| basing salary expectations on the top labor markets, not the
| ones they reside in. If you are operating out of a marginal
| marketplace and have gone remote because of the pandemic, this
| can take you by surprise if you think "now I can hire people
| anywhere".
|
| My second point contradicts my first point, to the extent they
| overlap.
|
| Really, though, if one believes in marketplaces setting a price
| and some person is willing and capable of doing my job for 1/3
| the cost, who am I to complain? There are many factors that
| play into being willing to accept the downsides of working with
| a team in an opposite time zone but to the extent that people
| are willing to deal with this, I say go for it. That's the
| world we have built and must now live in.
| varispeed wrote:
| It makes me wonder why authorities have not caught up with
| those sites that essentially operate like Uber, except that you
| don't drive a car but do software development. I think it is
| worth raising awareness so that people get paid minimum wage
| and get all benefits associated with being an employee and pay
| correct taxes.
| hemant19 wrote:
| Upwork is a pain.
| ldap1001 wrote:
| So, Microsoft tracks developer "productivity" and submissiveness
| via GitHub and now drives down salaries via LinkedIn.
|
| The new developer career: Work yourself to exhaustion in "open"
| source to get noticed. If you succeed, welcome to the underpaid
| gig economy at LinkedIn.
|
| As a bonus, get tracked all the time by GitHub, VSCode, vcpkg,
| LinkedIn and the new Microsoft in general.
| frockington1 wrote:
| I'm not familiar with Microsofts practices, how are they
| driving down salaries via LinkedIn?
| jraby3 wrote:
| I immediately thought the same thing. In my experience
| LinkedIn gives employees more options and drives salary up.
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