
Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work? - s1k3s
I&#x27;m currently working 40h&#x2F;week as a backend php developer and I think I can put an extra 20 hours every week to increase my earnings. However, I struggle finding remote work or above the average freelancing projects. Basically I don&#x27;t want to waste my time on sites like freelancer.com where I have to compete against many low-quality programmers who place low bids just to win projects and then they mess them up.<p>Where could I find jobs like these?
======
ArtofSaf
Here's something you can do:

1\. Go to
[https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/PHP](https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/PHP)
to see websites that use PHP

2\. Focus on smaller to mid-size companies (large corporations likely have the
tech team and contractors to cover almost of their needs)

3\. (Optional) Search for each company on Linkedin and add managers with
relevant roles (VIP of sales, project manager, marketing manager, etc.). The
goal is to familiarize them with your name so they're more likely to open your
email (step 5).

4\. Find the email format of these companies with
[https://hunter.io/](https://hunter.io/).

5\. Reach out to the most senior person with a relevant role at each company
with a personalized 1-on-1 email.

The key here is to review their website and business and share 2-3 ideas of
what you can them build or fix (if there are any glaring issues or
vulnerabilities). They may not necessarily use your ideas but the goal is
stand out and help them understand how they can put your programming skills to
use. Here's a template you can reference: [https://artofemails.com/new-
clients#developer](https://artofemails.com/new-clients#developer)

There are a lot of businesses out there whose teams don't have the capacity to
build everything so they would be keen to have a reliable freelance programmer
help them bring some features or projects out of backlog.

~~~
john_moscow
I happen to run a small company with a website built in PHP and I get several
generic emails every couple of days from random individuals and fly-by-night
"SEO consultancies", claiming that they "found issues on my website", "could
help optimize website", "get us reach top Google positions" etc.

Most of this is auto-generated junk based on some keyword scrapping, but given
the volume of it, I don't think it's possible to be taken seriously in that
niche anymore.

I also get several "personalized emails" per week peddling software developers
for hire, management trainings, factories in China, real estate investment
opportunities and countless other junk, so I wouldn't count on that channel
either. Anything that looks like a cold email goes straight to trash simply
due to the volume of it.

IMO, a much better strategy would be to publish articles showing your
expertise (i.e. comparing similar technologies, or sharing step-by-step
instructions on accomplishing some familiar task), while mentioning that you
do consulting in that area. People usually don't mind if you share them on
Reddit/Linkedin/Twitter/HN and that can get a you a much better traction than
cold-mailing people.

~~~
preinheimer
I'm in a very similar boat to you, I think I've deleted three messages this
morning...

But it would still be possible to get my attention. The average message is
something along the lines of Hi {name}. I was at your site {domain} and had
some ideas. [the same copy every single person gets]

If instead someone emailed me something that showed that they not only knew
what domain they were mailing but understood what our product offered and how
maybe they could help I'd probably keep reading. For me that might look like:

\----

Hey Paul,

I love what you've built with WonderProxy, this GeoIP testing niche you've
carved out is super interesting, I wish I'd known about it years ago! We had
this horrible integration that refused to load in Germany but worked perfectly
in our office, debugging over Remote Desktop at 3am still haunts my dreams.

Anyways i'm actually wondering if there's a way we can work together. I'm a
senior PHP developer and I've got a lot of experience building OKTA
integrations. It looks like you've started offering SAML, but let me tell you
OKTA is like the secret sauce to get loved by IT departments. Your team is
likely capable of building this in-house, but why spend tens or hundreds of
hours learning the ins and outs of this stuff when I can build it in half the
time with a quarter of the bugs :).

let me know if you're interested

\----

I'm not saying I'd hire that gal/guy, but if it was something I wanted we
would at least have a conversation. I'd optimize for quality messages to
qualified companies, rather than quantity anything.

~~~
mikaelmello
Kudos for "quarter of the bugs" and not "no bugs", seems like a great and
honest developer.

------
bernierocks
It's a numbers game. I used Craigslist last year to find freelance jobs. I
talked to about 40 potential clients in a month. Out of those, 30 were a no
from me right off the bat (wanted to hire cheap developers, etc) and out of
the last 10, I was able to setup a contract with 2.

Here are two things that have helped me:

1) Answer the ad within an hour of it being posted. This may be tough if you
have a full time job. My response rate when up 100% when I did this.

2) Give them your phone number and offer to talk on the phone. Email generally
doesn't work that well to sell yourself, especially now with all of the low-
wage competition.

3) get good at selling yourself. They need to know why they should hire you
over a $5/hour developer from overseas. Some don't care and only want to pay
peanuts.

Freelancer.com is horrible. I used it a few times and got a few potential
clients..but most expect things like a turnkey Facebook clone for $100.

~~~
staticautomatic
Freelancer is also horrible on the client side fwiw.

------
mcthrowaway123z
As someone who ran a consultancy for several years, no one wants your last 20
hours. I think you'd do yourself a favor looking for more rewarding employment
if you are feeling underpaid.

~~~
dakna
What's holding potential customers back the most? The quality of the work,
implying you are already exhausted after your current job? Or the fact that
20hrs is often not enough time for a meaningful contribution in a development
team and you have to spend time to catch up every week?

Courious to know what your experience is and if a price conscious buyer would
be willing to accept the trade-offs.

~~~
soup10
working with freelancers that have full time jobs almost always means that
that freelance work is lower priority to their main job and will be first to
be neglected if things get busy. Freelancers/consultants that do it full time
value their good reputation to continue getting clients and work.

~~~
conductr
It’s all about communication and setting expectations. If client is expecting
quick delivery with low chance of disruption and you have a full time job
maybe this consultant shouldn’t take the job. Or at minimum tell client they
are juggling multiple priorities at the moment and say that they’ve built in a
buffer into the ETA but it could still be a risk. And that you’ll communicate
frequently with any deviation to your ETA.

Not every client needs delivery at breakneck speed.

------
anon1094
Hey there, here are my suggestions for you:

Sign up to AngelList and search their jobs. Besides normal jobs, many startups
looking for remote contract developers post there.

AngelList also lets you search by technology category, whether it's contract
or not. I don't think they let you search if it's part time or not on the
website.

Next, I would join Developer focused Slack channels. Some of these have #jobs
channels that post positions from time to time.

Here's an article I wrote that lists some of those out:
[https://medium.com/hackernoon/developer-slack-channels-
remot...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/developer-slack-channels-remote-job-
freelance-project-98e9b70d6275)

Finally, there are also Facebook Groups as well where some companies and
individuals go in and post freelance jobs.

Again, an article I wrote that lists some good Facebook groups for remote
work: [https://medium.com/hackernoon/facebook-groups-remote-job-
fre...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/facebook-groups-remote-job-freelance-
project-ee52c542946d)

Shameless Plug: How do I know a bunch of these places? I run RemoteLeads, a
lead generation service focused on remote freelance development work. If
you're interested check us out at
[https://remoteleads.io/](https://remoteleads.io/)

I hope the above links help and let me know if you have any extra questions.
Email in my bio. Happy to help!

\- Derick

~~~
xivzgrev
Looks like a great site!

One typo I noticed: on pro page
([https://remoteleads.io/upgrade](https://remoteleads.io/upgrade)), in 6x
leads paragraph, "about" is misspelled

"That's abotu 10x less competition per lead according to our analytics."

~~~
anon1094
Hey, thank you for the feedback. Fixed! :)

------
yakshaving_jgt
This is maybe going to be an unpopular suggestion, but I think certain
technologies are going to more commonly be associated with race-to-the-bottom
markets, and I think PHP is one of those. It might make sense in investing in
studying some more niche and higher-barrier-to-entry languages.

~~~
akor
What languages do you suggest? Does Javascript have the same association with
"race-to-the-bottom markets"? Having used Symfony and Laravel I don't
understand why PHP has such a bad rep except that it's on the easier side so
any language that makes things simple would suffer the same fate (attracting
inexperienced developers (hello Javascript, Ruby, Python)). Both PHP and
Javascript have many language specific issues so I'd say they're on equal
footing.

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
I intentionally didn’t suggest any, because I didn’t want this to turn into a
language shootout, or for me to sound like a fanboy of the particular
languages I prefer. It’s the same reason why I avoided levelling criticisms at
PHP. And yes, I do think JavaScript has the same market supply issue.

If you haven’t done much other than PHP and JavaScript, I’d suggest going
through the Seven Languages in Seven Weeks book, and also doing a bit of
market analysis; see who’s hiring for which languages.

~~~
arcturus17
I personally don't find PHP attractive at all, but in recent months I've been
very surprised to meet some devs who are making absolute bank with it
(including WordPress devs). I think success as a freelancer depends a lot on
being a good salesman, delivering value to your client, and being efficient.
Whether the end product (eg, a WP installation) is "quality" in terms of
software engineering might be highly debatable... I can totally understand why
a Scala dev wouldn't want to touch PHP projects with a 10-meter pole, but that
doesn't mean that you can't be highly successful with it.

Personally, I can code in a few languages but I build mostly in JS. I
understand why some engineers would not want to work with it and I'm not
personally offended by that, but I think ES6+ can provide a great dev
experience. And while there's certainly a lot of crappy jobs in the space,
there also seems to be really interesting work to be found around Node / React
/ Vue etc.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
WP is such a dumpster fire it's unlikely that PHP skills are going to become
obsolete any time soon.

From a freelance/consultancy niche it's almost ideal. Demand is high, and
employers/clients are likely to have relatively simple requirements (i.e. a
brochure/catalog site with a bit of a backend, not a huge industrial db that
needs to run at planetary scale backed by a devops machine.)

It's not a personal interest but it seems to work well for people who can
stand out from the pack, even a little.

~~~
arcturus17
Yea agree, that’s what I’ve learnt in the last few months after years of
thinking “this shit can’t be profitable”.

------
breck
I would recommend strongly against freelancing. Instead, try and join up with
a remote team. YouTeam.com might be relevant.

Find a team where you are a specialist, you'll earn a higher hourly rate and
probably have a lot less stress.

Try to pair up with a few different groups until you find one that you love,
then stick with that one.

Source: I did a lot of freelancing in the 2000's before joining up with a
larger consultancy and the latter earned me probably 3x hourly rate, the
projects were more interesting for bigger companies, and the coworkers became
friends for life.

~~~
blueadept111
Did you post the right url? YouTeam.com is a French website.

~~~
PorterDuff
Dammit, it's like they have a different word for everything.

------
cameldrv
Show up to PHP meetups in your area if you're near a largish metro. Go for
beers afterward, meet the people, mention what you are doing. Keep doing this
and wait and you'll likely start getting work coming your way that has a
completely different category of client than you'd see on some sort of
marketplace.

~~~
bigtunacan
Meetups depend largely on geographic location. If you are already in a large
city this is good advice. If you are anywhere with a population of sub 500k
then people looking for help is few and far between. Also for every one that
does show up and has money to pay ten show up saying how they have a "great
idea" but no money or skills and why won't anybody work for 2% equity?

------
darepublic
Do the low bid programmers really mess them up? I mean it's comforting to
think I'm miles ahead in quality than people from those places but honestly
I'm not sure. I figure there have to be some decent programmers better than
myself who will gladly work for half the money

~~~
robryan
Better programmers maybe. In terms of finding someone at half the price that
communicates at a high level and cares enough to investigate past what is
precisely assigned and understand the business case, I am not so sure.

------
whalesalad
Sign up on moonlightwork.com. It’s a great community for this exact sort of
thing.

The advice here sucks. Don’t give up on this idea. I make my living
freelancing and a fair portion of that income is from Moonlight.

~~~
jcadam
I joined moonlightwork early on. Never have landed a job through it, or any
other freelancing site (so I suppose I can't say whether it's any better or
worse than the rest).

At various points throughout my career, I've fantasized about quitting Full
time work and freelancing. I gave up on the idea after a few potential clients
wanted me to work for peanuts.

Close as I got was a few short-lived negotiations where I refused to work for
pay similar to what I made as a teenager bagging groceries.

Maybe I should start a lawncare business? It would be more lucrative than
freelance software engineering, and at least it ought to be immune to
offshoring.

~~~
philip1209
Just emailed you - but happy to provide some advice! It takes skills beyond
code, such as positioning, writing, and sales to successfully close freelance
gigs. We're averaging a little over $100/hr on Moonlight gigs.

Freelancing is a numbers game - you need to have a funnel of work in order to
keep a stable income. We try to screen out bad clients as much as possible on
Moonlight, but you'll run into them and need to know when to just say no. It's
the same challenges most small businesses have anywhere in the world.

Finally, if you want to get philosophical, Gresham's Law in economics is
really illustrated here - "bad money drives out good". Basically, the people
who are trying to pay below-market are constantly looking for workers. People
who pay fair wages are not having turnover, so not hiring as often. It's just
something to keep in mind - that the cross-section of people looking to hire
does not accurately represent the transactions of the overall industry.

------
trykondev
I have a suggestion which might be something of interest to you -- I work
part-time at a company that specializes in conducting remote technical
interviews as a service. It pays pretty well ($100 USD per 90-minute
interview) -- the work is very flexible and you set your own hours. It might
be a good option for you if you're interested in putting in a few extra hours
each week, and it also might be a great fit in the sense that you don't have
to spend time hunting down projects and instead can just schedule a few extra
hours in your availability calendar when you want more work.

Although it's not a traditional software development job, I've found it to be
a welcome change of pace to have a job that is separate from the stress of
maintaining a codebase or crafting software all day which I find can be pretty
draining.

If this is the kind of thing you (or anyone else reading this) might be
interested in, send me an email and I would be happy to talk further about it!
My email address is in my profile.

------
erikig
TweetJobs was posted in HN the other day -
[https://tweetjobs.dev](https://tweetjobs.dev)

A good portion of the jobs are freelance/remote and pretty up to date.

------
unnouinceput
I started with Upwork 10+ years ago (when they were still oDesk) and I never
looked back. Best decision ever of my life. I can afford to enjoy my projects,
while doing what I love, and I never have the feeling of work, but of playing.

The problem with Upwork is initial drawing of clients to build a profile with
a good score. Once you did that, you're in the clear. Just like in any other
places, there are plenty of bad programmers and plenty of bad customers, and
once you identify their style of language you can easily avoid them. Also I
insist of always talking to my clients, we use writing as only a mean to an
end, not to create endless chats. This way they can asses my English as well.
Oh, and I work for only US, Australia or Canada clients. Rest of the countries
are a no go for me, most of bad customers are from there.

to OP: AMA regarding, I'll be happy to reply

~~~
Gustomaximus
I know people hate on Upwork/Freelancer but they are a good platform but you
have to look at it like starting your career again.

Start with low prices. Turn over projects and you'll find regular work and be
able to put up prices.

You can't expect to step in at a high rate as an unknown. Also stay on the
platform. They do take their cut but look at it like advertising. If you build
up volume and quality reviews there is loads of reasonable paying work there.

~~~
unnouinceput
The difference between Upwork and Freelancer is the same difference between
Comcast and FANG. One is universally hated the other just partially

------
aksahy
> I'm currently working 40h/week as a backend PHP developer and I think I can
> put an extra 20 hours every week to increase my earnings. However, I
> struggle to find remote work or above the average freelancing projects.

Freelance is all about branding, word of mouth and selling your self. Maybe
give blogging a shot and keep looking.

Shameless Plug: I was a PHP/Node developer. now I am trying to switching to go
or elixir/erlang. I am already super comfortable with go. due to the fact, I
have been using it since 2013 on hobby projects. As of now, I am working On a
rest API using Clojure and react for frontend.

Here is more information about me:
[https://ooooak.github.io/](https://ooooak.github.io/)

Github: [https://github.com/ooooak/](https://github.com/ooooak/)

~~~
diweirich
What made you want to switch languages?

~~~
aksahy
Looking for better alternatives on the backend. I really like PHP. I have used
it heavily so there is not much I am gonna learn from PHP. Elixir seems like
good choices for a few reasons. easy access to the OTP and a good ecosystem
(when compared to Clojure).

------
DoreenMichele
I will suggest you could try putting information in your HN profile regarding
what you can offer and what you looking for, plus participating on the first
of the month in "Freelancer -- Seeking Freelancer" on this site.

I hear over and over that freelancers doing work they like with good
conditions get most of their work via word of mouth. That seems to be about
finding a few good clients and having an established relationship with them
and them referring you to other people.

------
muthafa
I've pursued this before and I came to the conclusion that the only reasonable
way to do it is to hire a virtual assistant to help you look for projects.
It's just become too much of a numbers game. I personally hire people from
Latin America and recommend it if you're in North America for time zone
compatibility. If you're in Europe probably somewhere in Asia is better for
time zone reasons.

------
gabor_biro
I've been using upwork.com for a few months now and I'm getting regular
projects as a mobile developer. Interesting ones too, sometimes to patch up an
existing project, sometimes to start a new one. It took roughly a month though
until the first clients started responding to my applications. Create a sexy
profile and be patient.

~~~
ethanwillis
I can vouch for upwork. The initial warmup phase can be a little rough, but if
you use it consistently it's really good. I've probably billed 20-30k in work
on there part-time.

~~~
iends
At what hourly rate?

------
chris5745
If other freelancers are messing up projects on those sites, I would see that
as an opportunity to enter the market with a quality service, if the customer
needs the quality. If it’s a race to the bottom and you want no part of it,
you could start a side business selling something unrelated to programming.

------
twodave
I have found most of my work via old employers. I’m currently working full
time at one place and part time for the previous place. Establishing a track
record is hard, but if you have worked at a place before and done excellent
work then it is orders of magnitude easier to make this work.

------
aknosis
PHP dev here, I never found anything that paid well enough on a "marketplace"
site to bother investing time in.

My advice is to get networking, if you can get into the ears of enough people
you will stumble upon someone who needs help AND may pay you a decent rate. I
would have never found my "after 5" gig had it not been for a recommendation
from a previous co-worker.

I've been working with After5.io for a few months and it has been great so
far. After joining I basically jump to a JIRA board at my leisure and pull
work to do.

I've also stumbled across [https://www.turtle.dev/](https://www.turtle.dev/)
which seems like a similar idea but I have no knowledge of the product.

------
Stevvo
gitcoin.co I made $15k+ on there pretty easily before boring of web
development and moving on to other things. One advantage is nearly all of it
will be open source and show on your github profile.

~~~
krn
> I made $15k+ on there pretty easily

How did that translate into the hourly rate in your case?

~~~
Stevvo
~$100/hr, definitely there were some outliers, like a $500 issue that took 30
minutes, and others that got stuck in code review for weeks and took up a
disproportionate amount of time.

------
aknosis
We don't have any direct insight into contract vs. full time, but you can find
remote php jobs: [https://www.phpjobs.app/remote-php-
jobs](https://www.phpjobs.app/remote-php-jobs).

You can also search for contract and more than likely most of those jobs are
actually contract jobs:
[https://www.phpjobs.app/search?search=contract](https://www.phpjobs.app/search?search=contract)

------
thisisrajat
Here's some actionable advice (hope it helps):

\- Join Toptal ([https://toptal.com](https://toptal.com)) or similar sites.
I've found their criteria of getting developers on board to be quite hard.
Brush up your skills. You'll end up getting good projects overall. The upside
is huge. People generally don't bid too low.

\- Start by cold emailing executives at small-medium tier startups. You can
find those companies on Crunchbase
([https://www.crunchbase.com/](https://www.crunchbase.com/)) and
AngelList([https://angel.co](https://angel.co)). Find engineering manager or a
C-team executive (CTO, CEO) on Linkedin and message them (or cold email). Tell
them how you can add value to their engineering team instead of just asking if
you can get a project. All depends on your ability to write a well-crafted
email.

\- Build relationships. I've freelanced before and can vouch that finding good
clients is HARD. Keep a healthy relationship with the ones who hired you
before, ask them for referral, etc.

\- Write a useful blog and convert clients from there. Assume it to be your
sales funnel if you will. \- Tweet, connect with people virtually. Be
genuinely nice. Many people I know got their "big break" in freelancing via
Twitter.

\- If you have Wordpress skills, you can go so far with managing instances for
people who don't know a thing. I know people earning $3K a month pretty easily
by invoicing a handful of bloggers. Again, cold email is your friend.

My parting advice would be to _not_ look for freelance projects. They're a
waste of time. Instead, just look for high paying remote PHP jobs. You'll work
much less and earn a lot more. I was skeptical at first but YES remote
companies pay well too. Go to DailyRemote
([https://dailyremote.com](https://dailyremote.com)) and filter jobs by $70k+.
Start applying to those positions. Also, remote companies that are not
actively hiring would be interested in a good candidate if you just tell them
that you're looking out. Tell them why they _need to have you_ on the team.
Most of them would be happy to accommodate.

Hope it helps. Good luck!

------
bilifuduo
Been working on a project to help people find high-impact jobs tackling
problems they care about (ie. climate change, healthcare, etc), and we'll have
filters for part-time and remote when we launch next month:
[https://www.splashwithdolphin.com](https://www.splashwithdolphin.com).

------
g1gecon
Full disclosure - I work at Toptal and have been for over 3 years. Now that’s
out of the way, I would like to encourage you to check out Toptal.com . Our
entire purpose is to connect talented freelancers with companies looking for
serious work. That way you, as a freelancer can focus on engaging in quality
projects.

Let’s face it, you are already busy with a 40h/week job and you don’t need to
be burdened with additional clerical tasks associated with freelancing. We
will take care of the billing and pay you directly. We want to make sure that
you are successful as a freelancer in our network, so we will help set you up
for success.

------
bacheson1293
I'm currently hiring remote full time PHP developers for my saas Agency
analytics ... Blake[dot]Acheson[at]agencyanalytics[dot]com if interested

------
buboard
> who place low bids just to win projects and then they mess them up.

Go to their past projects and offer a high price to fix the mess

------
BorisBorisov91
Definitely www.remotemore.com/candidates

------
stuartc842
in my experience, upwork is the least spammy site compared to freelancer,
fiverr, and guru

------
gtirloni
I suggest you look at Toptal.

~~~
juskrey
Humiliating machine disguised as a freelance platform

~~~
s1k3s
I thought that too while looking over their "screening process", but now I'm
really curious to see how hard it is to get in. Did you go through it?

~~~
lotyrin
I started it once when I was super under-utilized in my day job and was
looking at ways to stay stimulated.

I figured I'd start out getting approved as being able to do useful work in a
particular CMS in a particular language (Where I expected the acceptance
criteria to be low (and the size/complexity of engagements to be low) --
customize a listing of content, build a custom form, customize how content is
themed, etc...

After typical screener quiz etc. and a Skype interview, there was a take home
challenge that resembled "build a minimalist custom ERP with <such and such
acceptance criteria> and <such and such custom business logic> shoehorned
inside of WordPress" , probably a good 20 hours of work minimum if you were
using an MVC framework with decent developer experience, let alone trying to
bang it together inside a CMS without much support infrastructure for such
things.

I declined to complete the challenge.

I might have had better results going straight for a language + framework
actually suited to creating custom apps, but it didn't give me a great
impression.

~~~
lastofus
I had the same experience with the take home project applying as a
Python/Django dev. I would have normally billed around $2k for what they
wanted for a throwaway test.

I also declined.

------
xxsitek
I'm seeing that dysfunction pattern in a lot of industries. Irrelevant middle-
man creating a lot of drama and fees to justify their existence when they can
be easily bumped out of the way digitally....

------
garinswari
up

------
add1ct2
I'd suggest going with Toptal.

You'd join an elite network of the world’s top talent, connecting the best and
brightest in business, design, and technology.

This will give you a chance to work top organizations from anywhere in the
world, on your terms. All Toptal clients are thoroughly vetted. Only those
with the budget, skill, and intent to hire make the cut. You get paid on time,
every time as Toptal handles all billing and invoicing directly with clients,
letting you fully focus on your engagements.

I'm sure you'll appreciate that since you have a full time job and don't want
to waste your time going through action races to the bottom, competing against
armies of coders.

However, Toptal has a very rigorous screening process to identify the best.
Toptal looks for great problem solvers with passion and drive — the types of
people they want to work with (and learn from) themselves.

(Full disclaimer: I've been with Toptal for over 6 years now, and our mission,
from day 1, is to enable great talent work on great projects through our
platform.)

~~~
unnouinceput
Toptal is full of BS on their screening process. I am a freelancer on Upwork
for 10+ years now (at that time they were oDesk) and a few years ago I applied
at Toptal, out of curiosity. The experience of the screening process where
they asked to do free work on a project, disguised as a throwaway test, except
the specifics of the test was too much inline with those of a ongoing project
made me decline it. Also I mentioned I was already a successful freelancer of
Upwork and gave them my profile there to see for themselves meant nothing to
them. My impression is they use their screening process to get projects done.

As for you, good for you that you made it there, but it's definitely not a
freelancing platform.

~~~
Kokoloko22
That's factually incorrect, but I am sorry that you've found it bothersome.

I don't see how you being part of a different platform, makes any difference
to them.

It's like saying "Hey, I interviewed at Facebook - so everyone has to
immediately hire me".

It is a freelancing platform and there are thousands of freelancers in their
community, I'd suggest attending one of their events where you could meet &
greet them, and talk about their experiences. As far as I can tell, they find
it valuable to be part of it, so much that they dedicate their own time to
spread the news, and work on Toptal's recognition.

The process is very similar to the interview processes at companies like
Google, Facebook, Palantir etc.

Yeah, you're expected to do a project, as did every individual that made it
through the screening process.

I really don't see how, with so many years of experience, you could possibly
claim that they have hundreds of people (weekly) complete their clients
projects? For free?

And,they've done it for years? Seems ludicrous to me mate.

~~~
unnouinceput
Their screening process is to make sure that creme de la creme is hired,
right? Me, as a successful freelancer with verifiable track means I am already
that. So is like saying "hey, I worked at Facebook, not just simply
interviewed, and here is a verifiable record that I did good work there, so
let's skip the BS, shall we?". That was my point with them giving them my
Upwork profile

~~~
maccck
That still doesn't make a lot of sense.

So, you're essentially saying that the next time you apply to join a company
(say Google), you should not go through whatever interview process they have
because you worked at Facebook, and they should take your word for it? So you
should not be going through whatever tests they subject their applicants?

~~~
unnouinceput
Not take my word for it, do you even understand what giving a link to your
profile on Upwork means? You can see what they worked on, how much they
charged for and most importantly what was the feedback the client did. And I
am not talking about jobs with 200/300 USD range pay, I am talking about jobs
with thousand of hours and tens of thousand of dollars as payment with more
then six months of continuous commitment to them AND at the end of those jobs
my clients praised me while giving me 5 stars. That's what I meant with
verifiable track.

