
Freelancer.com has ruined my life - hohaa
https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/59fdae7d31302a07249dc4fe
======
lsmod
Stay away from Freelancer.com

They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to
suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the buyer's payment
method. Note that this is after completing the project fully and leaving
feedback for each other.

I left the money on my Freelancer account, becasue they are/were having issues
with Skrill withdrawals. It was there for about a month and they suddenly
reversed both payments at the end of the last month.

They should validate/verify payments before accepting/processing them, not
after a month after completing a project.

Basically, i just did a job for free. no one's going to pay for my time. they
have 0 seller protection.

BTW, buyer had this[0] green icon next to his profile. Evidently, it doesn't
work as you might expect.

[0][https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png](https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png)

~~~
_wmd
Their web application isn't the canonical source of whether they owe you money
or not, a court decides that. I don't know in which jurisdiction Freelancer
are based, but if there is a low cost small claims procedure, sounds like that
would be worth you time.

In the UK in a variety of circumstances you can petition a court to issue a
wind up ("liquidation") order for a company if it refuses to service its debt
to you.

~~~
twic
A friend of a friend got such an order for Tesco, our biggest supermarket
chain, a few years ago. Needless to say, their invoice was paid very soon
after that.

~~~
TomMarius
Can you share more? Sounds interesting, especially as I'm reading your comment
inside a Tesco store.

~~~
twic
Not much, i'm afraid - i can't even remember who it was, it was a tale told in
a pub, i think. They'd done some work for Tesco, sent an invoice, Tesco messed
them around trying not to pay it, so they brought a case in court, Tesco
didn't bother sending anyone to contest it, and this person got the winding-up
order. When that is issued, official letters go to the directors, and
apparently that got their attention.

~~~
aidos
I've twice been involved in sending winding-up orders, or at least sending a
letter before action to say that a winding-up order comes next. They're an
effective and cheap tool in the U.K. to shake dishonest companies looking to
avoid/delay paying their bills.

------
dhimes
Well, first let me say that my experience as someone who has hired on
freelancer has been very good. I have found some excellent developers there.
But I'll also point out that (1) I spec my projects pretty carefully, almost
to the point of 'hell I might as well build it myself'; and (2) I pay. And
when the project is harder than I originally thought, I don't say "tough shit
you signed a contract dumbass" but rather I pay more. I treat the contractors
more or less as contract employees, and myself as a project manager.

Second, as others here have pointed out, there is a whole lotta "I'll just
skip the details here" in this story.

But what strikes me most is that here is a guy who is raising a voice in the
hacker internet community about a company with the intent of either warning us
of a dangerous situation or hoping to get some community pressure on the site
to get his money out of them, or perhaps both. I have no problem with either
of those things, and actually appreciate the first.

What I _do_ have a problem with is how little effort (apparently) went into
the piece. It's like a stream-of-consciousness ramble about the bad things
happening to him, including the piece about the issue leading him into
depression. It's just not....professional. It makes my spidey sense tingle. I
wish him the best but I'm a bit skeptical that we've got a balanced view here,
and half of me is thinking that if this is how he approaches things then the
complainants may have a point.

~~~
notatoad
yes, it seems entirely likely that freelancer.com is awful and online
marketplaces withholding payments for nebulous reasons is a real problem, but
i have a hard time trusting this review. Specifically, this:

"The first time I asked for the reason I was told that there's no reason and
that I should keep working, then I was told that because a client complained,
and in another occasion, i was told something else that I can't quite
remember"

Freelancer.com is "ruining your life", but when they explain their reasoning
to you, you "can't remember". I call bullshit. In the scenario the author of
this review is trying to paint, you don't just forget the rationale they give
you.

~~~
JamesBarney
As someone who has been bounced around customer support before I can testify
that I have forgotten reasons they've given me for why they weren't able to
help me.

~~~
notatoad
when they don't want to refund me $50, sure. But if they're holding $3600, i
think i could probably pay attention to what they're telling me.

------
tomxor
I tried Freelancer.com when I was starting out, I was really happy when I got
my first gig, I did a good job, the client was pleased, I got paid an
equivalent of £1 an hour but accepted that as my foot in the door... I tried
to keep going down this route but quickly realised that this kind of
competitive race to the bottom in terms of price is not just the the entry
level experience, it's just generally expected.

This guy is in the top 0.5% and while i'm sure he's earning much more than I
did on freelancer, I expect he would be far better off on his own or under
full employment. Clients go to freelancer to get cheap labour, for workers I
think that it's a great place for someone to go to dip their toes in the water
for one of the types of work they advertise, but it's not a place to make a
living.

~~~
PeachPlum
Same here at vWorker. Did great work, ranked in the 100s, but it was not
sustainable.

To top it off I got a job to implement a forex trading algorithm. He had a
system to buy/sell on signals.

But when it came down to it, it didn't trade profitably. He wouldn't believe
the code worked, and I couldn't convince him his scheme was flawed because it
worked when he did it manually - and I've watched his youtube videos of him
trading live. Obviously his scheme on paper didn't capture his feel for
trading visually. (And I know now it is very challenging to make it work at
all).

Went to arbitration and they decided I'd get 50% of the fee.

~~~
pmorici
Sounds like the time I decided to try one of these sites and ended up with a
client who wanted software written to pick winning lottery numbers based on
some system he'd devised to analyze past winning lottery numbers. Of course
such a thing will never work in a fair lottery.

Guy refused to pay the $10 price after the "work" was done. Validated my
suspicions that those types of site are a total waste of time even if he had
paid the fee.

~~~
nkrisc
Genuinely curious: why would you accept a job to do the impossible? Or perhaps
I'm misunderstanding and his refusal to pay was totally separate from the fact
his whole idea was flawed?

~~~
pmorici
I'm glossing over the details. The actual description of the software the guy
wanted written was very straight forward. That said something like, Python
program that imports the historical pick-4 results from the North Carolina
Lottery and allowed the user to look-up the last date those numbers were
picked regardless of order. The job had a fixed price of $10.

This was a long time ago but I think my thought process was that doing the
hourly rate jobs at $2.00 per hour would never be viable so I was trying to
find fixed price jobs that were miss priced in the sense that I knew I could
perhaps do them in 30 minutes but the purchaser assumed it would be several
hours of work. This project fit the bill. The job description didn't actually
explain that the guy wanted to use the software as part of his nutty system to
game the lottery. That only came out later after the work was done.

~~~
nkrisc
That makes much more sense. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.

------
nickjj
Like most marketplaces, they are only interested in making themselves
profitable. Always remember that.

Working at freelancer.com or similar sites is saying:

"I should spend a large portion of my life to become an expert in my craft,
and then I should agree to have my privacy stripped away from me while I race
to the bottom and undercut my competition because I will actively place myself
into situations where I have the highest competition to ensure I receive the
lowest rates. Lastly, I will bust my butt and bend the world to satisfy
clients who take advantage of me."

By the way, if anyone is interested in making $ on their own as a freelancer I
wrote a mini-guide on how to get your first paying client by tomorrow at
[https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-
fre...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-freelance-
business-as-a-software-developer).

~~~
mac01021
So after you take down the number on that ice cream truck you saw driving by,
and get back home from your walk and decide to call them, what do you say?
Just, "hi! Do you need any software developed"?

I've never tried, but it's a little hard for me to imagine ever getting a
client this way.

~~~
nickjj
I wouldn't go after the ice cream man, but here's a couple of people I would
(and have) contacted: locksmiths, plumbers, lawn maintenance teams, roofing
companies, solar panel companies and the list goes on and on.

Then I would either talk to a worker directly if it looks like a decent
opportunity. I'm not going to wave down a guy off the roof, but if he happens
to be fiddling with something near his van and I naturally walk past, then
sure.

If not, then I just call the number they have later. I'm not pitching them
right away with "do you need any software developed?". All I do is ask them
about their business. My goal here is to get a feel for how they are doing
financially without directly asking.

Then I'll guide the call into casually offering them services that could help
them grow. Sometimes it's a new website or setting up a landing page. There's
honestly a TON of things that almost every business could benefit from and you
can comfortably charge $2,000 to $20,000 for these things with monthly
retainers on top. That's not even counting custom software gigs that come
later.

~~~
pryelluw
Pretty much this. Lot's of people dont believe this approach works and miss
out.

------
dalbasal
Ultimately, underlying all this, is a broken financial setup. At least I
suspect so.

Transaction fees, liability, and regulatory-ish obligations are very high. The
last one has been getting worse as "anti money laundering" standards are being
beefed up to make financing terrorism & tax evasion (also money laundering to
an extent) more difficult. It all results in weird rules and policies followed
without a good understanding of why they exist. It's even hard to tell who's
policy they, regulators/legislature or the companies themselves.

The whole thing has choke points (eg CC transactions) controlled by tiny
oligopolies.

Anyone handling money-in-money-out from lots of parties ends up bureaucratic
and skittish. Fraud, chargebacks and such are generally a big problem. On top
of that there is always an incentive to screw around. For example, the average
number of days between payment and withdrawal multiplied by daily transactions
is a sum of money sitting permanently in freelancer's vaults. That spread also
reduces all sorts of chargeback and fraud risks.

Anyway, all this boils down to a reality where no one but financial
institutions can do a decent job of handling other people's money. Freelancer
is handling this guy's money. His "salary" goes into a freelancer account.
We've seen this problem a lot in startupland. Paypal, even though they _are_
financial institutions. Ironically, the bitcoin exchange world and the MtGox
thing. The online poker crisis of 2006...

It's a problem.

------
IAmGraydon
There’s a suspicious amount of “I’ll just leave those details out” in this
article. That aside, this just goes to show why it’s important to work toward
controlling your own destiny. That seems to be a theme here at HN, and for
good reason. Your services will likely always be resold to someone, regardless
of how high up the chain you are. However, the less layers above you there
are, the lower your risk in ending up in a situation such as this one.

~~~
moxious
The severity of this persons claims are why arbitration was invented. If he's
right, complaining on the internet isn't enough of a remedy. And if he's
wrong, there ought to be some attempt to hear the other side

~~~
gruez
How can trust that the arbitrator is neutral when they're hired by
freelancer.com?

------
Animats
I once had a disagreement with Freelancer over a few hundred dollars. I was a
buyer, rather than a seller, the job didn't get done, and I was trying to
withdraw the funds I put in. So, although in the US, I filed a small claims
case in New South Wales. This can be done entirely on line. It's possible to
request court hearings by telephone. So you can do a small claims case
remotely.

Within 8 hours after filing the case and sending the documents to Freelancer,
I had been paid by wire transfer. I then withdrew the case.

~~~
masonic
The disturbing implication here is that Freelancer has little incentive _not_
to push _any_ given debtor to a legal process, given that this escapade cost
them but a little personnel time to respond.

------
socrates1998
People here are blaming this guy for not thinking Freelancer.com will take
care of him like he is an employee. I think the platform, freelancer.com, is
trying to play both sides of the issue.

Their advertising, marketing and brand are "we are here to help you!" and to
take away the potential headaches and challenges that freelancers without the
platform have.

Yet, really, they are not there to mitigate the risk they claim. They don't
give a shit about you or your income. They only want people to use the
platform.

It's a power imbalance. The company has thousands and thousands of people
using their service, so one person is such a small % of their business, they
don't give a shit.

For small businesses, in a small town or community, your reputation is what
your business is, so you will work really hard to ensure it is good.

Large companies with a huge web presence and the resources to protect it,
don't care about you. If you post a bad review, they will find a way to get
100 people to post positive ones.

It's largely about resources, the large company has WAY more than you as an
individual.

They only care about their competition.

It's sad, but that's the state of our system, from health care companies to
insurance companies to telecoms to banks, you are at the mercy of these large
corporations as a customer.

Unless you have a personal networth large enough to fix these problems, it's a
basically insolvable problem.

I recently had a disagreement with my car insurance company about an accident.
They ruled against me, which I disagreed with. My only recourse would be to
hire a lawyer and take them to court. They knew it would be WAY more effort
than it was worth for me.

My only option was to switch companies, which I did, but it doesn't really
matter since the new company could do the same to me just as easily.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
This is exactly right, couldn’t agree more on every point. We live in a
corporate world with companies large enough to not really give a shit about
any one individual. It is only when we organize that they start paying
attention.

I had a terrible experience of Hertz defrauding me with zero recourse. I
searched on the issue and found that it had been rampant in the past and
probably day to day. Hertz simply settled every time for some measly amount in
the millions. To some large corporations going this route is cheaper than
doing the right thing to begin with. Yet we have a government that oks mergers
left and right. A win for consumers my ass.

Let’s face it, when it comes to options we are truly fucked.

------
andrew_wc_brown
Ever since Elance merged with ODesk to make Upwork getting online work has
dried up, and so I have to rely on my personal network.

With Elance you'd get leads for jobs, and take them offsite. Its not that I
wouldn't want to use the ecosystem provided its just that it suck and took too
much.

Upwork takes more, and really locks you in. I refused to scan my license to
become authorized. Even if I used the platform, taxes and their fees makes and
the chances of them hanging payments makes it a death trap.

I would love to build a platform that actually is useful, though I think with
these kinds of websites it's a hard market to penetrate because they're
already on X platform.

I just want to remote from a small town and bank money, but I'm forced to live
near large cities because companies that pay well want you in office.

The only way not to be poor is to be a two-person income of 100K and my gf
never going to make that kind of money.

So my choice is be poor in a small town or be poor in large town.

There are remote jobs for 90k, its just they are far and few and interview
processes can be very involved with lots of studying.

~~~
soneca
Toptal and Crossover might be an option. But I have no first hand experience
with them to recommend.

~~~
convolvatron
toptal's screening process wants you to write a sample application. in my case
the reviewer didn't actually want to look at it, and i was summarily failed. i
feel pretty cheated.

------
doozy
I was a member of rentacoder, which was eventually acquired by freelancer.com.
My account there dates back to 2002.

I haven't been active there in a couple of years. The signal to noise ratio
makes the website useless. Not enough quality projects and not enough projects
with realistic budgets.

But the problem with fraud is beyond serious. I am very careful with who I do
business with, and screen customers as much as possible, but their platform
really makes it easy for fraudsters to screw you over. I got a couple of
issues there over the years. They both were very small amounts, like $200 or
so. In one occasion the customer just reversed the payment, stole my code and
freelancer.com did absolutely nothing to stop him. In another incident, the
customer did not release the payment after completion of the project and I had
to settle to accept only his initial deposit as payment, which was like 20% of
the agreed price.

The company is also _very_ fee hungry. There are hidden fees everywhere for
everything you do in that website. The website itself is also terrible.
Customer support is the worst I've ever dealt with.

There are much better ways to find customers than these kind of websites. On
the other hand, if you are looking for developers there are plenty of good
ones there, just avoid all the Asian body shops and your chances of
successfully finding someone are actually not that bad.

------
jquip
Tried this for 2 small gigs. Terrible experience.

There definitely is something strangely odd about this site. They act as a
currency exchange, pilfering huge amounts of money by converting slightly
lesser than actual forex value. They apparently converted currency 9 times for
2 small gigs. And I just stopped using this site. They deserve this backlash.
From what I can gather the developer is aghast with difficulties and is
emotionally distraught to provide a compelling narrative. But the fact remains
that sites like these, though they call themselves for freelancers, is purely
hogwash about its business and is more than happy to shoot itself in the foot.
The ideology of acting like a half-decent marketplace (at least what they
purport to be) is somehow lost out on these guys. Shame.

------
bastijn
Though the author might be right, as an outsider I have a hard time believing
his words tell the only thruth. When you start the blame game like this you
better include some actual conversations instead of telling the reader you did
them a favor and rephrased them in your own words (state of mind!) for them.
Anyone can write a piece like this. An honest victim or the neighbour's 13 yo
spoiled script kiddo.

So word of advice. If you want to have true impact rewrite your piece to
include conversations and other relevant discussion material that led to this
exclamation of frustration; because you might be totally right.

------
d4e4f4
It seems you have a good reasons to sue. You got perfect reviews. It shows
your dedication to providing great customer service. Maybe you got carried
away and said some things to the agent however the lockdown is unacceptable.
She doesn't have the right to make these decisions. You should speak with
senior management before to get your money out.

~~~
wpietri
Suing probably won't help. The freelancer desperately needs money now. Suing
requires you to spend money now in hopes of getting money down the road. Since
Freelancer.com is based in Australia and the person they screwed probably
isn't, suing would require sending spending a lot of money they don't have on
an Australian lawyer, probably well more than the $3600 that's at stake. And
if Freelancer.com is malicious or doesn't want to lose in public, they could
drag this out a long time.

~~~
greenyoda
See this comment by someone who remotely sued Freelancer.com in small claims
court with successful results:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626228)

~~~
wpietri
Nice! That's impressive of Australia. In SF, I'm pretty sure that physical
presence is required for small claims.

------
extrememacaroni
I always thought of freelancing websites like freelancer.com as being
platforms to meet clients with the goal of removing them from the platform and
establishing long term relationships. Basically, meeting clients and then
quickly getting them to use a service where you and them work and manage
payments directly.

There's no way I could consider freelancer.com to be a worthwhile long term
investment, the fees they take are preposterous to say the least.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
The smart thing to do although that’s breaking TOS.

~~~
extrememacaroni
Only for the currently active project, nothing stops you to not use their
service for the next project with the same client.

------
jimnotgym
It makes me wonder if there is space in the market for a freelancing website
that has minimum rates and does some more vetting, or referencing as we might
call it in the real world.

Ditch the credit card nonsense and make people pay by bank transfer, like real
agencies would. It sounds like a product I would use. I have a need for
Freelancer style services, but I don't need to have to vet people and read
reviews, thats what agencies are for. I want the service that I get from my
local contractor agency, but availability for small projects rather than long
contracts.

~~~
crevizniq
There is one: [https://www.toptal.com](https://www.toptal.com)

~~~
jimnotgym
Does anyone have experience of working with them as a contractor?

~~~
jrgnsd
I've done a couple of contracts through them. For the most part it's beem a
good experience.

They try to vet the clients as well as the coders / talent, but it's not
perfect process so sometimes a dud falls through the cracks. They do have
solid procedures for both the client and freelancer to follow if either party
isn't happy, which includes the person who set up the engagement initially.

Much better than the other sites.

------
5_minutes
It’s an emotional post and doesn’t really explain what happened.

But I’m sure all these freelance hub sites playing escrow etc there’s a lot of
stuff going wrong.

Using these to get work would be really my plan-d.

------
ilamont
I criticized one of these platforms on Twitter over policies & practices --
including horrendous treatment of freelancers -- and they locked my account.

I wasn't a freelancer - I was a paying client with a long and profitable
history, good ratings, etc.

Never used them again.

------
novaleaf
The takeaway, summarized from all the negative experiences I've heard from
these outsourcing platforms (Freelancer, upwork, etc):

SETUP AUTOMATIC WITHDRAWAL OF YOUR EARNINGS. Don't leave your money on the
outsource platform. To do so invites unnecessary risk. Don't work if you can't
withdraw your money.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
You know what’s funny about that is though, even with auto payments set up,
places like upwork keep some of your money for days even though it’s ready to
cash out.

------
mbrameld
I have no experience with freelancer or any of the similar platforms. What
precipitated the whole issue? That is glossed over completely, but it seems
very material to the situation.

------
Upworker
Posting from a new account since my old one identifies me by email address,
and as you'll see below, Upwork has vindictive staff.

Upwork is better than Freelancer, at least on a UX level, Freelancer's site is
a mess, I'll concede that. However, Upwork will arbitrarily lock your account
and you will have no recourse, so don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Once, I asked Upwork technical support about an issue I had where they were
showing the wrong hourly rate to clients (who asked me why I was changing my
rate), and I asked Upwork whether it was possible to resolve, very politely.
They told me no, that's just how it works, it won't be resolved. I was totally
baffled, but what can you do? I would just continue to explain to clients the
problem.

Upwork, after a support issue, gives you a little survey "did this resolve
your problem / how satisfied are you" or whatever, so I put no, and
unsatisfied, obviously.

Not 30 minutes later my account was locked, so I could not apply for new jobs,
nor withdraw any money that already belonged to me. "It needs additional
identity verification", despite having worked there for a long time, having
100% positive feedback, all jobs successful, my photograph on there, all forms
of ID they initially required were provided, all payments successful,
contracts ongoing, etc. I had to install some nonsensical app and have a
webcam interview to prove I'm the guy in the photo, etc. It seems entirely too
coincidental that I would give a support person a bad review and then be
flagged immediately.

So, if Upwork asks you for a survey, beware, you are obligated to lie. I have
been using Upwork since then, but at least now am aware of and prepared for it
to be locked up or deleted at any time.

Upwork charges 10-20% of an enormous global tech labor market and there is no
major competitor? Freelancer is garbage and I've heard horror stories about
Toptal. I'm open to suggestions, and encouraging some enterprising reader to
start a competitor; I'll use your site.

------
XCSme
I have personally used Freelancer.com (I am a web dev) for about 10 projects
and everything went great, never had issues with the clients or payment. I
also managed to find several good business partners/long term clients through
Freelancer. I understand that this is not always the case, but I guess saying
that the platform is completely bad because one in 100k users has a issue is
just an overstatement, we might not even know if he actually did something
wrong that imposed that limitation (maybe because of his accident he couldn't
complete the projects for which he was paid).

I am not trying to defend Freelancer.com in an way, just saying that for me
personally it was a great platform and a good stepping stone in my developer
career.

~~~
wolco
This guy was in the top 5% did many more projects than yourself for 5 years.

In the end all it takes is one help desk person to bring it all down.

The next project may be your last you never know.

~~~
XCSme
My guess is that the guy is not completely honest that the "help desk" person
blocked his account. Anyway, freelancer.com is just a platform, if you are a
freelancer you shouldn't rely only on one specific platform. A freelancer by
definition should not be dependent on anyone else, you are in charge.

------
olingern
As a person who would love more freelancing opportunities, the market is
littered with sketchy proposals, undercut / underpaid projects, and just a bad
experience.

Software Engineering Daily had a episode[1] on Gigster that seems to be trying
to solve this, but I have no experience with that. They also tout only hiring
"1% of all developers who apply," which doesn't really solve the other 99% of
freelancer's problems.

[1] [https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/10/13/gigster-
with...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/10/13/gigster-with-roger-
dickey/)

------
benkarst
I've heard of several people getting screwed over by Freelancer. I don't see
them as being around too often. Maybe Upwork and others will displace them?

I recommend Open Door
([https://opendoorconnect.com/](https://opendoorconnect.com/)) to market
yourself as a consultant or contractor. It's appointment based so it's not a
pure alternative to Freelancer but IMO task based sites aren't worth it for
talented developers.

~~~
wsc981
Upwork also had similar stories in the past. I doubt it's much different from
Freelancer.

~~~
wolco
Upwork has one advantage if you go hourly with the screenshot program those
hours always get paid. If you go per project then you are at the mercy of the
client.

------
ve55
Situations like that are, to me, one of the greatest appeals to using
cryptocurrencies and decentralized systems or websites. Unfortunately the
ecosystem isn't quite there in some areas, so I don't expect these sites to go
extinct just yet, but I'm hoping that they do some time in the future.

Freelance.com obviously isn't alone in the way it acts. Fiverr can easily be
just as worse, on top of the huge cuts they take from payments (as well as
applying their 20% cut to things such as 'tips' you give to workers), it's
always clear who is in the position of power and authority on these platforms,
and the answer is never the end-user. Go against them and you risk your money,
your reputation, and your career. Paypal and other payment systems can be just
as bad as well - you've likely read many horror stories about people losing
access to 'their' money for months on end.

At some point it's just too much for users to deal with. When proper
alternatives are available, hopefully users will move to them as a result of
this.

------
sideproject
I have heard a lot of bad things about freelancer.com from the users'
perspectives like the one in the post - but also on both sides - those who do
the work and those who post work.

I think Freelancer as a company though has somewhat of a positive feel here in
Australia (correct my if I'm wrong fellow Aussies).

It's probably seen as one of the better tech products from Australia and its
CEO Matt Barrie is at times outspoken about the aussie startup scene, lack of
innovation in Australia etc [1][2].

[1] [http://www.afr.com/technology/matt-barrie-says-doomed-
austra...](http://www.afr.com/technology/matt-barrie-says-doomed-australia-
needs-an-apollo-program-20170919-gyknq6)

[2] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-last-person-sydney-
plea...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-last-person-sydney-please-turn-
lights-out-matt-barrie)

------
bartedinburgh
That's what happens when you entirely rely on one platform as your source of
income, be it Freelancer, YouTube, Amazon, or anything else. You become de
facto employed by the platform and can be let go in a similar way you can be
fired from a regular job.

If OP had a normal salaried job and was let go for whatever reason, would it
matter if he used to be a good employee before, or had a car accident, or was
short on cash? No, I wouldn't matter; his employer would not keep paying him
on the basis of "being fair" or "helping in a difficult life situation".

While I understand OP's frustration, his story is really nothing out of
ordinary. I know many people who were, fairly or not, let go and subsequently
got into financial trouble. Life's tough.

~~~
wolco
Full time jobs can't hold wages until other work is completed.

------
jhgjklj
Single source of income is by definition at the mercy of the source. If one
thinks that one could have had a disciplien to save, think again that savings
has limitations. You can not save much as an employer and if you get screwed
in your mid 30's, you don't have much savings to live off and also can not
start over either. The only option is look for multiple incomes and if you are
not capable, do not marry or take any personal commitments that affect other
people. I know it sounds harsh but that's also make logical sense. Since you
now have time, either save more or fight to change the situation so that the
next generation of humans does not have to suffer this. Depressing but logical
thought.

------
samrohn778
There is a lot of details missing in the write up like what exactly lead to
the ordeal with freelancer.com customer service agent and subsequent account
limitation. The usual process is quite seamless - you bid, get the contract,
you get paid few days after you deliver the job . I also had a bad experience
with the cs executive of a similar freelance site before. Most of them are
quite insensitive and do exactly what they are said to do without even trying
to understand the context of the issue. I believe this is such a case. It
would have made much sense if the author could have explained the issue in
detail so that readers can decide for themselves who is wrong here.

------
cloudfive
Inspired by this post, here is my Freelancer.com horror story:
[https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/59fe2e9231302a07249de1a7](https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/59fe2e9231302a07249de1a7)

------
codewardenh
These types of platforms have one single function - to drive down the cost and
quality of delivered software. I may end up inadvertently using a piece of
software as a client of a company that cheaped out and purchased a deliverable
from platforms like this and it will end up being a crap experience. If we had
something like an engineering oath and certification that developers had to
complete before they could work on any projects, we could make avoiding all
these freelancer platforms part of that certification process. Would
eventually kill these platforms off, and good riddance.

------
gardenpuppet
1\. way too many details not revealed in this story, so difficult to make any
kind of assessment of the review.

2\. my freelancer experience dates back to the days of getafreelancer and I
have way more reviews that the reviewer, so I think I can comment with my take
on freelancer.

3\. I have never had a issue with freelancer in regards to payment, either as
a freelancer or as job poster. This is the one and only thing that they do
well.(That said everything else is pretty poor)

4\. I've had a couple of disputes there, mainly due to the ignorance of job
poster on how payment is finally made, and this has always been settled in my
favor.

Enough of the nice stuff.

Freelancer is a subscription site disguised as a job portal. IMO they don't
give a shit about either the freelancers or the project owners, all they want
to do is collect the subscriptions, which I think is not a bad business model.
They have to go through the motions of giving a damn, but everything besides
collection and disbursement is done on a shoestring and it shows.

Freelancer is the anti-pattern of how to do things online. They have earned a
place as one of the classic a case studies on how not to do things on the web.

Their web site sucks in just about every respect, speed, not so much. Test
environment = live site. so when they roll out changes, guess how that goes.
Might have changed recently, I hope so, after all they have this wonderful
pool of resources to draw on.

Their search engine is precious, search on "automate", fine, now search on
"automated", and now on "automatic", and so on...

I estimate that less than 10% of job postings actually end up as actual
projects. Now and then I tinker with the idea of monitoring their projects and
collecting actual statistics, but then I realize that I have better things to
do.

Job bids - fields are limited in to 200 character length, and then they have
the cheek to send you an email saying basically, "hey, your bid sucks, you
need to fix it"

You have no way to vet either bidders or job posters, used to be possible, but
they took that feature away.

I'm receiving fake job offers which look like deliberate traps for ignorant
subscribers. Can't prove that, but all the accounts are a day or so old for
stupid amounts $10, or so. If you're desperate for any lead and click on
Accept, hey look, Freelancer just deducted their $5 commission. This has been
going on for a couple of months now.

I can go on, but that's enough. The fact is that the site is up and running
and generating income. There must be thousands of subscribers hoping to find a
career via the platform and freelancer is milking them.

TL/DR - Stay away, the site can be useful, but probably not for you unless you
are v careful.

------
Dangeranger
What this story and the comments here tell me is that the market for a
developer focused contract<\-->bid site is ripe for competition.

There are only a few well known branded marketplaces in the industry, and they
all seem to be quite poor in the eyes of skilled developers.

Maybe there is a continuous decline towards the bottom after a marketplace
becomes a certain size, but I wish that there were more options to find
contracts as a developer without onerous contracts which strip skilled people
of their rights.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
I’m a designer and clients always ask me if I can recommend a developer. I
can’t seem to network with any good developers who I can honestly recommend to
my clients. I even started a freelance slack group in hopes of broadening my
network but that hasn’t really done much.

~~~
AlbertoGP
Hi, I've tried to find some way of contacting you, looked though your post
history but nothing came out.

I'm interested in joining your freelancer group, and see whether I could be
useful to some of your customers. As others have mentioned, remote work from
sites like Elance/Upwork and PeoplePerHour (I'm currently in both) has
dwindled in the last years, and by now most of my work comes from repeat
customers instead of new leads from there.

I guess your customers ask for web development: the last finished job that I
can show you is a balloon sculpture design tool for a business in Australia:
[http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/design_tool.html#grid](http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/design_tool.html#grid)

The full source code can be seen right there:
[http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/index.js](http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/index.js)

You can find a couple other examples in my portfolio: [https://sentido-
labs.com/en/portfolio/](https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/)

------
anandsuresh
I was a top provider on vWorker (back when it was still called RentACoder)
from 2001-2010... consistently in the top 100 for pretty much the whole
decade. Never had any trouble getting projects or getting paid. Stopped
working on vWorker in 2010 when I decided to head back to school for my
masters. So its been a while since I was on there.

It was a great place to start off my career, but sustaining it as a business
was always a challenge. Sad to know that it has deteriorated to this point
now.

------
ilaksh
Sites like Freelancer are another type of centralized platform that will
probably eventually be replaced by decentralized peer-to-peer systems. This
should result in more fairness and better pay since there won't be a
middleman.

One way that could work would be to require payments at short intervals, allow
people to optionally opt-in to an arbiter who is also rated or reviewed, and
also to not have a facility for freezing funds, and using direct
cryptocurrency payments.

------
handzhiev
I remember having an account with them. It had something like $900 sitting
there just in case I wanted to hire someone to do something. I had not visited
the site for an year or so and then once logged in to see what's going on.

Discovered that my account balance went down to $750 or so. They quietly
introduced an Idle account fee of $10 per month with no email notice or
anything.

If I did not log in they would completely wipe out my money.

I withdrew it all and never looked back since.

------
Walkman
Freelancer.com seems like a bunch of assholes, but the guy made a big mistake
also by only working for only one such site basically going all in and
standing on one leg. The same applies here as many other investments in life;
you don't put your money/work/whatever in only one place/thing. In this case,
multiple platform, own network should have been build instead of relying one
shady company.

------
Mz
My 30 second political action for the day:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-
textbrok...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-textbroker-
model.html)

If you want a startup idea, there you go.

------
chrischen
Slightly off-topic but is Trustpilot trustworthy? As a company they've
approached me before but from what I understand Freelancer.com pays trustpilot
to maintain reviews, and from the looks of it they have a decent 4 star review
there...

------
amelius
I wonder why nobody has filled the gap of a job-agency for smart people (10x
developers if you will) that are looking for short-term jobs (e.g. when in
between jobs/projects or when their current startup is not ramen-profitable
yet).

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Because 10x developers are probably in very high demand and are hardly out of
work. I know one such person and he makes a pretty penny on contract work with
nonstop offers he has to decline 99.9% of the time because he simply can’t
handle more work.

~~~
amelius
But there must be 10x developers out there starting a business and who are not
yet ramen-profitable?

------
mudil
I complained about Freelancer.com probably 5 years ago. The site is evil.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177951)

------
notoriousjpg
The CEO is an active member on a FB group called Sydney Startups. I suggest OP
try to contact him publicly through that. I'd be curious to see what he says.

------
kingjacob
Might be relevant as an decentralized alternative
[https://ethlance.com/](https://ethlance.com/)

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Eth lance is garbage, tell me, what recourse do you have when someone decides
to simply not pay for completed work?

------
cwcr7
You should release the name of that garbage agent at least. Such pathetic
people lower the dignity of human beings.

------
BjoernKW
Some people, freelancers as well as clients and those middlemen that are
unfortunately very common in this market, seem to fundamentally misunderstand
what a freelancer or contractor is.

Freelancing is not some alternative form of employment that allows you to
conveniently dispense with social security costs.

A freelancer is a self-employed service provider. Like with any other kind of
self-employment you’re responsible for your marketing, sales and for
reasonably insuring yourself against calamities that might happen in life.

If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only
have yourself to blame. The same applies if you act irresponsibly in terms of
finance, e.g. by spending all your income before costs and taxes are taken
care of (if you have a problem with that Profit First is a great framework to
help you).

That said it’s well-known that the software industry is overly dependent on
mostly useless middlemen like Freelancer.com . So, perhaps it’s quite
understandable if you turn to them when you start out.

You should always be aware however that they’re neither your insurance nor
your employer. They don’t protect you. They just take a cut from your hard-
earned money. They want you to commoditise yourself by solely defining
yourself in terms of a bunch of TLAs because those ‘profiles’ are easier to
sell.

The sooner you extricate yourself from that dependency the better. Putting all
your eggs in one basket like the review suggests the author did is recklessly
negligent.

~~~
opmac
Classic victim blaming. What you say is mostly true, but it completely glosses
over the potential issues raised by this post. So what if the author made a
mistake about using Freelancer.com? That doesn't change the fact that what
Freelancer is _supposedly_ doing here is incredibly shady and they should be
held accountable. The only real issue I have with the author's post is there
are a lot of details missing. What did you do to step on the toes? Where are
these chat logs? I can't assume that Freelancer is 100% in the wrong here
without proper evidence and at least hearing their point of view. That being
said, the author is using this as review a platform to raise attention to a
potentially serious issue, and there should be no reason to immediately blame
him with "sorry, it's your fault for using Freelancer to begin with... good
luck."

~~~
wpietri
Does anybody have a theory as to why victim-blaming is such a popular response
on HN? I don't see it nearly as much elsewhere.

~~~
Casseres
I think that smarter people are more likely to victim-blame because it's
harder to imagine themselves falling victim to whatever situation.

For most problems, they seem like they could have been easily prevented by
either being more knowledgeable about the situation or thinking things through
beforehand.

After reading a lot of the discussions here, and considering that most of us
are here for the pursuit of knowledge, my guess is that the community here
represents more of the right side of the bell curve.

~~~
watwut
I don't think inability to imagine bad luck or own mistake is proof of
intelligence. It is proof of ego or arrogance or an attempt to mask I
security.

Smart people made mistakes in the past, smart people can imagine situations
where they become victims (whether by own fault or not). Some smart people do
have inability to imagine themselves in other people's shoose - but dumb
people are often similarly disabled

~~~
wool_gather
You're right, it's a one-sided kind of intelligence. Maybe what Casseres said
would be better phrased "people who are proud of being smart".

The fact that it's one-sided smarts, the fact that one is probably not as
smart as one thinks, and the ability to imagine another person's shoes, are
all life lessons that may click into place at different times for different
people.

~~~
wpietri
This definitely seems like a major factor to me. If I'm proud of being smart,
I'll be inclined to perform smartness. And one easy way to perform smartness
is by making somebody else look dumb.

------
mhasbini
Is there anyway to donate to the reviewer?

------
retrogradeorbit
Matt Barrie's collar and unbuttoned shirt should tell you everything you need
to know about freelancer.com

------
santoshalper
Can someone with experience explain how freelancer.com works and how the
account holds work?

~~~
BoorishBears
It works in a way that’s built to maximize profits for Freelancer.com, and
that’s about it.

You pay up front to cover fees on a project, and hold money for a period
before you can transfer it out. So you can end up paying them a percentage of
your pay without getting paid yourself if the transfer doesn’t happen.

I recall doing a small job and had a dispute opened after it was over. It was
a relatively small sum of money so i didn’t even respond to the dispute
(figured the person was running a scam and just told myself not to use the
site again).

Almost 2 months later I get a message telling me the dispute fell in my
favor... but then the transfer to my bank account blocked for weeks.
Eventually I was told the account holder had been “hacked” sometime during the
2 months (I guess that’s one way to get out of paying for stuff), so the money
probably sits in my account to this day. The only way to transfer it is to get
the original account holder to reconfirm, but obviously they’re long gone.

The way I see it is you have to remember that Freelancer.com is out to make
themselves money. At the start of a job charge for a small deliverable that
covers the fees of the job so that you’re not losing time _and_ money if a job
falls through.

And although it’s against the rules, strive to get contracts out of
Frelancer’s site.

Freelancer in theory has protections for you that you’re losing, but in
reality those protections are almost always defaulted to not pay out a job to
you.

And definitely don’t make a living out of the site. It’s like making a living
on eBay, you don’t want to make a living on a site where a robot can end your
access with little human recourse.

------
DyslexicAtheist
plenty of people complaining
[https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%40freelancer%20scam&s...](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%40freelancer%20scam&src=typd)

------
jMrL
Is have to agree, I have had nothing but a spoiled exp with them

------
imron
> You're here because we don't support your browser

Mobile safari.

------
mrburton
Anyone interested in a free version of the platform?

~~~
rhizome
Do you have one?

------
jondubois
I worked for Freelancer.com briefly as a software engineer at their HQ in
Sydney for about 1 month (that was in the year before their IPO) - I was fresh
out of university. The culture within the company was toxic.

They treat developers like crap - Both those who use the platform and those
who work at HQ. They fired me after 1 month during my probation because I was
too slow to implement a feature because I was spending extra time writing
tests. I remember the tech director telling me "That's not the kind of
engineering we do here" after I tried to justify why tests were important.
Several of these horrible people went on to work for Facebook later.

The CEO of Freelancer.com is a complete jerk. A few years after I had gone, I
spoke with engineers who used to work there and there was gossip going round
that the CEO had sex with a female employee and she got pregnant. He also
hired his friends in top positions; some of which were utterly incompetent.
Some of the CEO's favourite employees got drunk during work hours in front of
the overworked engineers.

Employee retention was very low.

~~~
justboxing
> because I was too slow to implement a feature because I was spending extra
> time writing tests.

This. Just yesterday, I was asked by an interviewer at a Startup. "How do you
test your code? Do you write tests? What's your familiarity with TDD."

My answer: "I prefer to do a test driven approach. However, none of the
companies I worked for allocated time for writing tests in the sprint, so I
have not been able to actually do this in practice. I usually debug my code
and run it through all the happy path and edge cases."

Was bitten once very early in my career just like OP, and decided to only
write tests _after_ initial coding, if there was time left. Most (not all)
Companies expect you to do TDD, but never allocate time for it in the
estimation. So I've made it a point to ask the PM if there was time allowed
for writing tests in the estimate, and if they say something like "Oh no we
don't have time for that" I don't do it.

~~~
wirrbel
I couldn't imagine to work without writing tests and I firmly believe it
actually makes me quicker than manual coding. Sure, if you aim for 100% code
coverage it takes time, but instead of trying out my code a few times, I just
write those try-outs as tests and am happy ever after.

I don't really mention tests to my management. To me, they are just part of
coding. My coworkers don't mind, they are happy when maintaining or changing
my code that they have tests for support.

~~~
Denzel
This, exactly this. I've felt the same increase in development velocity; and
an equal increase in confidence. I'm able to deliver systems and walk away
with 99% confidence that no one is going to come back to me with a problem.
And if they do, it's easy enough to write a regression test to prove the
problem and then fix it.

I've adopted your same approach. I don't mention testing, but I'll be damned
if I'll ever write a piece of code without it.

The light-bulb moment for me was when I realized that testing happens one way
or another. Either you're in the console manually setting up and running
everything... or you could just write a program (a test) to do the same thing
for you. Once I realized that, I never looked back!

------
featherverse
All of those "freelancer" websites are scams.

Freelancing is about not working for other men. It's about being your own
boss. Those websites are not really freelancing, they're temp agencies hiring
out short term contract work. That is not freelancing. Those websites all
share specific qualities: The salaries are too low, the service quality is
poor, and you'll be outbid by unskilled indian labor 90% of the time.

Put your portfolio online and find your customers through other methods. If
you have to pay someone else even $1 to find customers you are being ripped
off.

~~~
sunilkumarc
"unskilled indian labour" huh? There are tens of Indian entrepreneurs who have
set up Billion dollar companies in US. Don't forget that Microsoft and Google
CEOs are Indian too!!

~~~
robjan
Skilled Indian labour is also outbid by the unskilled Indian labour.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
s/Indian//g

The only reason why its Indian right now is because British occupation taught
them English. It also doesn't hurt that they have the second most populous
country in the world.

And I know its anecdote, but I've met a number of fakers here in the US.
Nothing special or "Indian-like" that makes lying about your abilities.

Then again around 08 I considered padding and lying about my resume. Nothing I
couldnt do, but it does look more acceptable to put down a bankrupt business
as a source. Hard to.. Check.

~~~
Dylan16807
Who said anything about lying?

It's Indian because they speak English, they're rapidly getting more online,
and they have low cost of living.

Skilled Indian tech workers can outbid skilled and unskilled Western workers,
but unskilled Indian workers are abundant enough to outbid everyone else.

------
gressquel
let me piggyback on this thread. this is my freelancer.com experience as a
hirer [https://medium.com/@ss88/freelancer-com-my-horrible-
experien...](https://medium.com/@ss88/freelancer-com-my-horrible-
experience-991ad0f18597)

~~~
literallycancer
Your article doesn't mention how much you paid them. If you are paying someone
5$ per hour, you can't expect much.

edit: you mention the prices in the comments, so here they are for anyone
curious:

 _Node.js port 155 USD, Android port 789 USD, Website theme 300 USD. It is not
slave wages considering the living costs in the respective countries._ (sic!)

>Node.js port 155 USD

This is good for what, 1 hour of work?

Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

~~~
gressquel
Well, the hour rate in europe is much higher than in Asia because the living
costs are much lower.

So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000
CNY

~~~
literallycancer
Why should the number be based on living costs? For assembly line workers with
no skill requirement, yes. For engineers? Definitely not.

>So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000
CNY

Let's see: Bangalore is (only) 5 times cheaper than SF.[1] So it's hardly 3
days of work. Shanghai is 2.2 times cheaper.[2]

1 - [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&country2=India&city2=Bangalore)

2 - [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=China&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Shanghai)

~~~
GordonS
> Why should the number be based on living costs?

Because that's basically the whole point of globalisation.

Both parties benefit, I don't see what the problem is.

~~~
klibertp
> Both parties benefit, I don't see what the problem is.

The problem, as always in this kind of situation, is how unequally the
benefits are distributed.

If the investor pays 4-5 times (and that's a low end) less for something,
while the worker gets 10% more compared to doing the same locally then it's
unfair, even if both sides "benefit".

It's also natural for investors to seek the lowest prices they can get. That's
why there are laws like minimum wage and other protections of the workers. The
globalization is not just a way of getting things for cheap, it also a
workaround for laws which prohibit investors from paying _too_ little.

It's unfair, in my opinion, even if the worker does benefit. It gets much
worse when the workers don't benefit at all. For example, in EU, we currently
have a heated debate about delegated workers - people employed in one country
and working (and living) in another. Companies do this to dodge the laws -
minimum wage, social benefits, and so on - of their own country, while the
workers suffer the higher costs of living in the richer country. It also makes
the richer country native workers screwed. It's probably going to become
illegal in the next couple of years.

People working remotely are in a different situation, in that they indeed live
in a cheaper place. They still get paid much less than the minimum wage of the
richer country where the investor comes from, which I think is also unfair.
Also, the "cheaper place" is often not really - the prices in these countries
are getting ever closer to the richer countries, while the wages lag behind
the prices significantly.

In other words, there should be - and is, in many places - a limit on how
badly workers can be exploited. The globalization is a loophole which
circumvents these laws. I hope it will get closed in the future.

EDIT: note that it's definitely not the _only_ way globalization affects
people and many effects of globalization are positive. Just not this one, in
my opinion.

~~~
a_imho
Regarding EU, there is a "Equal pay for equal work!" campaign.
[https://www.wageunion.eu/](https://www.wageunion.eu/)

------
tytytytytytytyt
Are they related to ODesk?

------
Kenji
Should've have accident insurance. Should have diversified his business and
not relied on a garbage website. _Especially_ after the first 2 months
limitation. All these problems were completely avoidable. He might be a good
engineer but he is not a good manager. Sorry, no pity from me.

------
tremulantdesign
In other news, water is wet.

------
gexla
This review should get pulled. If the reviewer posted this under his real
name, then he should remove it. This review will kill his reputation, which
will cause more problems than anything mentioned in the review. If it's not a
real name, then I imagine it's a violation. This is the only review under this
user.

The review has a TLDR at the top, but my own TLDR for this review would be "I
was desperate".

It's easy for me to armchair quarterback these situations, but this is the
sort of reason why my parents along with most of middle-class America received
medical insurance from their employers and paid into Social Security. Things
happen. Most people won't set themselves up for dealing with those things. The
government and employers then step in and set up a system in which hopefully
will save people from not thinking ahead.

Today, more people than ever are freelancing, these safety nets are going
away, people run on the edge and any bad turn is going to put them on the
street. In developing nations, these safety nets may have never existed.

If employers were to Google this person, then this entire review comes up as a
red flag. This is a person who is susceptible to disasters, being forced into
the street and can't manage the basics of living in the modern world. When
things go downhill, rational thinking goes along for the ride.

There are many reasons to avoid Freelancer and similar services. That subject
has been well covered here. In this case, it's better to build networks of
people who will help you out, knowing that you would do the same. Services
which deal with money have to follow certain processes. If this were a smart
contract, then the contract would be even less forgiving. If you want to deal
with people who are going to be human and open to hearing your story and
weighing your reputation, then build your community that you can reach out to.
Don't put 5 years into being a drone profile on a service.

~~~
JepZ
Safety nets are good, but that review is about the abuse of power by a
freelancer.com employee.

~~~
rufus_2
The reviewer is building a monument to their conflict with a previous
employer.

Every future interview they have will be in the shadow of this monument.

What do they gain? The company they've focused their ire upon isn't going to
fold because of these paragraphs. The person working there now has an
opportunity to revel in their handiwork - they riled this guy up all the way
to the top of Hacker News!

Best to relegate your emotional outbursts to your art instead of putting them
into your business or relationships if you can't keep perspective of how
they'll effect your future. I wish someone gave me this advice.

~~~
gexla
Thank you. Don't blow up in public. Go ahead and post a negative review, but
keep it rational. That you ended up homeless is too much information.

Post details about the experience, not just your interpretation of the
emotional state of customer service.

------
jacquesm
No, you ruined your life. You joined a group of people that are not really
freelancers but are effectively employees only without the associated perks
and securities. Just like Uber drivers are not freelancers.

------
nik736
I don't understand why he would blame Freelancer and not himself. How do you
even sleep at night if you rely completely on one platform? It's also widely
known that all those sites suck and the same story happens over and over
again.

~~~
mantas
All of those platforms are designed to make developers platform-exclusive. The
rating on a platform is extremely important to get new projects. You're shown
higher, as more "relevant" offer and so on. At the same time, it's hard to
have enough of good and recent feedback on multiple sites.

The market is so saturated that staying relevant (in platform's and clients'
eyes) is getting hard. Even if you work on a single platform. One big project
(e.g. building a nice app and then updates for it) and you're fucked. One
review a year won't get you far. Especially if subsequent updates are handled
off the platform.

I worked with repeated clients as well as on my own products for a few years.
Working my way back up on those platforms is miserable to say the least.

~~~
quickben
So the harder, and more long term rewarding option, is to stay away from
platforms.

~~~
mantas
The things is many of the clients are not really reachable without such
platform. How would one advertise to a random mom&pop non-IT company on the
other side of the globe? Personal site w/ portfolio would barely cut - they
wouldn't even know what to google for. Arranging payment would be a huge
hassle too. Working only locally is not a solution either.

~~~
quickben
I guess if one approaches this as an employee or entrepreneur.

My reply is as an employee. I'd prefer to not chase JavaScript frameworks.

I guess on the other side of the coin, one sort of has to these days if the
entrepreneurial route is taken?

~~~
mantas
Did you reply to a wrong thread? I must be missing a link between the
marketplaces and Javascript frameworks :(

