
Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup - odysseas
https://medium.com/@odysseas/5-things-being-an-upwork-founder-taught-me-about-all-remote-862a2409cbfe
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benatkin
As a remote worker having my every activity recorded is not my idea of remote
work. UpWork by default requires running their app and taking times
screenshots. I'd rather not use anything that's remotely related to UpWork
TBH...

~~~
beilabs
Just hired a remote developer via Upwork. Looks to me that he's installed a
script to open random files in our repo and move the mouse around. There are
ways around it. Based on his output over the last 7 days he won't retain this
contract....terrible stuff.

~~~
odysseas
There is not much difference between hiring a local developer vs hiring a
remote. Would you ever say: Just hired a local developer. He has been sitting
on his desk playing games and reading HN? Terrible stuff?

If that were to happen the problem would not be the "local" developer scene.
It would have been most probably your hiring practice or your bad references.

My point here is that there is no free meal when you try to hire a remote
person via Upwork. The only difference is that you leverage the global talent
pool and most probably you can find someone in weeks as opposed to months (or
never).

~~~
txcwpalpha
> Would you ever say: Just hired a local developer. He has been sitting on his
> desk playing games and reading HN? Terrible stuff?

Yes, I can definitely see that happening. And the main upside of an onsite
developer in that situation is that a 'local'/onsite developer is much easier
to identify when they are just sitting at their desk and much easier to
encourage them to do otherwise. As much as people hate the "manager looking
over my shoulder" feeling, it is very important in most workforces because the
vast majority of remote workers (in my experience) will absolutely take
advantage of the "remoteness" and use it to slack off. Sure, if you're a small
or top tier company you might be able to solve this by making your hiring
practices more strict, but the reality for most managers is that you _must_
hire some of these less-than-ideal candidates and mentor/watch them, and being
remote makes that harder.

I'm generally for the remote work model and this type of issue can mostly be
solved by changing the way you interact with your team and do checkups, but
regardless I find it strange that someone like yourself who is presumably very
experienced in the remote work space would imply that there is no difference
between a local slacker and a remote slacker.

~~~
benatkin
I'd also say if you hired a remote developer without using a marketplace, but
by thoughtfully searching for a remote developer using
networking/references/etc, and that still happened you would have some
feedback on the broken chain in the network if this happened, and could adjust
what you're doing. Hopefully you'd eventually get good at it. With UpWork you
aren't meaningfully learning how to recruit and manage remote developers.

~~~
odysseas
I am sorry, I must be missing something. The Upwork marketplace is no
different than any other source of people that may be looking for remote jobs.

When we hire engineers, we post in Upwork and several other forums and we go
through the identical process vetting candidates, via multiple interviews,
screenings, reference checking etc etc.

When we post in other places we have to explain that this is for a "remote"
job - and many job posting sites make this very awkward - so in that sense
Upwork posting is easier - since all the candidates understand/are remote
ready .

However, I don't use the Upwork reference history much (sorry Hayden :-) ) -
because there are too few companies that hire their long term staff remote -
but thats not an Upwork problem - its "the world is broken" problem.

So this means that reference checking is hard. Shortcuts that we use, is that
we trust the hiring practices of certain global companies.

Yandex for example in Russia has very strong hiring practices - this means
that an engineer from Yandex is a strong qualifier . Similarly for certain
companies from other countries.

I plan to put some of these practices I have learned in a follow up post -
because I see how people like you end up getting burned.

~~~
benatkin
> The Upwork marketplace is no different than any other source of people that
> may be looking for remote jobs.

The trouble is that people will typically do their reference checking on
UpWork, which incentivizes people to leave positive reviews on it, just like
Uber and AirBnb do. It does tend to require real names and you can often find
information about people elsewhere, but a lot of people don't. So if you try
to do a more thorough check, the candidate may not be expecting it.

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treelovinhippie
Why would a guy with enough personal funds to tackle any project decide to
focus on home improvement? How boring and inconsequential to the future of
humanity.

~~~
odysseas
:-) I would love to be on a debate meeting-room to argue with you on this for
hours :-)

I was attracted to it because skilled manual labor was practically abandoned
by techies. 15 years after I started oDesk there are plenty of startups that
are tackling the problem of building global/remote teams around engineers.
Nobody is helping the crew that comes to my home to fix my fence or driveway
or floor.

I saw a space that is as big as 10% of the workforce of most countries, the
skilled, often licensed technicians that work in the home improvement,
construction industry - that huge slice of the workforce still remaining
abandoned by the techies - by the disruptors. By people that tout wanting to
"shape the future of humanity".

You may find it surprising that the answer here is both around remote work and
pretty advanced technology that enables a remote architect/civil
engineer/drafter to draft/design/spec and a "local" customer to visualize the
end result ahead of time and a local crew to follow the instructions/spec and
build.

~~~
ianwalter
Please don't spend hours arguing with people that don't get it haha. Home
improvement has been such a pain in the butt for me and I just can't see it
not being a problem for millions of people. Best of luck!

~~~
odysseas
Thank you.

But to tell you the truth when I told to the Upwork team in my farewell get
together what I was intending to do (I described it "home services" then ) I
saw lots of raised eyebrows.

Even more when I went back home to my family in Greece, and had to explain how
"building fences" for people is my best idea for how to change the world...
they just thought I was making a joke :-)

So I understand completely @treelovinhippie's reaction.

