
Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork - data4lyfe
https://www.racketracer.com/2019/07/11/why-data-scientists-should-never-use-upwork/
======
pdkl95
> the dataset contained ... demographic attributes like _race_ ... to predict
> actual work performance

Regardless of the original intent, that's a request to launder a protected
class into an opaque "work performance" metric. Also, while they are not on
the unfortunately short list of protected classes, using demographics like age
is probably going to create similar discrimination problems.

If you want to know about job performance, use data that is at least
theoretically related to someone's performance. While machine learning is
going to find some sort opf signal in whatever pile of data you feed it, that
doesn't mean it actually predicts something complicated like job performance.
When you feed it a bunch of general demographics, it's going to find one of
the signals that we know are present throughout existing demographic: the
institutional discrimination and similar problems of the past.

~~~
opwieurposiu
If you think it is not possible for race be related to job performance you
must not have watched much NBA basketball.

~~~
3131s
The best athletes are extremely intelligent and driven people. The over-
representation of black people in athletics is most definitely related to
their under-representation in other fields.

~~~
cambalache
Nah, intelligence is orthogonal to sports skill, that is, it is not
correlated. Plenty of dumb and smart sportsmen. Now, mental fortitude, self-
belief, ability to perform under pressure, now those things I believe. But
none of them are strongly correlated with intelligence.

------
caiocaiocaio
I freelanced on Upwork for a bit. It was all the worst aspects of having an
abusive boss (the platform itself), and all of the worst aspects of
freelancing (unpredictability, getting ripped off by shifty clients).

"Creepiest shit ever" is a pretty accurate description of Upwork. If Upwork's
attitudes and policies were described to me in the 90s, I would have said it
was lame, unrealistic science fiction with an over-the-top villain.

If anyone wants to do freelance work, I'd recommend marketing yourself
directly to local businesses, print some business cards, schmooze. It's about
as much work and stress as using Upwork, and you don't have a misanthropic
middleman taking their cut.

~~~
jammygit
Any tips for freelancers who are recent engineering grads? I have some
portfolio items, but I still can’t claim more than 1 year experience

~~~
vkou
Spend a year working for a consulting company, to learn the ropes. If I were a
business looking to have a freelancer build something for me, 'a fresh grad,
with less than a year work experience, who has never done this sort of thing
before' is not who I'd hire.

I have 9 years experience, and if I were to to go into freelancing (The kind
where you solve problems for businesses, as opposed to the kind where you're a
9-5 1099 contractor), the first thing I would do is to take a job at a
consulting firm, and spend my time there _learning_. Figure out what works,
and what really, really doesn't.

That job is probably going to suck, but you'll have a much better idea of what
to do, what your customers really hate about working with big firms, and your
resume will look much better, when you can put down "I did the thing I want
you to hire me for, in a consulting firm, for 18 months, I know how this
works, and I can do it better."

~~~
JamesBarney
> I have 9 years experience, and if I were to to go into freelancing (The kind
> where you solve problems for businesses, as opposed to the kind where you're
> a 9-5 1099 contractor), the first thing I would do is to take a job at a
> consulting firm, and spend my time there learning. Figure out what works,
> and what really, really doesn't.

I have to disagree.

I've worked for several tech consulting firms(8 years of experience) and then
started my own consulting company 2 years ago. And in my running a successful
consulting firm involves 3 key skills(in order of importance).

Sales - This is definitely the hardest and most important skill. And
unfortunately is also the skill developers usually have the least experience
in. This involves finding leads and closing deals. This will take a long time
to do and is emotionally very rough for most developers.

Customer/Relationship Skills - If you're already a nice a polite person who
doesn't mind eating the occasional shit sandwich this mostly involves
repeatedly learning the lesson that however important you think communication
it's more important you think.

Execution - This is mostly involves a combination of being able to correctly
identify requirements and technical execution skills. Most developers usually
have plenty of experience hear.

The experience most developers lack is sales. And most consulting shops won't
put you anywhere near a sales or account management role unless you have
previous sales experience or have spent significant time at the company. A
much faster route to learn these skills is to just start a company and start
doing them. (while reading a bunch of books and talking to anyone you can who
has relevant experience)

~~~
vkou
> Execution - This is mostly involves a combination of being able to correctly
> identify requirements and technical execution skills. Most developers
> usually have plenty of experience hear.

How do you think a fresh-out-of-college junior with less than a year of
experience going to be at execution?

Knowing nothing but that, I'm going to take a statistical guess, and say:
"Probably not great." I'm going to make another statistical guess, and say:
"They probably don't even know what they don't know."

Also, joining someplace that's not consultancy-focused (like Google or
Facebook) isn't necessarilly going to help with building relevant experience.

Yes, you're going to learn a lot about how to move protobufs around from one
distributed system to another, and how to do on-call, and how to work in the
cloud.

No, this is not the most useful set of skills to have, when the insurance
broker down the street wants to pay you $XYZW to build them a custom
SalesForce widget.

~~~
JamesBarney
Sorry I wasn't disagreeing that the fresh out should get some experience. Just
I don't think that working at a consultancy is going to be much more helpful
than working any other development job.

> Also, joining someplace that's not consultancy-focused (like Google or
> Facebook) isn't necessarilly going to help with building relevant
> experience.

It's soo much more important to have worked for one of these companies. If you
have Google on your resume it will work magic. Clients love that. It'll help
with leads, it will help with negotiation, and it will help close deals.

Honestly the two things I wish I'd done before I started my company was work
for amagoobooksoft and put in some time at a sales job.(cold calling or some
type of lead gen)

------
jp8585
Long term upwork Data Scientist here. It seems he had a bad experience, that
could have happened on any other place / platform. There are always horror
stories about how platforms deal with conflicts (think PayPal, Stripe,
Uber...)

Out of >30 contracts I had, only 1 resulted in a dispute, and it was decided
in my favor. I do agree the whole monitoring thing is absurd and I generally
don't take jobs from clients that demand hours to be logged through the
monitoring app. If you want to see how the jungle looks like, please have a go
at freelancer.com.

~~~
usaphp
> I generally don't take jobs from clients that demand hours to be logged
> through the monitoring app

Isn’t like 9/10 jobs there require you to use the monitoring?

~~~
jp8585
Not at all. Maybe for low paying jobs.

------
zzaacchh
My company uses Upwork (as a services buyers) for hundreds of contracted hours
per week, and have been for many years. We’ve never required any contractor to
use screen recording for hourly work — that is optional — and have never heard
of anyone using a webcam. We’ve also never disputed a single hour of work that
a contractor has billed, nor have we heard any of the dozens of contractors
we’ve hired mention this as an issue.

I think you might be extrapolating from a single bad data point (never a good
idea, especially for a data scientist) and reaching an incorrect conclusion
about the Upwork ecosystem.

~~~
Nextgrid
While I appreciate your perspective, I can imagine there’s a lot of people
hiring that have zero idea how developers & data scientists work and think
screen recording is a brilliant idea and thus insist on it.

I’ve seen a lot of really shit job postings on Upwork & similar freelancing
platforms that confirm the person posting the job has no idea of what they’re
doing.

~~~
zzaacchh
I imagine there could be employers who insist on this sort of thing screen
monitoring (which sounds crazy to me) -- but the good thing about this
marketplace is that contractors aren't forced into any particular contracts.
If they don't like the terms with one buyer, they could "vote with their
dollars" and work for another.

------
msadowski
I've been using UpWork for over a year now and never had a dispute so far.

The author is right in saying that UpWork only guarantees payment when time
tracking using their app. Where he is mistaken though is where he says that
the app requires camera to be on at all times. There is such an option but
personally I'd never go for a project like this. And yes, the app will take
the screenshot of the stuff you are working on.

I don't get why author's customer would launch a dispute over not completing a
10 minute survey. Given that it was an hourly project I bet there were issues
with communication and perhaps the author should have double checked with the
client before closing the job.

UpWork is far from being flawless but for me it has been working quite ok.

~~~
gloggy
Yeah, I've been working on Upwork for about 1.5 years now and it has been such
a vast improvement over other freelancing sites - both in terms of the size
and scope of the projects and in terms of the types of clients available. Not
one of my hourly clients has ever insisted that I use the monitoring app; yet
I do it anyway because then I don't underbill and the payments are guaranteed.

In my mind, the screenshot every 10 minutes is no more invasive than sitting
next to a colleague in an office and if you want to do something private,
simply pause the timer and do it on your own time. Upwork is a pretty great
site if you're a freelancer.

------
rahimiali
I'm surprised that the complaint is about getting paid, rather than pointing
out that Upwork facilitated an illegal and immoral system to be built. You
don't get to use "demographic information" like "race" or "age" or probably
many of the columns the post mentions to make hiring decisions. For the sake
of the jobs industry, the author should change their post to say this.

~~~
TrackerFF
I feel there's such a huge potential for serious sampling bias in data like
that, I wouldn't be comfortable to train classifiers on it.

Any company with dubious ethics could easily manipulate the data (collection)
to match their intentions.

~~~
daveFNbuck
Things like job performance usually have a subjective component, so the
training data will already have human bias built in without any intentional
manipulation.

------
blueboo
> The central computer notices just about everything. Keeps track of every key
> you hit on the keyboard, all day long, what time you hit it, down to the
> microsecond, whether it was the right key or the wrong key, how many
> mistakes you make and when you make them. You're only required to be at your
> workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-
> minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely
> be noticed, which is why Y.T.'s mom is sliding into the first unoccupied
> workstation and signing on to her machine at quarter to seven. Half a dozen
> other people are already here, signed on to workstations closer to the
> entrance, but this isn't bad. She can look forward to a reasonably stable
> career if she can keep up this sort of performance.

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

And now, from the convenience of your home...

------
burlesona
As a buyer I had a few good experiences finding contractors on Upwork. If “no
one should ever use it,” does anyone have a good suggestion for a better place
to find good freelance coders for small projects?

~~~
atiff
I have used Turtle for 2 projects and had an exceptional experience with both.

Very well vetted devs, excellent platform and framework for managing them, and
human customer service at (currently underpriced IMO) $55/hr.

The two apps I’ve used Turtle for:

\- React site for my business \- Ongoing Node integration work at about 10/hr
per week.

[https://www.turtle.ai](https://www.turtle.ai)

~~~
vlokshin
Thanks for mentioning Turtle! Really appreciate it.

(1) Great talent, (2) great customers, and (3) an easy to follow process
(platform) are critical for making freelancing work. UpWork typically misses
at least 2/3.

------
vlokshin
Upwork is ruining it for gig economy / freelancing / outsourcing. They create
a race to the bottom and prioritize the client over fairness. Fiverr isn't
much better.

It's hard for any "we focus on everything" platform to get the specific needs
of each vertical (customer + talent side) right. It's why TaskRabbit (focus on
everything) never reached the scale of Uber/Lyft (press a button, get a ride).

I'm not deep in the Data Science world, but hopefully there's a platform
focused on vetting customers + freelancers and providing a platform for
working together easily, fairly, transparently (without the creepiness).
Platforms should also decide what kind of work is fine to outsource. Long-
term/strategic work the company has to live with for many years (i.e. a core
prediction model or fundamental backend arch) shouldn't be outsourced. People
who will see the benefits of their work in 5+ years should be the ones working
on stuff that'll benefit the company in 5+ years.

I appreciate the mention of Turtle
([https://www.turtle.dev/](https://www.turtle.dev/)) in this thread already
(I'm one of the founders).

For freelancers, Turtle: \- Makes sure customers are vetted (just as
freelancers are). \- Pays for all hours billed (even if customers don't pay).
Freelancers are trusted to enter all hours manually. No creepy screenshots. \-
Provides an easy-to-use platform for task management, chat, video, payments.

We're specifically focused on React, React Native, iOS, and Android dev now.
Front-end/mobile is easier to compartmentalize. I'm not sure if that's
possible for many forms of data science.

Part-time work is an important part of our economy and will become more
important as the world further globalizes (ex: "Remote" now being a hot topic)
-- but the infrastructure is seriously lacking. UpWork is a sloppy solution
attempt.

I encourage freelancers, customers, and platforms to be honest about what
should and shouldn't be outsourced, to make sure there's quality on both sides
(great freelancers and shit customers fail), and to make sure there's an easy
process to follow (great freelancers, customers, with shit process still
fail).

~~~
ilaksh
I'm happy to see an alternative to Upwork.

I hope you will consider branching out beyond those particular technologies.
For example, I'm a Node dev who has done Angular and React before but would
probably rather use Vue on the front end (if it's appropriate) these days.
Also have a fair bit of Linux experience which might be an important skill (as
well as C++ and many other technologies from 20+ years). And I am thinking I
might focus more on AI by learning to use some of the high level APIs out
there. I assume there is demand for that type of thing.

I guess one of the main difficult things about branching out beyond React etc.
is, how can you necessarily do a weekly demo for something that really isn't
visual or interactive or may not have a short term deliverable? I think the
simplest answer is just some type of screen share or short video that shows
the raw progress, for example just a run-through of data cleanup scripts
highlighting some of the data issues being resolved.

~~~
vlokshin
Thank you.

We will absolutely branch out, but not sure on timing or specific skillsets.

Fixing what companies (Startups) and freelancers (React, React native, iOS,
Android) are on Turtle lets us focus on our platform.

We believe the infrastructure is the biggest missing element in making remote,
part-time work successful. Something as simple as how fast or reliably a chat
message gets delivered becomes important in asynchronous work. Chat, tasks,
meetings, payments, and vetting processes are the core elements of our
platform today and these feel critical to any vertical. The vetting processes
and meeting templates are the only unique pieces to each vertical.

Since most of our customers are technical, the non-visual demo is not a
concern. We are more concerned with distracting ourselves away form focusing
on the platform or outsourcing things that shouldn't be outsourced (ex:
strategic, long-term impact decisions should not be outsourced. Co-founders
should never be outsourced).

------
phaemon
Archive link: [http://archive.is/Is2Uk](http://archive.is/Is2Uk)

The title is "Why data scientists should never use Upwork"

------
datenhorst
Upwork rules require you to have their desktop app installed and let yourself
be filmed for the duration of the task? Holy s __ _

~~~
msadowski
UpWork doesn't do filming using your camera, only takes a picture every ~10
minutes. Also the picture taking is optional and can be disabled by client
(Throughout 1 year working on UpWork I never had a project which required of
me the camera bit). The screenshot taking is required for payment protection.

~~~
module0000
> UpWork doesn't do filming using your camera, only takes a picture every ~10
> minutes.

And how can I, the person being filmed, verify that?

~~~
fwip
Probably notice that your webcam light comes on only once every ten minutes,
or that your network traffic is consistent with one picture every ten minutes.

Isn't this site for nerds?

------
lucasgonze
You can't be precious on Upwork. And there's a strong GIGO factor.

What you have to do is churn a bunch of jobs/contractors until you get the one
that really pays off. Don't let the hassles get to you, just keep turning the
crank.

------
eddieone
A lot of people from India on there posting dumb jobs. Though, dumb jobs can
come from anywhere. It takes hours of sifting to find real offers. Most people
want you to solve climate change for $1k or build their amazing idea they
haven't thought through. It's a dumpster fire but there are real offers on
there. With data science, you have to stress that it is research. You can only
give probabilities, there's a chance it never works as you suspected or you
don't come to a conclusion.

------
jgillich
Archive link: [https://archive.is/Is2Uk](https://archive.is/Is2Uk)

------
cweagans
_Nobody_ should use Upwork. You won't get paid what you're worth, and it's the
worst of both worlds when you compare it with normal freelancing or working in
a regular job.

------
buboard
Site down, we 'll never know why ...

~~~
taurath
Maybe the site was built by Upwork? ;)

—-just a joke, I have nothing against them

~~~
Beltiras
After reading the article, you will.

------
danj
I’ve probably hired about $150,000 of contracts through up work and never once
have we required the monitoring app to be used. However, we have a bit of a
different approach, we will “pay” you through upwork for the first month, but
if we are satisfied with your work after a month we pay you directly through
PayPal or wire transfer and then we cancel the contract on upwork. Out of all
of the contractors we have hired (20-30) I can only think of one who wanted
complete payment through upwork.

I know how bad upwork is and when we hired we genuinely always set out to get
the contractors we worked with off using it so they can keep more money.

~~~
social_quotient
Might not want to post that here if you intend on keeping that account -
[https://www.upwork.com/legal#noncircumvention](https://www.upwork.com/legal#noncircumvention)

~~~
danj
We have such a solid team now and we have lots of other channels for hiring
people now but thank you!

~~~
social_quotient
Care to share a channel or exchange some knowledge? We buy about 50k hours a
year off of upwork, would love to learn how others are doing it. John @
curtisdigital . com

~~~
greendestiny_re
The e-mail address isn't working, neither is info@<website>. You might want to
take a look into that.

------
Herrin
> This was the first task I ever received and it flickered my curiosity. In
> the problem set, the dataset contained survey and demographic attributes
> like race, age, computer proficiency, immigration status….etc.. to predict
> actual work performance.

> I completed the survey which was asking me workplace situational questions
> testing my unconscious biases and then quickly rejected the dispute.

This sounds like the "consulting company" was someone running a scientific
experiment to see who is willing to create racist/ageist/otherwise unethical
models.

------
chii
what would be a way to start contracting if you have no existing network, no
existing clients to get references?

~~~
atlasunshrugged
I actually do think Upwork is a good way to start but you could

1) Build a network - go to product meetups (assuming you're a dev) 2) Contact
agencies near you and see if they have contract projects you can hop on 3) Use
other sites - Toptal, Freelancer, Remote, Gigster, etc.

------
Briel
With Upwork, since they're an intermediary and marketplace and hirers are the
ones who are paying and providing supply, it's in their interest to offer
services that cater to them like time logging and charging connection fees,
even if it's unfriendly for freelancers.

Your best best is to take matters in your own hands, and proactively email
people you know you can help with your services. This way, there's no
intermediary controlling your relationship with your client and you don't have
to play the waiting game either (waiting for referrals or networking to pay
off, waiting for people to find your website, etc.)

This may seem hard at first glance but let's the take the example of data
science work. You can reach out to startups who recently raised a sizable
investment round (sign they have the budget and bigger growth goals) and share
a few interesting ways you can help them uncover user behavior patterns that
would them hit their next milestones.

Further reading:

[1] [https://artofemails.com/get-new-clients](https://artofemails.com/get-new-
clients)

[2] [https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-guest-post-pitch-
exa...](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-guest-post-pitch-example)

------
vzaliva
this article has nothing to do with "data scientists". It is just a runt by
some guy who used Upwork for the first time, did not follow their (admittedly
stupid) rules and got into payment dispute.

------
wolco
Anyone using upwork knows you need to have the software running when you have
an hourly contract. Fix contracts are different and upworks judgements can be
awful but for hourly as long as you have the software running you will be
paid.

Data scientist doesn't read agreement.

------
data4lyfe
Here's the post on medium. [https://medium.com/@jayfeng/why-no-one-should-
never-use-upwo...](https://medium.com/@jayfeng/why-no-one-should-never-use-
upwork-a2da9c42769b)

------
Schnitz
The gig economy sucks.... surprise!

------
agentofoblivion
What does this have to do with Data Scientists? So you didn’t read up on how
to log time, made unnecessary mistakes, and an inflexible collective of likely
underpaid service reps didn’t care enough to go beyond the letter of the law.
That’s hardly a scam. That’s you not knowing what you’re signing up for and
then being upset when you didn’t get the outcome you wanted. Hardly deserves
front page news.

------
jammygit
> Their rules state that you must have the Upwork Desktop App on you computer
> which installs some sort of video malware onto your laptop AND have your
> webcam visible and on at all times so that the customer success agent can
> audit that you looked like you were working through the webcam while staring
> at a screen. How is that not the creepiest shit ever?

Gross

------
rhema
>Their rules state that you must have the Upwork Desktop App on you computer
which installs some sort of video malware onto your laptop AND have your
webcam visible and on at all times so that the customer success agent can
audit that you looked like you were working through the webcam while staring
at a screen. How is that not the creepiest shit ever?

Compare this to the Upwork App's description
[https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-
us/articles/211064098-Log-T...](https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-
us/articles/211064098-Log-Time-with-the-Desktop-App) .

It seems pretty reasonable. By default, it snaps a picture every 10 minutes.
If you do not want to upload a snapshot, it removes the 10 minutes from your
recorded hours. It captures info about how often you used keystrokes and
clicked, but not what you typed or clicked.

The benefit of using the app is instant approval and payment.

On my reading, it looks like the author failed to take a 10 minute survey in 3
days, losing his work hours. That seems like a pretty reasonable ask that he
failed on.

~~~
hiccuphippo
Yeah no. No kind of spyware is reasonable.

------
bitwize
This is standard industry practice. I remember hearing about one of Upwork's
constituent companies, oDesk, doing the same thing 13 years ago. You had to
run their time logger program, which would periodically screenshot your
desktop and take a webcam photo to ensure you were working.

------
premieroncall
There's also an older post about the same topic: [https://hackernoon.com/why-
you-should-never-use-upwork-ever-...](https://hackernoon.com/why-you-should-
never-use-upwork-ever-5c62848bdf46)

------
asfarley
This is very typical for Upwork. I have entirely stopped using their platform.

------
surajs
Elance was so much better

~~~
burmer
Looks like upwork ate them AND oDesk

------
aasasd
Well, maybe a data scientist should do some research into a platform's terms
before taking on a job there. And read up on a topic properly when writing a
blog post.

------
tschellenbach
Nobody should use Upwork, it's filled with scam artists and Upwork doesn't
actually adequately block the scammers.

------
bencollier49
So hidden in the article is the real reason that data scientists might not
want to use Upwork:

* They record your screen * Your screen contains data * GDPR.

------
cryptonector
s/Data scientists shouldn't/No one should/

No?

------
ohazi
s/Data scientists/people/

------
kristerv
tl;dr OP accidentally left a survey unfinished for the client, this a dispute
was made. OP completed survey, client was okay to pay, but OP hadn't logged
hours with always-on webcam thus money was refunded to client.

~~~
garyb2
Seems to me the client got the work for nearly free (gaming the system time
only) - I see nothing in the article about UPWork requiring the client return
work product as consequence of payment refusal.

