
Why you should never use Upwork - shadlovesgrowth
https://medium.com/@AdShadlabs/why-you-should-never-use-upwork-ever-5c62848bdf46#.1n597kqcn
======
delegate
I once interviewed for Upwork pro. They sent me an Xcode project and I had to
make some changes to it.

However, the required changes referenced features and files which weren't in
the project and made absolutely no sense.

Even worse, the project they sent me was the "Photomania" project from
Stanford's CS193p class: [http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-
bin/drupal/node/289](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-
bin/drupal/node/289)

But the copyright information (Copyright by Stanford University) has been
ripped off from all the files and replaced with "Copyright (c) 2015 Upwork".
No reference to stanford CS or anything like that, just copy and paste.

Which is very wrong in my book.

I wrote them a message and after some fruitless exchanges with 4 or 5
different support people, I've decided to just let it go.

The incompetence of the interview assignment, coupled with robotic support
answers quickly convinced me not to waste any more time with this bunch.

~~~
babaganoosh223
Sounds like what'd you expect from Upwork clients

~~~
esalman
It is not Upwork clients he is talking about, it is Upwork themselves ;)

------
asoskm
Totally agree with the article, and I am more than certain that such acts and
extortionate behaviour are widespread on the platform.

It seems it is part of their business model to allow clients in developed
countries to find people in developing countries (all with weak legal systems
and corruption) to commit illegal acts (both violations of public and private
law). Just look at how many jobs involve rewriting, scraping, penetration
testing (really a guise for hacking others sites) modifying existing
copyrighted content to circumvent laws.

Upwork as middleman profits -- and takes a blind eye to all this corruption -
since cross border police investigations are so difficult to manage when
dealing with corrupt countries.

In my case, I had my competitors procuring hackers off Upwork to take down my
site. We found out because one person who was contacted on Upwork to bring my
site down actually contacted me via my site and provided screenshots and other
evidence. There was literally a job posted requesting contractors to take my
site down.

We raised this with Upwork. They did nothing.

Guess what they said?

Their customer support asked if I had proof that my site had been hacked by
the specific person who posted the job on Upwork and that if had suffered
financial loss as a result of the hacking! It wasn't merely enough for their
client to procure contractors on the platform to commit an illegal act. They
wanted proof that I suffered financial loss!!

However, I can say that we are considering a civil suit against them. It would
be interesting to see how this impacts their brand.

Note: Please forgive the messy and unstructured writing. I've been writing it
while walking the streets of Central London shopping for X-mas gifts.

~~~
shadlovesgrowth
The worst thing about what you wrote is, as I was reading it, not a trace of
shock or surprise passed through me.

It's like it's just now the norm for these things to happen.

If you'd like to, i'd be happy to post your story in an edit below mine. I
know this isn't the first time it's happened.

If you want to contact me, it's shad @ the domain in my twitter bio.

Good luck!

~~~
dankohn1
You want to add you contact info to your HN bio. I thought you did a
reasonable writeup and would consider contracting with you for this sort of
work. I will avoid Upwork based on their appalling behavior here and lack of
willingness to engage and accept their mistakes.

------
shadlovesgrowth
FROM THE AUTHOR, PLEASE READ:

Apologies for the capitals, ladies and gentlemen. Please can I remind all of
you to be Civil.

I've just received an email from the man himself, suggesting that I'm getting
people to give his FB page 1* reviews and to spam his email. He's threatened
(implied) legal action directly against me.

Publicly let me say, for the record (Hopefully it doesn't get wiped), that I
do not encourage any of the aforementioned behavior, nor do I condone it.

He's currently posting on reddit and generally acting like a massive douche
over email to me, still. After all of this. So the above was quite hard for me
to write, but remember there may well be a lot of people working at said
company, that have families and lives beyond this.

So please refrain yourselves.

Appreciate all of the support and input, from everyone.

~~~
dba7dba
I don't facebook so don't worry about me. But looks like the douchebag still
hasn't learned his lesson.

------
traviswingo
I think the worst part about this is that I wasn't even surprised throughout
the entire story. Anyone who has been a freelancer has dealt with the random,
uncalled for threats from clients to give you a bad review or try to suspend
your account. It's the reason I gave up on working on platforms like Upwork
and Freelancer almost immediately.

Building a personal network is way easier to find contract work and you'll
make more money in the end while creating real relationships that will help
you foster your career.

I'm sorry this happened to you, and I'm super glad you revealed this persons
name publicly. Good form.

~~~
nmat
Aren't people on this thread being too harsh on Upwork? I agree that there are
problems with the way it works, but nothing is ever perfect. I happen to be
from a country with a lower cost of living than US/UK and Upwork allows me to
do remote freelancing and charge more than I would be able to charge for work
in person. Also, the world is full of clients that won't pay for your work
after you deliver it. I don't know exactly how helpful Upwork can be in such
cases, but I bet it is better than if I was alone trying to contact a non-
paying client 8000km away.

I guess you need to choose your clients carefully, whether you are working
remotely or in person, always watch out for red flags and get out of the deal
as soon as you see them.

~~~
soreasan
>I happen to be from a country with a lower cost of living than US/UK and
Upwork allows me to do remote freelancing and charge more than I would be able
to charge for work in person.

This is part of the problem for freelancers who do live in the US/UK. They're
expected to work for less than they could charge in person because they're
competing internationally with people who live in areas with much lower cost
of living..

In addition, as the article mentions, a big problem is the amount of
dishonesty. The fact that someone could have their livelihood shut down
overnight by one abusive client is ridiculous.

~~~
nmat
> In addition, as the article mentions, a big problem is the amount of
> dishonesty. The fact that someone could have their livelihood shut down
> overnight by one abusive client is ridiculous.

Once you are out there and have your website/blog, anyone can hassle you
really, but I agree that Upwork may make it easier.

As for the other point, aren't we in a global economy? When you bring the
freelance business to an online marketplace you are competing with the world,
there's no way around it. I mean, I buy things from China on ebay because it's
cheaper than buying them in a store. I also buy clothes from Zara, H&M,
Primark, etc. that are made in Bangladesh by a family earning $1 a day. Remote
contracting of people in cheaper countries is inevitable.

------
almata
From the Upwork FAQ: "You'll need to download and use the Upwork Team App—this
tool includes the Work Diary, which ensures you are guaranteed payment. By
taking work-in-progress screenshots every 10 minutes, it provides proof to
your clients that you are hard at work."

Screenshots every 10 minutes? You mean... screenshots of MY SCREEN every 10
minutes? That was what made me close their website and totally forget it until
I've seen this submission on HN today.

~~~
Mithaldu
I can understand why some would not like this, and maybe it's because i'm
german, but i do not mind this at all. Here's why:

If i'm employed in an office and working at my work pc, not only is the
machine often administrated by the company i am doing work for, and thus may
have additional software in there, even if it's as simple as a VNC server. It
is also on their premises and the screen plainly visible to cameras or other
employees that may be around. In the case of open plan offices or offices
separated with glass walls, usually straight across the entire office. When
i'm in the office i'm supposed to be working, and the machine is supposed to
be used for work purposes. Not for entertainment or other personal things.

Similarly, when i am billing hours in the upwork client, i am supposed to be
working, not playing around. So the machine does not have private things
running on it at the time i am working. The things on screen are work-related
and ok to be seen by my clients.

In my view, using my past work experiences as a guide line, same as in the
office, if there are things in the screen that i would not want the client to
see (or my coworkers/bosses in the office to see) it means that i am doing
something wrong and not separating work/private properly.

Mind, if it does happen, it is easy to delete the screenshot even before it is
sent on the wire, though that forfeits 10 minutes of billing, which as
explained above, is to me exactly as it should be, since i was doing private
things on client time.

So i don't see it as an undue burden. It just ensures that i am actually doing
what the agreement between the two of us says i should be doing.

And this has a vital advantage to me:

The client can simply look and quickly see that i was working actively on his
work, and i don't need to field questions like "This is taking a long time,
are you slacking off?", which i then have to answer with "this particular bit
is hard and complicated, just trust me on this".

~~~
brian-armstrong
What if you accidentally revealed a private key on the screen during the
screenshot? Are you willing to forfeit 10 minutes of time to keep your SSH or
whatever else uncompromised? Or are you going to trust Upwork and your client
to not somehow leak it, even accidentally?

~~~
Mithaldu
I delete the segment and enter manual time with an explanation of why i did
that. Manual time isn't protected by oDesk in disputes, but in that situation
it's fine to use and low risk.

~~~
brian-armstrong
That's fair. What if you didn't notice that it happened?

It seems like dealing with checking for sensitive onscreen information every
10 minutes could be kind of flow-destroying.

~~~
Mithaldu
There's a fairly noticable popup, that you can also configure to make a sound;
and if you're really worried you can review the screenshots in your work diary
at the end of the day.

~~~
cobby
As far as I know all screenshots are available for clients right away.

~~~
Whachadoo
I believe it gives you something like 10 seconds to click "delete" before it
uploads it, but even then you can click the screenshot from the Upwork client
and it'll take you to the work schedule where you can then delete it (removing
the time worked / money paid for those 10 minutes).

------
rikkipitt
Here's the link to close your account if anyone is interested:

[https://www.upwork.com/UserSettings/profile/close-
account](https://www.upwork.com/UserSettings/profile/close-account)

~~~
peterholcomb
Done. Thanks for posting. Can't believe this guy's experience. I used UpWork
for a few gigs earlier this year but stopped browsing for gigs when the new
fee structure was implemented. This is enough for me to say no thanks to ever
using it again.

~~~
holtalanm
even funnier is that link doesn't take me to anything resembling a page where
I can close my account. Almost like they don't want me to or something.

Literally no button or link anywhere within the profile settings that I can
see obviously leads to closing my account.

------
milankragujevic
Absolutely disgusting behavior by Kevin. I'm kinda hoping that it's just
incompetence at UpWork that caused this, and not that Kevin actually knows
someone at UpWork, but in all cases that's why I stopped freelancing through
UpWork and similar, and started building a solid client base which know that
I'm always there to help, for the right price of course. Plus I write somewhat
technical and topical blog posts about the technologies I work with (mainly
video encoding, processing, P2P CDNs, etc.) and that seems to pull clients in
easier than it would be using UpWork.

~~~
shabda
Absolutely disgusting behavior by Kevin. But thats par for the course - some
people are pathetic.

More interesting, is the behaviour of Upwork. With such a clear trail of
abusive behaviour from the said "Client", Upwork still decides to terminate
the guy's account. If you use Upwork, you are a sharecropper. And the
landlords are capricious and have no loyalty to the replaceable tenants.

------
phonon
Some new developments (in comments of the original post)

Rich Pearson

1 hr ago

Shadi, I work at Upwork and your post about your experience makes us feel
terrible. We’ve reopened your case and are investigating it much more
thoroughly. We hope to have a response to you quickly — if you have any
questions or want to provide more details, please email me at
rpearson(at)upwork.com. We care very much about our freelancer community and
want to make this right. Rich

1 response

Shadi Al'lababidi

16 mins ago

Rich, it shouldn’t take a post like this for you (Upwork) to give someone
special treatment. I know there are thousands of others like me that rely on
your platform (most, far more than myself, for much larger %’s of their
income). In some cases this can very literally mean the difference between
putting food on the table and not. They may not be able to spread the message
like I, or speak English in such a manner. They may not be able to drum up
enough attention, so they go unnoticed. It’s no skin of Upwork’s back, until
it turns into a PR mess. Hence why you’re commenting. Let’s cut the shit,
Rich. I’ve got 2 tickets open and have been messaging everyday for the last 11
days. Nothing, nada. Just, ‘We’ve banned you and you can’t know why’. (For
those reading this, yes, they do say you cannot know why.So as to not to let
on to why they ban you). I’ve tweeted at you, nothing. Now, I have roughly 75%
of a months worth of Upwork money stuck on there. If I were someone else, or
someone without other income streams, what would I do? What could I possibly
tell my incumbent clients? Shit, what am I even going to tell my incumbent
clients? you’ve just left me without a months worth of wages and a big ‘fuck
you, there’s nothing you can do.’ So, I do not want any special treatment. I
will not contact you via email. This is an integral problem with Upwork itself
and I will highlight it as much as I possibly can, even if that means losing
the money and my reputation on there that I’ve been building up over the last
year. And please Rich, I’m a bloody marketer for Christ’s sake. Don’t come at
me with that standard company mumbo jumbo ‘it makes us feel terrible’. You’re
just being patronising.

------
jeffmould
Looking at some of their responses to reviews on Facebook
([https://www.facebook.com/wiperecord/reviews/](https://www.facebook.com/wiperecord/reviews/))
it would appear the attitude is part of their company culture. Amazing, for a
company that bills itself as trying to help people overcome their past, it
appears they are simply in the business of taking advantage of a vulnerable
group.

~~~
HillRat
Also, if Kevin is an attorney, he's remarkably free with what is arguably
libelous speech to third parties.

~~~
nihonde
I am a lawyer/coder and "legal tech" is the festering ghetto of my profession.
The people who peddle technology solutions to lawyers (or worse, to clients)
are usually one step below car salespeople. Try popping your head in to a
legal tech conference sometime if you doubt me. It's almost all e-discovery
shills talking shite about AI. There are a few exceptions, but not many.

~~~
heuristicsearch
So - I have to ask (as a Graduate AI student, but no specific familiarity with
the e-discovery domain) why is this the reputation? Like the applications
don't work well? The salesmen don't know what they are peddling? I guess
basically - could you extrapolate a little more on this group?

~~~
nihonde
Someone else said it: lawyers are the worst clients, especially law firms. Too
many know-it-alls who think the world should bend to their will. When I left
my big law firm, there was a partner down the hall who made his secretary
print his emails every morning and dictated his responses to her. Try dragging
him into the 21st century and you'll see what I mean.

------
ftrflyr
Long time user of Elance and then Upwork here. I can attest, what occurred in
this story is common.

The problem that Upwork doesn't realize is that without an active and happy
freelancing demographic, clients will go elsewhere. Historically, Upwork has
made it a priority of catering to the client. This is evident given their JSS.
For those of you who are not familiar with JSS, it is a score that companies /
clients use to hire freelancers. Now, one would assume the score is based on
past work with clients. This is not all the score accounts for. Timeliness is
responding to invites, the number of long-term clients you maintain, the
number of clients you hassle (yes, Upwork actively goes out and tells it's
freelancers to hassle their clients to leave them feedback - the
responsibility falls on the freelancer and only the freelancer), etc.

Thus, when clients don't leave feedback (for whatever reason), you are dinged.
Upwork won't tell you by how much exactly so let me give you an example.

12 months ago, my score was 92% (Top Rated). A client hired me. We went over
the terms of the contract (# of revisions, not working on the weekends, etc.).
2 weeks into the project, the client started to deviate from the terms of the
contract. I let them know and they began to get pissy. This happens all the
time as Upwork has created a platform where the clients hold all of the power,
and they know this.

A week later the contract wrapped up, and I managed to make the client happy
as they left me a 4.7/5 on my profile and a positive review. Clients are able
to leave private feedback the freelancer can never see. When the JSS score
updated (every two weeks I believe-mind you, I had not worked any other jobs
since that job) my score went from 92% to 71%! A 21% drop.

Suffice to say, for the past 12 months, dozens and dozens of clients later
(most with positive reviews); I am now only sitting in the low 80's for my
JSS.

In conclusion, Upwork is the worst example of an online marketplace for
freelancers who have a backbone and are not afraid to tell a client how it is.
After all, we are hired for our expertise and when a client proceeds to tell
us how to do our job, it poisons the freelancing community.

edit: spelling errors.

~~~
throwaway7312
We had a similar incident with a freelancer recently. We left them a 5 star
review, a nice written review, marked the job as successfully completed, and
left no private feedback.

They wrote us immediately after we reviewed them to tell us their score had
gone down from our review and we must have done something wrong.

I asked them to send back to us; nothing in there I could see to fix. I asked
them to escalate to UpWork; UpWork support gave a non-answer. So I escalated
it myself.

The reply I got from UpWork was essentially this: we're happy to see your
concern for your freelancer. You gave your freelancer a 5-star review, you
marked the job successful, it's a perfect review. The way UpWork gauges
freelancer scores is on a rolling #-of-month period. Past a certain number of
months, older reviews stop counting toward a freelancer's score and only
reviews within that #-of-month period count. So a declining rating is most
likely due to older good reviews aging out of the scoring.

So this could be another possibility, if you have better older reviews
dropping off the chart and a few more recent reviews that weren't as good, and
now are weighing more heavily without the better older ones to offset them.

------
tptacek
Apropos nothing:

"$100 an hour is more than our CEO makes so I'm not sure we can budget $1500
for this".

Don't bill hourly! I know this sounds like a very silly example (it's not even
logically coherent) but reasoning like this gets deployed _all the time_ ,
even with sophisticated clients. People have anchoring price points for hourly
rates that they don't have for other billing structures. Fixing this to make
more money is literally as simple as "switch to daily billing".

~~~
afro88
Just thinking out loud here (haven't tried this) but maybe a better approach
would be to not mention time. Simply ask for project specs and break it down
into priced components if need be.

$1500 at $100 an hour sounds expensive if you're comparing to the CEO's
salary. But $1500 for a piece of sales lead infrastructure that has to be
built but can't be off the shelf bought. That sounds reasonable.

~~~
tptacek
Heading off the objections you'll get to this: the downside to fixed-price
billing is that it maximally exposes the worker both to errors in their own
estimation and also to errors in specifications provided by client, and to
scope changes. Fixed-price bidding forces the consultant to shoulder a lot of
risk.

That's fine, if you're sophisticated. Certainly I think fixed-price bids are
smarter than hourly billing. In a fixed-price bid, you get to describe the
business impact of what you're doing, which can be huge even if the task is
relatively simple, and then put a dollar figure next to that impact. Almost
any number you come up with is going to at least sound sane in that context.
It's the more favorable setting in which to present the comparison of value
and price.

What I like better though is the hybrid approach. I still remember someone on
HN saying that this was the first original approach they had heard to pricing
consulting work --- which blew my mind, since it was simply the way I was
taught by my partners to bid projects, and presumably the way they were taught
as well.

The approach is this:

Come up with a fixed price for the work you want to do, and simultaneously an
estimate of the number of days you believe that work will take. You can divide
the former by the latter to arrive at a daily rate. In your bid, focus on the
total price of the engagement, but "show your work" in terms of the number of
billable days and your day rate. Include a clause stating that overages will
be billed at that daily rate as well.

To most clients, this is the moral equivalent of a fixed-price bid, and
they'll treat it like one. But it de-risks the project for you.

As you do more projects, you'll get a better sense of what your real daily
rate is (it's higher than you think it is now). You can tune your bids so that
you keep a fixed daily rate but still value-price your engagements. By the
time you're routinely employing this kind of finesse, you'll have enough
traction to easily figure these kinds of things out for yourself.

~~~
josephjrobison
This is definitely a way better approach than hourly billing, for sure.

On the flipside, stating daily billing is not much different than hourly since
the client will just divide by 8 (usually). I stated my daily rate after
hearing it from you and Patrick and Brennan Dunn, and one client just said -
ok so your rate is "$xxx" per hour?"

My point is that daily billing is an improvement over hourly, and with your
approach of an overall fixed price and also daily that's a great approach, but
the client still knows a daily rate is essentially hourly. A better approach
is retainer pricing if not a fixed one-time project!

~~~
tptacek
Even if your client does the division --- and many won't, because, remember,
it's usually not their money they're spending, so what really matters is
whether the number you presented fits into the abstraction of their budget ---
if you're going to negotiate, you're better off negotiating in a frame where a
$100 difference is insignificant to your outcome than one in which a $100
difference is devastating.

------
zachruss92
I think that the freelance marketplace is not good for the freelance economy
as a whole. A lot of the time, it creates a race to the bottom as far as
pricing, and you have to compete with workers overseas undercutting you at
every corner.

When I first got started freelancing, I used eLance (which is now UpWork). I
had a similar experience with a client, they suspended my account for 2+
months, and I won the dispute at the end. If I didn't have my own clients
outside of eLance, I would have been screwed and not even able to pay my rent.
After that, I stopped using the service and haven't looked back 4 years later.

I have a friend who actually does know someone on the executive leadership
team at UpWork, I just emailed him with your article - hopefully something
positive can come of that. I really hate it when all around bad human beings
go around and try to make people's lives harder.

~~~
user5994461
I'll slightly disagree with the view about "the race to the bottom".

Most of the market is always in the bottom, whatever the market is.
Upwork/elance/whatever just make it stand out.

Most of the work is low paying shit by shit clients who have no clue what they
are doing. (Nothing special. It's the same with physical companies to
physically work at :D).

As a decent freelancer who wanna do decent work for a decent client, you've
gotta filter aggressively.

------
Down_n_Out
Hmmm, interesting:

"Thank you for using Upwork.

At this time we are unable to close your account. Please call our concierge
team at 1-866-676-3375, select option 3, and we will help you close your
account.

Please note: For security purposes, you will not be able to change your
username, or open a new account with the same email address.

If you need help, please contact Support Services."

~~~
smhg
Got the same message but somewhere I read it was due to the fact multiple
users where present in my account (long time since I last used it).

I was able to remove the other user (under Settings - Permissions) and,
subsequently, close the whole account.

~~~
Down_n_Out
No multiple users for me though. Will give it another try later on. I was
already fed up with how Upwork works and this article just pushed me over the
edge.

------
marcell
Shameless plug: I run a new company, CodeGophers, that competes with Upwork.
We get a lot of unhappy Upwork customers.

Unlike Upwork our service has a quality guarantee, so clients aren't forced to
manage freelancers, and deal with low quality work. It's kind of like a
product manager and freelancer combo, and overall it's much easier for the
client.

If you're unhappy with Upwork, please give us a shot. You can see our site at
[https://codegophers.com](https://codegophers.com), or start a task by writing
in at:

    
    
        start@codegophers.com
    

We're able to handle most small tasks in a matter of a few days.

~~~
orthoganol
I took a look. Main feedback is it's just an info page with email addresses...
You need a webapp, a platform, signups, etc., if you want people to consider
participating. Something that can be put up in a couple hours does not instill
confidence that it's a serious thing. Just my opinion.

~~~
marcell
Thanks for the feedback! We're actually working on a lot of improvements to
the site, and we'll be pushing them out within a week or two. Please check
back soon :)

------
dvcrn
Damn, that's rough. Hard to believe customer support is this ignorant, but if
it really directly comes from the CEO, I doubt they can do anything.

I hope this gets some traction through HN to bring it to the attention of the
right people.

I am currently looking for a Freelancing platform and also looked at upwork.
Thanks for that, will avoid them!

~~~
shadlovesgrowth
I mean, it's being handled by 3 different customer support staff, so I don't
know what that actually entails.

My advice, get a blog. Write about your experience within industry. My best
example would be a man called Simo Ahava, whom writes about GTM and GA. Join
Slack groups and communities and just network.

I highly doubt he knows the CEO and even if he did, would said CEO actually
act on such an inconsequential thing. I mean, imagine the PR meltdown from
such an act.

Anyway, time for some tea and a chillout. Have a good Sunday :)

~~~
RonanTheGrey
OK so I have spent the last month trying to make it on Upwork after seeing
some of the "$1000 a month income on my side project!" posts here on HN and
decided to start doing some side projects while building a rep on Upwork to
try to get some outside clients.

I have had absolutely no success with Upwork at all and had been reaching the
point of walking away from it and what should I see but this post.

I want, actually desperately need, to be working outside my day job. I'm out
of my element. I realized I had to start a blog and have done so and am
writing a series of articles relevant to my knowledge and experience.

Aside from that, how might you recommend I make contacts to have long term
work with good clients? Your comment is the first I've ever seen about "join
Slack groups" \- where would I go to get started doing that?

A million thanks if you bother to read this, a million more if you reply :)

------
didgeoridoo
Never, ever give a price break without a scope change. Apart from the obvious
$/hr benefits, it's great way to figure out if the person on the other end of
the line is an abusive psychopath. A professional will understand that you're
trying to help them achieve a realistic value for their budget. A psychopath
will take it as a personal affront and become transparently manipulative
and/or abusive. This is a great time to cut off contact before it escalates to
the level shown here.

~~~
scardine
The real problem is: the conflict resolution process at Upwork is utterly
Kafkaesque.

Even if you have a perfect five stars reputation for two years, all it takes
is one upset jerk and you are done at Upwork. Eventually you will step on
someones having a bad day if you stay there enough.

After you make a good reputation in those market places you can command a
higher fee - perhaps they want you out at this point so they can get work for
other skilled professionals that are undercharging in order to build
reputation.

------
desaiguddu
Brave of you to put a write-up ! Fuck you Upwork !!

When I started my consulting company, I decided I will not rely on this Upwork
- Freelancer.com shit!

I use various aggregator services -

1.) StackOverFlow Jobs

2.) No Mad Jobs

3.) PDX Startups

4.) Slack Groups

5.) Domino Slack

6.) Meet, demonstrate your services

Everyone can teach WipeRecord service a lesson - I will be giving them 1
Rating on Facebook, Yelp and all other places with a write-up.

~~~
dkns
Actions of one (presumably) manager guy doesn't reflect company as a whole.
Yelp/facebook/etc. isn't for rating how company deals with freelancers. Don't
be childish.

~~~
Gigablah
Unfortunately it looks like this Kevin guy is the company director, if you
look up his full name.

------
prmph
UpWork is simply a joke now. They were a bit better when they were oDesk, but
now the sheer incompetence is hard to understand.

They keep inviting me to jobs that have no relationship to my declared skill-
set.

They keep inviting me to apply to jobs for clients who have no intention of
actually hiring.

They invite me to apply to work for them, and then fail to show up at the
agreed upon interview time, several times

Whenever I reach out to support about an issue, they invariably, without fail,
make the issue worse.

I'm seriously thinking of just deleting my account so I can focus my efforts
on local freelancing

------
erklik
Sorry to hear about this Shadi. Kevin is one hell of a asshole. I try to
refrain from using profanity but this man utterly deserved it. Will do my best
to let every other freelancer know of this and recommend them to stay away as
they can from Upwork.

~~~
shadlovesgrowth
I also tried to refrain, but, as Medium seems to be the only effective medium
for myself to vent my frustration, I had to let a couple pop.

Yes, it really is one of those things which you say to yourself 'Oh, it'll
never happen to me', then actually it does. I'm the 3rd person I personally
know of that's had this happen to them. So I think it's more prolific than it
seems.

Hope you're having a good Sunday Erklik

------
infodroid
What I learned from this is not to ignore the warning signs of a psychopath
client. Because you can easily get sucked in to a bad situation regardless of
your good intentions, and you can't rely on the marketplace to resolve these
disputes in your favor. This scenario can also play out on other freelancing
sites, and it can also happen if you solicit clients directly and they turn
out to be well-connected.

~~~
novaleaf
yes, and always stay courteous even when they are total asses

~~~
ftrflyr
I have to disagree. This is not how the business world works. If a client is
being an ass, you have the right to fire them. Upwork doesn't afford you this
opportunity unless you want to see your JSS drop by dozens of points.

~~~
novaleaf
yes fire them! just act like it's your fault, not theirs

------
pearjuice
A freelance marketplace is very much against the idea of freelancing. You are
basically working for the marketplace with little freedom to design the actual
work processes your way. Everything is geared towards getting positive reviews
and thus getting more work through the marketplace. A vicious, underpaid
circle.

Sure it works great for building contacts when you are not really visible yet.
After you land a few gigs and have work, references and talent to show for,
you should really abandon it asap. Better even, not start with it because the
gamified nature will lure you in to do more gigs.

~~~
Hoasi
> A freelance marketplace is very much against the idea of freelancing.

Exactly. The point of freelancing is working for yourself, not as a vassal of
a third party. That is why etymology is important, even when the initial
meaning of a word has changed. A "freelance platform" or "marketplace" only
makes sense for you as a freelancer if you own it (i.e. your self hosted site,
portfolio or blog, etc.)

------
seirim
Very sorry to hear it. I've employed many on oDesk then Upwork over the years
and almost always have great experiences with freelancers. In a rare case when
I did have an issue, customer support wasn't very good from the hiring side
either, fyi.

Also I think they shot themselves in the foot with the big price hike.
Previously freelancers and I would just keep using their platform throughout
working relationships. Now we use it like a dating app, meet a freelancer,
work a project or two to build trust, and then leave the platform to handle
payments on our own.

~~~
alucab
pay attention, this is against the agreement. you are free after two years
from the start of the relationship

just for your info to avoid possible bad things

~~~
greenyoda
I'm not sure how this agreement could be enforced. How could Upwork possibly
find out that a freelancer has made a deal with a customer outside of their
site?

~~~
alucab
for example if the freelancer or the client publicly discuss it on HN...

------
dewyatt
Convinced me, just closed my upwork account.

~~~
deckar01
To make it easier for others:

> Click Accounts menu, choose Settings, then Contact Info

You may have to add a missing security question before it shows the form with
the "delete my account" link.

------
webtechgal
As another freelancer who has been there, done that (not quite at Upwork, but
at three other platforms namely Freelancer.com, PeoplePerHour and Fiverr [yes,
Fiverr - and unlikely as it may sound, I found individual clients who placed
thousands of dollars worth of work with me there,]) I can only and totally
identify + sympathize with the OP here.

Of the three platforms above, I've found PPH to be the best in terms of
overall mix/quality of clients as well as the platform's fairness (such as it
may be) towards me (the freelancer).

After over two years of doing this almost full time, here is my takeaway:

The platforms have no love lost for the freelancers. Their first and foremost
loyalty is (almost exclusively) reserved for the buyers, even to the point of
being downright unreasonable in terms of favoring the buyers.

While I've been fortunate enough not to end up with the terminal outcome
(yet), I have come close a few times and every time that happens, it is such
an emotionally upsetting and disappointing experience that I feel I could
write a whole book about it, but then lose the inclination after a while.

Such then, is the state of affairs and I guess there's little anyone (well at
least I, at any rate) can do about it.

------
rrggrr
I use Upwork for projects and after reading this I wouldn't mind moving away
from them. What are the best alternatives to Upwork for python and data
science assistance?

~~~
dankohn1
I've had good experience with Toptal for high end software contractors.

------
joelennon
Just so you know, you inadvertently included Kevin's email address in one of
the screenshots. You blurred it out from the "from" section, but it's also
showing in a "flagged as spam" yellow box. I'm sure this wasn't your
intention.

~~~
pronik
His surname is also visible in one of the screencaps.

------
atrilumen
Shadi, please also post this on
[https://reddit.com/r/freelance](https://reddit.com/r/freelance).

------
imjustsaying
Closed my account.

Interestingly there's very few reasons for closing you can select from the
closure page. You can't even choose an 'other' category to write in the
reason.

~~~
peterholcomb
I noticed that. They should at least add an option that mentions their fee
structure changes. I stopped using upwork the day those were announced. This
story was enough motivation to officially close my account.

------
coolgoose
It's so sad to see that.

1\. People that try to hire freelancers don't have the decency of considering
that freelances have to pay: fees, taxes and other markups (transfer fees for
eg).

2\. The usual you quote me X but my budget is X/2 tops, and the failure to
realize that an Z for hour = x, or i can give you z/2 and double the number of
hours and still get X.

When an experienced developer in his field gives you a 15 hour quote, it
doesn't mean that it's an easy job that can be done by anybody in that time
frame, since if that's the case you would have done it yourself already.

------
dba7dba
Even before the threats made to Upwork, I feel the 'client' was trying to
trick the freelancer.

\- Snag a freelancer without providing spec up front. \- Once some desperate
freelancer signs on, flood the freelancer with tons of work. \- If the
freelancer tries to back out, threaten that you will file complaint with
Upwork. Since freelancer was desperate enough to sign on, the client probably
assumes the freelancer will be desperate enough to suck it and finish the
work. \- Repeat. Hence 40 previous jobs.

I think some call this 'client' a shrewd businessman.

------
stanislavb
I think UpWork deserves the negative PR now... They will be more careful from
now on..

~~~
atrilumen
I don't know; they get bad reviews pretty much daily on r/freelance, but who
knows; maybe the front page of HN will be more persuasive.

~~~
dexterdog
Until it mysteriously fell off

------
base1996
Thank you for sharing your experience, I am closing my account. But do you
have any similar (or not) service you recommend me to use ? As a student I
work with a company through this platform. Thanks by advance

~~~
josephjrobison
I think going through a more niche platform that has better quality clients
and respect for both sides is the way to go.

For example, for WordPress development, Codeable.com is really good - they
take care of both clients and developers

For writing, TextBroker or CopyWriterToday might pay more to writers with a
better quality control and escrow system.

Designers - if you can get contracted out by Lightboard or others, you'll do
much better

~~~
base1996
It clearly seems better for both sides. Here is a recent thread talking about
similar options you gave me
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983)

------
phantom_oracle
Nobody else has said it, but I guess I should then...

Does anybody else find it odd that this mans real name is: Shadi Al'lababidi

However, his UpWork profile is: Shadi Paterson

I've seen this done quite a bit when companies (especially the American kind)
ship their support overseas, but are either too embarrassed to let their
workers use their real names OR justify such actions by saying: "Some
Americans will find it difficult to say your name" (or in other implicit
scenarios, because your name is Muslim-sounding - or X-sounding - will
associate you with terrorism/other-ism).

Imagine the world we live in, where in order to do a job (or get work), you
have to literally change your REAL name to appease to the demographic.

Whether Shadi did this of his own accord or was instructed to by UpWork to
'passively appeal' to the hiring-clients, it is quite a shocker to see it YET
AGAIN.

~~~
shadlovesgrowth
Hey man,

I'm actually English born n' bred. I have Arab roots on my fathers side. My
Full name is Shadi Al'lababidi Paterson

I act on my own terms. I just found that when interacting with certain clients
(Basically, Americans), my Muslim sounding name definitely reduced my
opportunities.

Like, it was truly noticeable.

To be fair, this is the same for East Asians as they seem to value 'White
names' more.

I'd like to see Upwork do pornhub like stats on all demographics. Including
skin colour and gender. I think as a global society we'd be very surprised to
see what a 'True free market' produces.

------
dageshi
Useful to know, will steer clear of Upwork in future, thank you.

------
slinger
I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you. I just closed my upwork account
and I will spread the word.

------
mrsheen
I had similar feelings about Upwork. I am closing my account very soon as
well.

------
city41
A major theme of the story is using third parties means you have less control.
So why post it on Medium?

------
desireco42
I am really sorry you are wasting your talent on marketplace like this. Wish I
could help you get better work.

Behavior like this, from this dude Kevin, well that is normal on marketplaces
like this. If you are experienced, you should always steer clear when you see
people talk random stuff.

------
edoceo
I purchase talent from upWork on occasion. But less and less. On the buy-side
I think the personal network works better. And, with so many jerks on the buy-
side it scares the talent away. Death Spiral.

Is it possible to have a community like this without the BS? How to stop it?

------
ftrflyr
How is this falling off the front page?

~~~
amq
I really hope there wasn't any manual intervention on a request from Upwork...

------
alucab
Terrible story, all my support to you. It is completely true that the
protection we have is very limited and that we must be VERY VERY selective
with clients. Also if this means to reject offers. Also if this means to not
earn money. I try to give qualified answers and i ask for qualified customers
able to communicate and competent to discuss requirements. Otherwise i let
them go away “Too busy on other projects thanks” is my mantra on Upwork It
needs discipline and will but to be entangled in a poisonous relation with
someone who can harm you… far worse. Push this story around, it is the best
vengeance

------
dangle
Sorry this happened. Closing my account now -

------
MarkMc
What's the alternative to UpWork for a skilled computer programmer who has
fairly good English but has no formal education and lives in a poor country?

~~~
drinchev
Make a trip to the nearest capital of a country where there are tech events.
Don't forget your business cards. Stay there for a week and come back wit
projects.

------
matsatler
Upwork seems to always take sides with the company/client. It is terrible
practice and very scary for freelancers that use upwork as primary income
generator. I had few challenges with upwork and it took weeks to resolve.
Seems as freelancers have to walk on eggshells around upwork support or
clients when issues arise. I guess there is a huge opportunity for the next
upwork.

------
graeme
It's a real shame. I used Elance for around four years (as a client, not a
freelancer). This was before Elance merged with Odesk and became upwork.

I'm sure elance had issues. But I noticed a marked uptick in problems when the
upwork migration became. The Elance interface was old school, but very
functional.

Upwork was confusing. The migration was a mess and made me a freelancer by
default, as I had also had a minor freelance profile on elance that I had
never used. Took weeks to resolve.

The desktop app....actually, I don't remember the issue, but it led to me
leaving the platform entirely. I think messages took ages to load.

I will eventually look for new freelancers, and I'll need to figure out a
replacement when I do. It sounds like Upwork is not a great place to be for a
freelancer now – and that means the quality ones will be elsewhere.

As a client, I want freelancers to be able to make money, and to denounce bad
clients. By catering excessively to clients, Upwork is going to select for
toxic clients.

------
0xmohit
Although sites like Upwork make money from both sides (probably more from
freelancers), they are likely to support those offering work.

Perhaps their line of thought goes like: Freelancers would always outnumber
those offering work. Even if some walk away or are forced out, it doesn't
matter as long as we manage to keep those offering work on board.

------
drivingmenuts
Well, shit.

And I was about to try out some freelance work just to get some income going.

Best of luck. You got a raw deal on that one.

------
noonespecial
Another fine example of when you should ask yourself, "Am I the customer in
this deal or am I the raw material that gets rendered into the 'product'?"

With upwork, not only are freelancers raw material, they are so plentiful that
waste is free for upwork.

------
erikb
The goal here should be to sue, not just making things public. Why don't you
get a lawyer the moment your account won't be reopened? Upwork owes you over
$1000. A client is seriously trying to harm your public image, which may
result in losing customers/business. Both points themselves would be enough to
talk to a lawyer. Together they are clear suing material.

If you go public you actually open yourself up to get sued. Also cheaters and
bullies will see that you didn't sue and therefore see you as an easy mark.
Normal schoolyard logics apply, just that as a grownup you don't hit them in
the face but sue.

(I'm not a lawyer)

------
esalman
I had a similar experience; used to have 4.8+ rating on Upwork, then accepted
a job which went bad largely due to poor and inaccurate spec provided by the
client. He actually went to my company website, found out the team members'
emails and sent a message to everybody castigating me. I basically begged to
him to stop doing any further damage. Upwork always give their clients the
benefit of doubt because they know they'll always have a cheap source of
freelancers from countries where living cost is low.

------
nfriedly
Back when Elance was a separate site, I created a script to automatically
withdraw funds from my Elance account to my bank account. I posted it to their
forums and promptly had my account locked "after a routine review". They
unlocked it after I jumped through some hoops, but I think the same shoot-
first attitude clearly survived the merger with upwork.

------
1_over_n
Yeah this is pretty grim - also shows someones true character when they are
willing to act like this from behind the safety of a screen miles away from
the person they are interacting with.

Not sure if you have posted on data tau but it might be worth posting there
too @shadi....

[http://www.datatau.com/](http://www.datatau.com/)

------
kinkdr
Unfortunately corporate bullying is a new trend seen more and more frequently.
We should be very careful in our choice of companies we choose to interact
with.

------
city41
Why did he censor Kevin's name in all exchanges except for one? Was that an
intentional "slip"? Or was revealing his last name an accident?

~~~
kodfodrasz
Probably at the beginning Shadi didn't want to disclose the name, or wasn't
sure in himself (possibly because of thinking about the possible legal
consequences?), but as he was writing the article he pissed himself off so
much, that he decided to disclose it anyway.

------
aagha
All these posts make me think there an amazing opportunity to create a new
platform with a big focus on revenue sharing and amazing customer experience.

------
martinko
FYI, despite the fact that you attempted to censure the guy's personal info,
you managed to leak both his full name and email address.

------
marcamillion
What's interesting about the timing of this story is that I have recently been
playing around with Upwork for some freelance work and the issue I am having
is actually a different one.

I have come to realize that there is a fundamental problem with the
marketplace itself. I don't think it matches clients to freelancers properly.

I did two exercises. I posted a few positions as a 'buyer', and I got a lot of
spam (i.e. non-personalized, crap postings to my position/gig/job that was
obvious they never read it). I got more than I expected, which makes it
difficult to weed through and find a freelancer I want to work with. Granted,
I didn't want the typical "low-ball" freelancer. I was looking for a
freelancer that knew what they were doing. Alas, I was unsatisfied with the
results and ended up not finding what I was looking for.

I also responded to gigs as a Ruby developer. What's remarkable is that it is
literally very, very difficult to get any work, much less the type of work I
would like (high-value work with a handful of clients, potentially doing on-
going work).

I first started off with a relatively high-ish hourly rate for UpWork ($80/hr
for someone with 8 years of Ruby & Rails experience and 15+ years of web
development experience overall). Because I had no 'history' with the platform,
that didn't work. I filled out my portfolio, and responded to each job in a
very custom way detailing the specifics of how I would tackle each job I was
submitting a proposal to. This took much longer than just spamming, and was
more mentally taxing, but I figured I could make up for my non-Upwork-track
history by putting more into my proposal. No dice.

I then dropped my rates (down to as low as $40/hr) just to test, still no
dice. I didn't even get responses.

Then, I assumed that maybe my proposals weren't robust enough or maybe I
wasn't communicating my capabilities in my portfolio properly enough, aka I
was being hit with a 'portfolio tax'.

So to get over this, I decided to actually bid on fixed budget tasks that were
very specific in what they want and overlapped with specific stuff I have done
in the past -- specifically "B2B Lead Discovery" or "Website Scraping" for
something.

I recently have been playing around with scraping websites for different types
of leads, particularly B2B, and so this suited me perfectly.

I then started applying to some of these with not just the specifics of what I
have done, how I would tackle their specific task, but I would even send them
sample results for similar leads to what they were asking for. So say someone
was looking for wedding planners from each state (an actual job posting) where
they would need the $CompanyName, $Website, $Email, $PhoneNumber, $Address. I
replied telling them I have experience doing exactly this....in fact, I
recently did this exact thing for accountants, so I replied explaining what I
have done and how I can help them and I sent them a CSV file with a list of
sample accountants, along with a picture of my script producing those results.

In one case, I crawled the specific website they wanted crawled and showed
them pictures of the script doing that and then I gave them a suggestion based
on what they were looking for and what I found. There was a disconnect between
what they wanted, and what could be technically scraped from the website (they
wanted email addresses for all users on MySpace to be exact). So I informed
them that unless MySpace has an API that gives out this information, and
unless you are looking for email addresses that people post within comments on
the music throughout the site, this is a waste of time and I provided proof
from my script.

Suffice-it-to-say, I did a lot of work on each proposal. I did about 7 - 10 of
these specific proposals for scrapers, and about 15 - 20 other specific but
not as specific proposals. I also didn't change the price they asked. So if
they said their budget was $10, I replied with all of the above with a $10
budget. This is crazy, I know...but I did it just to experiment.

The results? Not even 1 reply. Not even 1. You can see screenshots here [1].

Yes, my portfolio on Upwork could be weak (although I doubt it because I think
it looks pretty robust), and my profile could be a deterrent (because the
language I use is a mismatch to what these clients are looking for) and my
rates could be high relative to the rest of the marketplace, but the real
issue is just an overall non-response from ANY of the 20+ proposals I
submitted over the period of a week.

Something feels fundamentally broken with that, especially when considering my
experience with the other-side of this experience.

I believe that there is some middle ground between the "elitist" Toptal and
"broken" UpWork. So, I would like to try an experiment.

Do you have any high value ($30K+ -- note this is a floor, just to weed out
inappropriate clients) development projects that you would like done? Either
generic projects where no tech stack is specified or Ruby and Rails jobs for
starters. I won't specify the types of projects, but something where you would
prefer a "high-quality" developer help you see it to fruition rather than the
cheapest developer you can find. Perhaps you have tried other developer
services/gig boards and are unhappy with the process.

Do you want a product manager to help drive the entire process for you, from
beginning to end?

If this sounds interesting to you, please send me an email to:
marc+hnexperiment@mymvpblueprint.com.

If I can find a pattern for how to find these types of projects consistently,
I would love to work with other developers to fill these needs. Until then
though, let the experimentation begin!

[1] - [http://imgur.com/a/MjHYk](http://imgur.com/a/MjHYk)

~~~
gspetr
How many jobs completed total do you have? Does not matter if it's $5 or $10
jobs.

~~~
marcamillion
None...which is the same number as the number of interviews I have gotten.

------
akashaggarwal7
Thanks, I was hoping to get work at Upwork before, now I'm considering not to.
I hope things turn out in favorable for you.

------
urza
So who is going to do a decentralized alternative to Upwork in the spirit of
OpenBazaar, ArcadeBNB and ArcadeCity? :}

------
tabbott
Ugh, what a terrible, terrible client. But I think the title draws the wrong
conclusion. I've personally been a client on Upwork over the last year, paying
several developers to work on open source software, and all parties have been
very happy with the experience. I think one should think about this incident
in the broader context:

* It's clear Upwork support screwed this case up. But one should keep in mind that resolving disputes between two people who both complain the other is a criminal (as in this case) is a really hard problem. The US justice system often gets it wrong (something egregiously). While it sucks when it happens, I think one should expect platforms like Upwork to screw up sometimes too.

* Dealing with people trying to cheat is a fact of life in any business. I've heard horror stories in the freelancing world of clients deciding not to pay a freelancer for months or work, freelancers pretending to do work, etc. Often, the wronged party is unable to get the dispute resolved satisfactorily, especially if the two parties are in different countries. Any marketplace the size of Upwork ([https://www.upwork.com/about/](https://www.upwork.com/about/) says $1B in jobs annually) will have a large absolute number of both bad clients and bad freelancers (there are certainly tons of bad bosses and bad employees in America, lots of bad taxi drivers, etc.). At least with a platform like Upwork or Uber, there's a reputation system where bad actors get bad reviews and eventually stop getting matched with other people. I'm willing to bet that this employer is a jerk to the people he hires not on Upwork, too.

* This particular client's behavior is extremely bad in several ways. But at least the client had bad reviews on the platform. Do business with bad people at your peril! They will figure out how to screw you.

* I had thought the "screenshots every 10 minutes" feature of Upwork was just an annoying invasion of privacy, until I had a freelancer report 50 hours of work fraudulently (i.e. he didn't post any work starting ~50 hours before I stopped paying him), make a bunch of increasingly unrealistic excuses that he would post his work soon once he got back from a vacation or whatever, and eventually disappear. After investigating, Upwork banned the freelancer, but their terms of service don't allow them to recover money already paid since we weren't using the screenshots feature. While I was upset and frustrated by it, I've also seen employees in the US stop working and hope to get a month or two of free pay before they get fired, and it's basically the exact same thing. Given the larger picture of Upwork having 3M jobs/year, mostly for relatively small amounts of money, there are probably a lot of disputes, and I think you should expect to have a significant fraction of disputes decided in a way where at least one of the parties leaves the dispute upset because the decision was wrong (the US civil justice system certainly has that property!). And keep in mind: a 5-20% fee on projects with a <$1000 average size doesn't pay for a lot of manual dispute resolution. Things like screenshots of emails can be forged; who knows what other fabricated evidence the client gave to Upwork support to help their side of the case. The screenshot mechanism is Upwork's current best solution for making dispute resolution efficient, and I think it does help: I haven't had fraud issues with those freelancers who are using it (and Upwork's ToS do allow recovering money from people whose screenshots show they weren't working). They address the privacy issues somewhat in that the freelancer can delete any screenshots they like before sharing with the client. They just don't get paid for those 10 minute windows.

OK, that's my little essay on the Upwork experience. Upwork isn't perfect, but
no large marketplace is. Keeping bad actors out of a marketplace is a really
really hard problem, and I don't think it's possible for them to eliminate bad
behavior. Still, I hope they kick that client off the platform and take this
incident as a wake up call to invest more in improving their dispute
resolution processes.

------
amelius
I guess it doesn't help if your name is "Shadi" :)

~~~
praptak
Sadly, that might be the case not because of the pun.

------
35bge57dtjku
Didn't everyone know Upwork was a total POS a decade ago?

------
mamon
Anyone has a similar experiences with Crossover company?

------
mderazon
Sounds like he stumbled upon a subclinical psychopath.

------
DominikR
> I’m not going to talk about the impossibility of competition they offer due
> to being seriously undercut by those that live in countries with lower costs
> of living.

As a freelancer/contractor working exclusively for customers that have large
budgets and pay a lot I'd advise against ever using such platforms.

You are going to compete with very cheap labour (and often low quality
services) and businesses will expect that and pay accordingly.

Even if you have no projects lined up it's better to create your own small
service or product which you can use later to advertise effectively what kind
of value you could create for prospective customers. (go to local events and
get into contact with future customers this way)

It's also interesting to note that Globalisation is so heavily pushed on all
levels of our society although we can clearly see that it sucks for the
majority living in rich countries.

Most people here probably do recognise (at least subconsciously) that it's
impossible for them to compete with persons doing the same job in a third
world country, no matter if they do a worse job. They make up for it by
offering their services at such a low rate that they offset this easily. (some
of them live in countries where you can easily feed, clothe and house a family
with $200 a month - it's impossible to compete with that)

You could argue of course that it's great for third world countries (it was)
lifting many people out of poverty, but would you want to get poor in the
process? (take a look at Detroit, this could be our future)

Google, Apple and other large IT corporations (or really any large corp that
needs IT services) of course are interested in lowering the cost of labour for
them (which is a legitimate interest for them), so make no mistake, what they
try to push politically in this case is certainly not in your interest.

------
kapauldo
I've heard this complaint many times about upwork. They step all over
freelancers and you are presumed guilty. Thanks for taking the time to write
this up and I hope people will heed your warning.

------
throwaway7312
From the employer side. We're a platinum employer on UpWork with probably
close to $100,000 spent on the platform and maybe 70 completed jobs. Tons of
reviews calling us one of the best employers on UpWork.

Right after oDesk merged with eLance to form UpWork, the platform rolled out
its new "job success" score and sidelined star ratings (which was how it'd
previously determined employer and contractor quality).

We typically hire multiple contractors to small test jobs, and let them know
these are test jobs. We then keep the best one or two on, and the rest we
thank for their work, give them a good review (assuming they at least tried),
and end the project.

In this case, right after UpWork rolled out its "job success rate" score, we
had a few trial freelancers we brought on who simply did not even start their
projects or respond to communications. So we ended those jobs and marked them
"unsuccessful."

Within maybe a week, I received a "letter from the principal"-type email from
UpWork letting me know that we had too many unsuccessful jobs and UpWork would
be monitoring our account to make sure we were following sound hiring
principles.

I assumed this was probably a situation where we had 3 job success ratings and
2 of them were unsuccessful, or something like this, since they'd just rolled
this out. Whereas we had something like 70 five star ratings (and a couple of
four star ratings) built up over the years.

I wrote to UpWork asking what this was about, pointing out that we have tons
of five star reviews and this job success thing was brand new, and we just got
a form letter back saying, in effect, "just be more careful."

So, now, we make every job "successful" when it ends, regardless how it ended,
and are very careful to end jobs in a cheerful way with freelancers and tell
them, "Okay! Job 5-starred and marked 'successful'!" in hopes they'll be
inclined to do the same. It's not about accurate information. It's about not
losing access to the platform.

We do hiring on other platforms as well. Guru, Freelancer, PeoplePerHour.
Freelancer and PPH are comparable to UpWork in terms of fees (UpWork's a
little bit higher). The PPH interface is pretty good; Freelancer's is not as
good, and the quality of contractors on Freelancer leaves something to be
desired compared to UpWork (though PPH is pretty good here too). Guru has
great contractors and its rates are almost half of UpWork's (12.5% instead of
22.5%), but its interface is something out of 2009 and employers aren't even
able to end their contracts with freelancers. It's just a downright byzantine
system to use.

So, like it or not, we seem stuck with UpWork for now, and UpWork can run a
crummier service than it used to in the oDesk days and charge twice as much
for it because, well, they're the only game in town, and that's the market
economy. We've moved what work we can off it (e.g., we use 99designs for
design stuff now, and have found some terrific contractors we've gone back to
repeatedly from them), but UpWork's still the best general place.

Maybe someone else will come along with a better service, cheaper. I kind of
hoped PPH would be that, but they charge comparable rates, so maybe that's
just what the market rate is for the middle man service between employers and
freelancers. Wish they'd plow some of the new capital into better tech though.
The new site design is worse than what it was before the upgrade, and often
gets stuck loading in the browser. Still better than Guru though.

~~~
vram22
Upwork rate is 22.5%? I think when it was Odesk (before merging with Elance)
it was 10% - last I checked, some time ago. And when Odesk started it was 30%,
IIRC.

~~~
phonon
It's 5%, 10% or 20% depending on the amount spent per contract. They also
charge a fee to the employer now for paying by credit card instead of ACH
(2.75%)

[https://www.upwork.com/blog/2016/05/upwork-
pricing/](https://www.upwork.com/blog/2016/05/upwork-pricing/)

I'm not against the changes overall (in my case, it will mean more money in
the pockets of the people I hire) but it seems to bias against contractors who
specialize in one-off smaller projects. IMHO anyone with a successful history
of doing that type of piecemeal work should still be charged a flat 10%.

~~~
vram22
Good point, there shouldn't be that bias.

------
anovikov
Sounds terrible. Absolutely disgusting.

Still, Upwork is an excellent mechanism for building professional network with
both customers and freelancers and should just be used wisely.

~~~
polotics
I disagree. My conclusion is that Upwork must be avoided at all costs. Anyway
discoverability is reached on Github and by blogging in this day and age,
Upwork is the remnant of a bygone era IMHO.

~~~
anovikov
Such a massive opinion against Upwork makes me also worry. It almost sounds
like i have to build other ways of reaching my customers as if too many people
feel like this, Upwork may go under.

Sorry you feel so bad guys. I made over a million bucks on Upwork and my
customers are happy, many work with me over years, and the only time i got in
serious trouble was actually the only time when i tried to trick my customer
myself, so i was entirely at fault.

