I believe software is a market for lemons (1). You don't know what quality you will get so on places like Upwork people are not prepared to pay much. Even though there's a shortage of developers, it's almost impossible to find freelance work, and there's plenty of people exploiting those who work basically for free just to get a good rep. And at the same time there's people paying outrageous prices eg $100,000 for a simple web site.
