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Some people, freelancers as well as clients and those middlemen that are unfortunately very common in this market, seem to fundamentally misunderstand what a fr

Some people, freelancers as well as clients and those middlemen that are unfortunately very common in this market, seem to fundamentally misunderstand what a freelancer or contractor is. Freelancing is not some alternative form of employment that allows you to conveniently dispense with social security costs. A freelancer is a self-employed service provider. Like with any other kind of self-employment you’re responsible for your marketing, sales and for reasonably insuring yourself against calamities that might happen in life. If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame. The same applies if you act irresponsibly in terms of finance, e.g. by spending all your income before costs and taxes are taken care of (if you have a problem with that Profit First is a great framework to help you). That said it’s well-known that the software industry is overly dependent on mostly useless middlemen like Freelancer.com . So, perhaps it’s quite understandable if you turn to them when you start out. You should always be aware however that they’re neither your insurance nor your employer. They don’t protect you. They just take a cut from your hard-earned money. They want you to commoditise yourself by solely defining yourself in terms of a bunch of TLAs because those ‘profiles’ are easier to sell. The sooner you extricate yourself from that dependency the better. Putting all your eggs in one basket like the review suggests the author did is recklessly negligent.

opmac 9y ago
Classic victim blaming. What you say is mostly true, but it completely glosses over the potential issues raised by this post. So what if the author made a mistake about using Freelancer.com? That doesn't change the fact that what Freelancer is _supposedly_ doing here is incredibly shady and they should be held accountable. The only real issue I have with the author's post is there are a lot of details missing. What did you do to step on the toes? Where are these chat logs? I can't assume that Freelancer is 100% in the wrong here without proper evidence and at least hearing their point of view. That being said, the author is using this as review a platform to raise attention to a potentially serious issue, and there should be no reason to immediately blame him with "sorry, it's your fault for using Freelancer to begin with... good luck."
- wpietri 9y ago
  Does anybody have a theory as to why victim-blaming is such a popular response on HN? I don't see it nearly as much elsewhere.
  - AsyncAwait 9y ago
    It's probably simply to boost one's ego, every time one of these posts brings up how you should've been more 'responsible', it occurs to me that they're trying to shake their own failing of a similar nature from their past.
  - Casseres 9y ago
    I think that smarter people are more likely to victim-blame because it's harder to imagine themselves falling victim to whatever situation. For most problems, they seem like they could have been easily prevented by either being more knowledgeable about the situation or thinking things through beforehand. After reading a lot of the discussions here, and considering that most of us are here for the pursuit of knowledge, my guess is that the community here represents more of the right side of the bell curve.
    - watwut 9y ago
      I don't think inability to imagine bad luck or own mistake is proof of intelligence. It is proof of ego or arrogance or an attempt to mask I security. Smart people made mistakes in the past, smart people can imagine situations where they become victims (whether by own fault or not). Some smart people do have inability to imagine themselves in other people's shoose - but dumb people are often similarly disabled
      - wool_gather 9y ago
        You're right, it's a one-sided kind of intelligence. Maybe what Casseres said would be better phrased "people who are proud of being smart". The fact that it's one-sided smarts, the fact that one is probably not as smart as one thinks, and the ability to imagine another person's shoes, are all life lessons that may click into place at different times for different people.
jimnotgym 9y ago
Another one of those 'blame the victim' responses. I work in an SME with more than 100 employees and I outsource legal work, HR work, payroll, tax accounting, property maintenance, web design, recruitment, marketing and lots of IT. Outsourcing specialisms to third parties is as old a society. A fundamental feature of our western democracies is a secure legal framework that means that I can use an agent and I can hold them responsible. When people don't pay, you can take them to court and recover that money. For some reason there is this idea that it is OK for Valley tech companies to work around that and use their size to fleece customers. It isn't, and it's going to catch up with them. Traditional contracting agencies do this for me at the moment. I call them up and I ask for x work to be done, they find people, reference their work (or know them already). I pay the agency, they pay the contractor. The contractor gets to concentrate on their day job rather than marketing and sales. Most of them seem to use a third-party to do their bookkeeping and tax too. This is how long term contracts work, why should it not be OK for short-term ones? Or projects?
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  If all a contractor focuses on is her day job how is that different from traditional employment? Being able to focus on your day job while leaving everything else to another party is what employment is for. I'm all in favour of outsourcing the work that you're not good at or that's not part of your core business. However, in my opinion as a software development freelancer marketing and sales is a key part of your business. Nobody understands better what your services are or how exactly you can help your clients. It's ok to outsource some of that work like cold-calling (if that works for your business), newsletter management etc. but defining and communicating the core value you bring to the table should never be outsourced. You specifically mentioned legal work and tax accounting. Those roles traditionally aren't marketed through middlemen simply because lawyers and tax accountants generally are considered to be independent professionals.
  - jimnotgym 9y ago
    There are two things confused here. Lots of people go contracting in the UK because 1) You can earn more. A company will pay more as it can ditch the person at the end of the contract, when it is not a core competency of the firm. 2) There are tax benefits 3) When you contract is over you get a change of scenery Many of those always contract through an agency What you are describing is more like someone trying to start their own agency/practice. That is quite different and sales would be a big part of that. > Those roles traditionally aren't marketed through middlemen simply because lawyers and tax accountants generally are considered to be independent professionals. Your point that I was answering was that the contractor is outsourcing some services to the 'middlemen', not using a middleman to find those services You are also not exactly right about accountants and lawyers. They join partnerships and associations exactly so they can get work from the practice and use their shared admin facilities. A barrister in the UK is a tenant of his chambers and the clerks get the work and the barrister has fees deducted for this service. This is exactly so they can concentrate on their day job.
scriptproof 9y ago
Maybe the OP was expecting something else than a string of blames and moral lessons in his situation. You are definitively an asshole.
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  You might not believe it - me being an asshole after all - but I do feel sorry for the author. The best he probably can (and from his writing likely does) expect from this on a personal level is to have learned a valuable lesson and to serve as cautionary tale for others to not fall in the same trap. He likely has little in the way of legal recourse but he'd have to consult with a lawyer for that anyway.
  - gexla 9y ago
    I'm also an asshole because I was downvoted heavy for the same sort of stand. As with any business, he needs to realize this isn't working and move on to something else. If he's staring at the possibility of being homeless after 5 years on this platform, then something isn't working and he will need major change so that the next 5 years doesn't end with the same results. Running a business requires a certain management capability. At #1 on the list of financial bullets which can take you down is medical expenses. If you're writing a to-do list and there's a pack of wolves ransacking your house, then that problem should be at the top of your list. This guy got cleaned out by medical expenses. He didn't mention anything beyond the money, so I assume that the injury wasn't a major barrier to work. He had savings, but he probably didn't have medical insurance. That's a major fail. If you're going into business dressed up like an employee, then prepare to be a victim. If you go into business fully expecting to run a business, then your #1 priority is business survival. There are no victims in business survival stories, only funerals.
- dang 9y ago
  Personal attacks like this are not allowed on HN and will get your account banned, regardless of whether another comment was self-righteous or had other negative qualities. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this again.
jmilloy 9y ago
> If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame. This statement is objectively false. If you do you own marketing, sales, etc, then you have yourself to blame. If you outsource them, then you have the entity to blame. If a company claims to provide those things and fails, then harsh criticism is warranted. Maybe you meant that if you expect those responsibilities to be handled by a middleman than doesn't actually claim to offer them, then you have yourself to blame?
ryanmarsh 9y ago
Freelancer.com is a market maker. “Buyer beware” doesn’t apply.
bkanber 9y ago
Some people, consumers as well as producers and those middlemen that are unfortunately very common in all markets, seem to fundamentally misunderstand what an individual's relationship to global society is. Grocery shopping is not some alternative form of agriculture that allows you to conveniently dispense with food security costs. Like with anything else, you're responsible for your own food sourcing, production, horticulture, security, and for reasonably insuring yourself against calamities that might happen in life. If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame. The same applies if you act irresponsibly in terms of health, eg by getting sick right before harvest season. That said, it's well-known that all humans are overly dependent on middlemen like big agriculture, farm subsidies, commodities traders, shipping and logistics providers, supermarket chains, etc. So perhaps it's understandable if you turn to them when you start out. You should always be aware however that you're on your own. They don't protect you. They just take a cut from your hard earned money. The sooner you extricate yourself from that dependency the better. Putting all your eggs in one global society is recklessly negligent. ---- My point is, we have a social contract here. Don't victim blame. Some unforeseen circumstance, like food supply shortage, could turn something you never expected to be a problem into something that kills you.

opmac 9y ago

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

wpietri 9y ago
Does anybody have a theory as to why victim-blaming is such a popular response on HN? I don't see it nearly as much elsewhere.
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  It's probably simply to boost one's ego, every time one of these posts brings up how you should've been more 'responsible', it occurs to me that they're trying to shake their own failing of a similar nature from their past.
- Casseres 9y ago
  I think that smarter people are more likely to victim-blame because it's harder to imagine themselves falling victim to whatever situation. For most problems, they seem like they could have been easily prevented by either being more knowledgeable about the situation or thinking things through beforehand. After reading a lot of the discussions here, and considering that most of us are here for the pursuit of knowledge, my guess is that the community here represents more of the right side of the bell curve.
  - watwut 9y ago
    I don't think inability to imagine bad luck or own mistake is proof of intelligence. It is proof of ego or arrogance or an attempt to mask I security. Smart people made mistakes in the past, smart people can imagine situations where they become victims (whether by own fault or not). Some smart people do have inability to imagine themselves in other people's shoose - but dumb people are often similarly disabled
    - wool_gather 9y ago
      You're right, it's a one-sided kind of intelligence. Maybe what Casseres said would be better phrased "people who are proud of being smart". The fact that it's one-sided smarts, the fact that one is probably not as smart as one thinks, and the ability to imagine another person's shoes, are all life lessons that may click into place at different times for different people.

jimnotgym 9y ago

Another one of those 'blame the victim' responses. I work in an SME with more than 100 employees and I outsource legal work, HR work, payroll, tax accounting, property maintenance, web design, recruitment, marketing and lots of IT. Outsourcing specialisms to third parties is as old a society. A fundamental feature of our western democracies is a secure legal framework that means that I can use an agent and I can hold them responsible. When people don't pay, you can take them to court and recover that money. For some reason there is this idea that it is OK for Valley tech companies to work around that and use their size to fleece customers. It isn't, and it's going to catch up with them. Traditional contracting agencies do this for me at the moment. I call them up and I ask for x work to be done, they find people, reference their work (or know them already). I pay the agency, they pay the contractor. The contractor gets to concentrate on their day job rather than marketing and sales. Most of them seem to use a third-party to do their bookkeeping and tax too. This is how long term contracts work, why should it not be OK for short-term ones? Or projects?

BjoernKW 9y ago
If all a contractor focuses on is her day job how is that different from traditional employment? Being able to focus on your day job while leaving everything else to another party is what employment is for. I'm all in favour of outsourcing the work that you're not good at or that's not part of your core business. However, in my opinion as a software development freelancer marketing and sales is a key part of your business. Nobody understands better what your services are or how exactly you can help your clients. It's ok to outsource some of that work like cold-calling (if that works for your business), newsletter management etc. but defining and communicating the core value you bring to the table should never be outsourced. You specifically mentioned legal work and tax accounting. Those roles traditionally aren't marketed through middlemen simply because lawyers and tax accountants generally are considered to be independent professionals.
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  There are two things confused here. Lots of people go contracting in the UK because 1) You can earn more. A company will pay more as it can ditch the person at the end of the contract, when it is not a core competency of the firm. 2) There are tax benefits 3) When you contract is over you get a change of scenery Many of those always contract through an agency What you are describing is more like someone trying to start their own agency/practice. That is quite different and sales would be a big part of that. > Those roles traditionally aren't marketed through middlemen simply because lawyers and tax accountants generally are considered to be independent professionals. Your point that I was answering was that the contractor is outsourcing some services to the 'middlemen', not using a middleman to find those services You are also not exactly right about accountants and lawyers. They join partnerships and associations exactly so they can get work from the practice and use their shared admin facilities. A barrister in the UK is a tenant of his chambers and the clerks get the work and the barrister has fees deducted for this service. This is exactly so they can concentrate on their day job.

scriptproof 9y ago

Maybe the OP was expecting something else than a string of blames and moral lessons in his situation. You are definitively an asshole.

BjoernKW 9y ago
You might not believe it - me being an asshole after all - but I do feel sorry for the author. The best he probably can (and from his writing likely does) expect from this on a personal level is to have learned a valuable lesson and to serve as cautionary tale for others to not fall in the same trap. He likely has little in the way of legal recourse but he'd have to consult with a lawyer for that anyway.
- gexla 9y ago
  I'm also an asshole because I was downvoted heavy for the same sort of stand. As with any business, he needs to realize this isn't working and move on to something else. If he's staring at the possibility of being homeless after 5 years on this platform, then something isn't working and he will need major change so that the next 5 years doesn't end with the same results. Running a business requires a certain management capability. At #1 on the list of financial bullets which can take you down is medical expenses. If you're writing a to-do list and there's a pack of wolves ransacking your house, then that problem should be at the top of your list. This guy got cleaned out by medical expenses. He didn't mention anything beyond the money, so I assume that the injury wasn't a major barrier to work. He had savings, but he probably didn't have medical insurance. That's a major fail. If you're going into business dressed up like an employee, then prepare to be a victim. If you go into business fully expecting to run a business, then your #1 priority is business survival. There are no victims in business survival stories, only funerals.
dang 9y ago
Personal attacks like this are not allowed on HN and will get your account banned, regardless of whether another comment was self-righteous or had other negative qualities. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this again.

jmilloy 9y ago

> If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame. This statement is objectively false. If you do you own marketing, sales, etc, then you have yourself to blame. If you outsource them, then you have the entity to blame. If a company claims to provide those things and fails, then harsh criticism is warranted. Maybe you meant that if you expect those responsibilities to be handled by a middleman than doesn't actually claim to offer them, then you have yourself to blame?

ryanmarsh 9y ago

Freelancer.com is a market maker. “Buyer beware” doesn’t apply.

bkanber 9y ago

Some people, consumers as well as producers and those middlemen that are unfortunately very common in all markets, seem to fundamentally misunderstand what an individual's relationship to global society is. Grocery shopping is not some alternative form of agriculture that allows you to conveniently dispense with food security costs. Like with anything else, you're responsible for your own food sourcing, production, horticulture, security, and for reasonably insuring yourself against calamities that might happen in life. If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame. The same applies if you act irresponsibly in terms of health, eg by getting sick right before harvest season. That said, it's well-known that all humans are overly dependent on middlemen like big agriculture, farm subsidies, commodities traders, shipping and logistics providers, supermarket chains, etc. So perhaps it's understandable if you turn to them when you start out. You should always be aware however that you're on your own. They don't protect you. They just take a cut from your hard earned money. The sooner you extricate yourself from that dependency the better. Putting all your eggs in one global society is recklessly negligent. ---- My point is, we have a social contract here. Don't victim blame. Some unforeseen circumstance, like food supply shortage, could turn something you never expected to be a problem into something that kills you.