Yes, it absolutely can be. If you hire a designer, a lawyer, a builder, you probably don't do so via middlemen like Upwork. That hiring freelancers, freelance

Yes, it absolutely can be. If you hire a designer, a lawyer, a builder, you probably don't do so via middlemen like Upwork. That hiring freelancers, freelance developers in particular, often works differently is an outlier, not the norm. There are various reasons for this but it has something to do with development work being organised and its value being measured as if it were manual assembly line labour, i.e. it's often measured in terms of time spent instead of value created. It also has something to do with freelancers often saying something along the lines of "I'm just a developer. I just want to code.", thereby both shifting responsibility for their work to somebody else and not recognising the true value of their work. This needs to change. Freelancers need to take responsibility for their work (as in: "I'm not just two hands. I design and create solutions."). Clients on the other hand need to get out of the hourly mindset as well if they want to get real value instead of an anonymous commodity with the constant need for oversight.