You're certainly right that the systems in use by Upwork and others are currently skewed in favor of @techcompany, but does that necessarily mean that it has to

You're certainly right that the systems in use by Upwork and others are currently skewed in favor of @techcompany, but does that necessarily mean that it has to be this way? In my career I had plenty situations where I would have loved to be able to be more transparent without putting so much effort into it. Documenting one's work at the end of the day is valuable, annotating screenshots to do it sounds like a great workflow for it. Using this to negotiate higher rates because you delve into territory that usually is more expensive as its very specialized know-how? I immediately come to think of two gigs of the past where I probably could have made this work. What I don't understand is your latter point of view. Why is lack of control something a freelancer has? I'd see this completely the other way around. I can basically end a freelancers contract on very short notice, negotiate all kinds of special needs into his contract, with an employee I have much less freedom in that matter and a much higher incentive to make it work, meaning more lack of fine-grained control of the employee versus a freelancer.