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My company uses Upwork (as a services buyers) for hundreds of contracted hours per week, and have been for many years. We’ve never required any contractor to us
by zzaacchh 7y ago
My company uses Upwork (as a services buyers) for hundreds of contracted hours per week, and have been for many years. We’ve never required any contractor to use screen recording for hourly work — that is optional — and have never heard of anyone using a webcam. We’ve also never disputed a single hour of work that a contractor has billed, nor have we heard any of the dozens of contractors we’ve hired mention this as an issue.
I think you might be extrapolating from a single bad data point (never a good idea, especially for a data scientist) and reaching an incorrect conclusion about the Upwork ecosystem.
- Nextgrid 7y agoWhile I appreciate your perspective, I can imagine there’s a lot of people hiring that have zero idea how developers & data scientists work and think screen recording is a brilliant idea and thus insist on it. I’ve seen a lot of really shit job postings on Upwork & similar freelancing platforms that confirm the person posting the job has no idea of what they’re doing.
- zzaacchh 7y agoI imagine there could be employers who insist on this sort of thing screen monitoring (which sounds crazy to me) -- but the good thing about this marketplace is that contractors aren't forced into any particular contracts. If they don't like the terms with one buyer, they could "vote with their dollars" and work for another.
- atlasunshrugged 7y agoSecond this, I've been both a nontechnical and a somewhat less nontechnical buyer on Upwork. When I was more nontechnical before working for Gigster (freelance software dev marketplace), I would have said that screen recording is brilliant. After all, how could I trust someone who is doing work I don't understand? At least I can look at their screen and make sure they weren't on HN when they were billing me :) Somewhat less nontechnical me knows better now, but if I didn't have any idea how to hire still, there's a good chance I would be one of those bad buyers.
- data4lyfe 7y agoIf Upwork will disqualify you for payment for not fulfilling a set of rules in a rather than look into the source of the dispute as a misunderstanding from a completion, I find that in bad faith and a terrible customer support experience.
- telesilla 7y agoI also have a high rate of success with Upwork for freelancers, from designers to developers, however I believe their recent changes, for example to charging to invite more than 3 candidates, is going to cause many to look elsewhere. They are increasing fees and decreasing usability. I'm open to new options.
- ilaksh 7y agoI used to work on Upwork and almost all of the projects required screen logging. I think this was before there was any webcam thing in it.
- lacampbell 7y agoYou registered in 2012 and thought you'd use your first ever post - 9 years later - to defend Upwork?