Just as a contrasting datapoint, I use Upwork a lot as a client, and I've found a lot of good contractors on there. I agree with you that the platform itself is

Just as a contrasting datapoint, I use Upwork a lot as a client, and I've found a lot of good contractors on there. I agree with you that the platform itself is terrible and seems to succeed in spite of itself, but it's worked well enough for my needs. I've hired cartoonists[0], editors[1], writers[2], accountants, and developers. I had the worst luck with developers because, as you say, the ratings are meaningless. They have the lemon problem[3] that good developers won't really work for $15/hr, but there are also bad developers who charge $125/hr. But to evaluate whether a developer is good or bad, you generally have to invest 10-15 hours with them. So a string of expensive bad matches can cost you $5-10k in trial hires just to find a decent developer. I think other tasks are easier to hire for because costs are lower and the outputs are more easily inspectable. [0] https://mtlynch.io/how-to-hire-a-cartoonist/ https://mtlynch.io/how-to-hire-a-cartoonist/ [1] https://mtlynch.io/editor/ https://mtlynch.io/editor/ [2] https://mtlynch.io/hiring-content-writers/ https://mtlynch.io/hiring-content-writers/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons