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https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211064098-Log-Time-with-the-Desktop-App https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211064098-Log-T... > It’s eas

• tmikaeld 6y ago
  Used to be optional, so the client could require this or not. Yeah, if you take a job on Upwork, you'll never be able to do work with that freelancer off-site ever. It seems they actually enforce this too, I've read of many that's been either banned on suspicion.
  • tluyben2 6y ago
    > Yeah, if you take a job on Upwork, you'll never be able to do work with that freelancer off-site ever. Why? That happens often a lot. There is not too much that can be done against it I think. I like the ease of hiring people and not having to do paperwork, so I see little reason, but I do know companies which do it a lot and have not been banned.
  • Hard_Space 6y ago
    Not so. My biggest long-term client started with me on Upwork. We did three projects and then moved away to dealing directly. Upwork may have tightened its T&Cs since then, so that a kind of 'Eye of Sauron' clause applies, though I'm not sure it would stand a legal wrangle.
• sergiotapia 6y ago
  As someone who worked on Upwork for a long time and literally owe them my career, it was great and I would do it again in a heartbeat. A long time ago I made a living on that platform exclusively. Thanks to Upwork I got to work with US clients and save enough money to migrate back home to the US with my wife and children. By using their time tracker I was guaranteed to get paid for work, they take the doubt out of the equation. Track time and you will get paid. It was 100% a worthy trade-off for me. The results speak for themselves. Now today I have no idea what the platform is like. I haven't worked there for in quite some time.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • Nextgrid 6y ago
    Presumably you went in early when the platform was still decent. I tried it in ~2013 and again recently and it's a shit-show. There's no quality control on the demand side so you waste hours sifting through crap like unreasonably low rates or unclear/nonsense requirements, then spend ages writing a proposal just to be outbid by some Indian sweatshop because the rating system has been gamed to death and there's nothing to weed out low-quality suppliers. Maybe it's good enough if you want to compete with third-world, bottom of the barrel developers and can afford to live on that, but otherwise you'd make more money on average just working at your local fast food joint.
    • sergiotapia 6y ago
      That was not my experience working up until 2016. My rates at their lowest was $45/hr. Double or more towards the end.
• Gustomaximus 6y ago
  I use a client like this for new freelancers/employees that are working full time or larger jobs. It is intrusive but 100% is needed for some people or they take the piss. I'm too busy to follow their workload and sit there estimating times of jobs match hours. I check it one a week for ~10min to see hours logged per day and quick random to check its not loads of time wasting. It feels intrusive but there is little difference than people walking past someone in an open plan office + they can turn it off anytime they want to do personal. For me I see this as really useful for managing Jr remotes. And personally would have no issue running it if I was working remote. I think the pain points would be more about how management use it, and in its worse its little different from having a micro manager in a on-site office experience.
  • seanwilson 6y ago
    There isn't a way you could track results instead of the time they're sitting in front of the computer? That way you don't waste time micromanaging and the freelancer is rewarded for working smarter rather than longer. With time tracking, the freelancer earns less if they find shortcuts and you'd probably rather the work was finished sooner rather than later so the incentives are all mixed up.
    • Gustomaximus 6y ago
      Not really. We do a really wide range of jobs and its too time consuming to dive into the detail of peoples work. Many people are taking this like its some micromanagement its my job to watch them but its literally the opposite. I can quickly check in for 5/10min every week or so and see that things are working. The alternative would be hours of reviewing tasks and output. And this quick check saves me a bucket of time + I leave them alone to do their thing if all seems good. I do get why people dont like it. I was quite hesitant to bring it in originally but I've found it a really useful tool for the way and employee structure of how our business works.
  • randomchars 6y ago
    > little difference than people walking past someone in an open plan office > in its worse its little different from having a micro manager in a on-site office experience That itself is a pretty horrible thing, and I'm glad I don't have to work for people like you.
• NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  How do they record your thinking time, do they take a brain snapshot?! As writing new code represents 30% of all time...
  • tluyben2 6y ago
    Not on these platforms; keystrokes and screenshots. It's a horrible thing, but on the flip side, of course many people who hire get screwed by people doing nothing but charging a lot for it. I cannot work on upwork as I ponder problems before I solve them; I can have quite large amounts of time without keystrokes or my laptop might be asleep. I would refuse it anyway if it was required though.
    • Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      That's the point I was asked in late 1999 to sort out a show stopper problem at one of the exbibits at the millennium dome. Took me about 2/3 of a day but only about an hour of programming the rest was spent thinking and sketching out the problem and test cases on paper. Program ran first time and ran with 100% uptime for the duration
  • hippich 6y ago
    Desktop logging is mostly used for hourly projects. I think it is possible (or used to be) to use logging for fixed projects as well, but there is little value here. For what you describe, hourly billing will not work anyway. Some kind of fixed type of payment, or perhaps retainer + hourly billing for actual typing/research would be more appropriate. I think, both can be setup on Upwork (as two separate projects)
• firechickenbird 6y ago
  As far as I know, monitoring like this is illegal everywhere in Europe
  • orangepanda 6y ago
    Source? There are products especially for europe that do monitoring like this.
    • edumucelli 6y ago
      The remote work law in the European Union is here https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM:c10131 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM... The specific article in question is: * "If any kind of monitoring system is put in place, it needs to be proportionate to the objective and introduced in accordance with Directive 90/270 on visual display units;" It is legal but there is a big "if" in there.
      • atleta 6y ago
        Also, it makes a lot of difference whether you are an employee or a subcontractor. These laws protect the employees. It's actually explicitly specified in this document as well: in the context of an employment contract/relationship,
    • hef19898 6y ago
      A lot of stuff is more or less illegal. Especially in employment, as long as nobody sues, nobody cares. And which freelancer would sue? Or which employee, as far as that's concerned? And even if, worst case is a small fine for the employer. Unfortunately.
      • consp 6y ago
        IANAL but isn't a breach of privacy a criminal law thing and all the other stuff civil? In that case it is also a thing for agencies to check up on or to prosecute even if there is no real harm. I'm talking about illegal activity here not the legal which is, as already stated, sometimes allowed.
• Jommi 6y ago
  If you don't do this as a quality worker, you're basically subsidizing for those that on purpose try to do lower quality work.
  • Teever 6y ago
    If you do this as any kind of worker you're basically enabling a hellish dystopian panopticon future.
  • onion2k 6y ago
    That assumes that the quality of your work is tied to the amount of time you're actively using your computer. Time making notes in a notepad, or thinking while you walk around, or having a work-based conversation with someone, or mapping something out on a whiteboard adds to the quality of an application. Heck, I've often found that taking a break to read HN or make a cup of coffee or even watch a YT video results in me figuring out what's causing a bug in some code. Apparently my subconscious is great at debugging. The converse is true too. I've worked with people who actively code for 8 hours and yet have produced very little usable code at the end of the day. They needed 8 hours to do what a better developer could do in a couple of hours. You can't judge the quality of a developer's work by looking at how much time they spend in their IDE.
    • Jommi 6y ago
      Isnt the tool more looking at what the dev is doing rather than timing?
• input_sh 6y ago
  Precisely why I only negotiated fixed price projects.
  • EugeneOZ 6y ago
    And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price contracts. Find someone else for this hell.
    • seanwilson 6y ago
      > And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price contracts. Find someone else for this hell. Can you explain why you think this? Courses/books on freelancing I've looked at generally strongly advise getting away from hourly, so it's interesting how both extremes of this advice exist. My hypothesis is a lot of freelancers get burned on their first projects because there's a learning curving in controlling scope creep, charging enough, identify client red flags, not haven't enough potential clients to be picky etc. and react by switching to hourly only.
      • EugeneOZ 6y ago
        My first project was 16 years ago. I’ve switched to freelance 8 years ago. So your assumption that I’m just a crying kid who can not manage his time is offensive. I’ll give you a hint: think how a client can abuse this.
      • tluyben2 6y ago
        Hourly works really well if you do the admin in enough detail. Try to agree, on paper, about number of hours per period as you can. And that then actually makes it into 'sprints' of fixed price. I used to send over an email at least weekly with; 'X is going to take me at least 35 hours, are you ok with that?'. Of course X has to be small enough to not overshoot by a massive amount of hours and also you cannot trigger the 'at least' too often. Outside that, it works well, as there is a trace of agreed-upon hours, which helped me a lot when going over 'fulltime'. If the client asked me why 'I charged too much', I simply showed them the emails they agreed to, tallying up to 90 hours instead of 40 I would charge under the contract. But yeah, this 'screen monitoring' definitely doesn't work for me, so I would never agree to it; in that case fixed price is simpler.
• f8 6y ago
  I work full-time and get monitored like this. Ever hear of Hubstaff? It's an unfortunate reality for some remote workers and I don't agree with it but it happens. There can be an inherent distrust from employers when they're unable to see you physically working. It's more of an assurance thing, but I've gotten used to working exclusively in VM's.
  • mdocherty 6y ago
    Where do you work?
    • cpach 6y ago
      There are probably lots of companies like this. Fortunately there are also lots of other companies who trust their coworkers!
  • antonzabirko 6y ago
    Name company please
    • yolo3000 6y ago
      Crossover is an example of this - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/06/workplace-surveillance-big-brother-technology https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/06/workplace-surv...
    • curryst 6y ago
      Glassdoor should add a field for whether the company uses software like that.
  • 3np 6y ago
    While I think it's stupid and would never dream of going in that direction with my staff (the most talented would probably bolt fast), in principle I see nothing wrong with it as long as: 1) The employer has paid for all necessary hardware 2) If anything goes through third-party services, I can work on the tracked environment in a way that doesn't expose my personal information in any way (e.g. I shouldn't be required to open my e-mail inbox or any other online accound not strictly tied to my employment there) 3) The employer accepts the time wasted on any friction with moving information back and forth (and/or sees to minimize need for that) If it means running a VM, up any workstation with 16GB RAM.
• godmode2019 6y ago
  What's next, brainwave scanners that only pay you for hours that has atleast 20% gamma wavelength.
  • nicbou 6y ago
    And I thought Snow Crash was far-fetched...
  • lpellis 6y ago
    Well, if you believe this article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7634705/Chinese-school-makes-pupils-wear-brain-scanning-headbands-class-ensure-pay-attention.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7634705/Chinese-sch...
  • Frost1x 6y ago
    If there's a way to reduce costs, it will be done. This is why we have laws to protect baseline rights because they would otherwise be whittled away to nothing.
  • sitkack 6y ago
    Dammit Jim, we could have sold that to a SPAC after we got the boards designed on UpWork.
  • hertzrat 6y ago
    I knew somebody working on an employee brain wave startup once, except it was to monitor (and help with) stress. My readings would probably be pretty high just from having to wear the thing
  • FireBeyond 6y ago
    https://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/memo-from-fedland.html https://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/memo-from-fedland.html
• baxtr 6y ago
  It also depends on how the client wants to steer a freelancer. I had one freelancer charging less than I was expecting. So I asked him why and he said, that the monitoring makes his machine unstable so he wouldn't log all the time he worked on the project. I told him to log the hours manually. And the problem was solved. Because, on Upwork, the client can decide whether or not the freelancer is allowed to put in hours manually. What I am trying to say is: it's an option that you don't have to use.
• admissionsguy 6y ago
  > Is all this just taking advantage of freelancers who don't know how to market themselves, or am I missing something? It is, sadly. Same with e.g. Toptal, they charge clients $100 for my work and pay me $50-$60, which is still higher than any clients I can find myself. It is frustrating to know they are capturing such a big fraction of my worth to the client just because they talk to the right people and I don't, but it's what it is.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • ethbr0 6y ago
    Standard consulting billable hourly to salary is about 3x. But that's accounting for <100% utilization as well. So ~2x for work performed doesn't seem that outside industry norms, assuming the platform is delivering value and not just matchmaking.
• f6v 6y ago
  Imagine proving content services. The competition is so fierce, you have no choice. Especially if you live somewhere outside Southeast Asia. Someone from Philippines can work for 7$/hr, and you can’t.
• rdevsrex 6y ago
  Well, when you first start out, it's not like you always have that many choices. I started working with clients on Upwork because I couldn't get any full time programming jobs at a company, but I could get contracts on Upwork. And the way they've set it up is if you use the Dekstop app you get paid even if there is a dispute, but if you don't, you might not get paid. So again, it's not like I wanted it this way, but it's that or potentially be out of work or loose money in a dispute.
  • DigitalSea 6y ago
    Precisely this. When I first started out, it was freelancer.com which eventually went down the path of molecular type tracking. It's invasive and people don't want to pay you what you're worth, but you do it for the experience and to build up a feedback profile to bolster your credibility. The feedback is what you work for, what you tolerate the poor payment for unrealistic work in return. Without it, you can't grow on these platforms and the people bidding for cheap labour know this and use it to their advantage. Platforms like Upwork all but encourage exploitation through fear, the lowest common denominator always wins.
    • hertzrat 6y ago
      Sounds better, when possible, to just avoid platforms like that
  • atleta 6y ago
    This is interesting. I usually advise beginners NOT to start freelancing before they get some experience with a full time job at a company (preferably a non-remote/on-site position). If the market starts to push people into the other direction, that will, I think, further decrease the chances of any client getting their project finished. And I definitely don't mean this as a critique towards you. (If I want to be honest, I've first tried freelancing/remoting after 3 months of FT work, which wasn't even really coding.) But quite a lot of these engagements end in poor quality results or simply fail. I've talked to a lot of people, non-tech clients, for whom it didn't work out. And obviously the reason is that they have no idea how to manage such a project, how to pick a good candidate (both wrt to technical skills AND management/self-management/product management skills). I.e. they don't know what they need. Now a bit more experienced developers will more often (though far from always!) at least have an idea how to work with a client, how to push back on stupid requests, how to actually manage the project AND the client. Because sometimes clients will come up with or slowly navigate themselves towards modes of operations that actually make a good outcome a lot less likely. And the end result is that they spend too much to get too little and the freelancer works too much to get too little. One symptom is wanting to monitor the desktop of the developer. That shows that whoever thinks they can resolve a dispute this way have no idea about software development, they can't judge and understand whether they are getting adequate value for their money, so they resort to something that they understand (standing behind the shoulder of the person they pay). But which unfortunately doesn't work. And how it makes things worse: e.g. they scare away the more experienced guys. A similar fallacy is being anal about deadlines and fixed costs. Again, a surefire way to shoot yourself in the foot.
• sdevonoes 6y ago
  > Is all this just taking advantage of freelancers who don't know how to market themselves, or am I missing something? I discarded UpWork precisely because of this.
• staticelf 6y ago
  I totally agree with your arguments, I would rather live in a fucking shed in the forest than to sell out my privacy like that. Also it seems ridicolously easy to game, just buy a seperate upwork computer and when you go afk, just leave the right program open.
  • unnouinceput 6y ago
    Upwork is even easier to game it than that. use a virtual machine, do the "work" there and minimize it while you play games or whatnot. But in the end is not about true surveillance, it's about liability in case of disputes between client and freelancer. Source: I work as freelancer on Upwork for 13 years now, only hourly projects and always with their desktop app turned on.
• DeusExMachina 6y ago
  FWIW, I have been hiring freelancers on UpWork for some years and I never looked at those work diaries even once. I only check the output of each person.
• EugeneOZ 6y ago
  I work 8 years on Upwork and I only work with this feature. Initially, I was hostile to it, but later one “accident” helped me to realize the whole purpose of this feature: disputes. When client don't want to pay, they have 2 ways: 1) just don't put the money to the bound card account, or don't pay the bill; 2) try to say that the freelancer wasn't working. In both cases, screenshots are the protection for a freelancer. In the first case, Upwork just pays you their own money. In the second case, you have huge evidence that will help you in the dispute. About micro-management: in 99.9% of cases clients don’t check the screenshots. I saw how it works from both sides. Also, in 8 years I had 1 client who turned off the option of tracking time manually (you don’t get payment protection for manually tracked time, so you only do this when you trust your client). In comparison to never-ending hell in the fixed-price contracts, per-hour payment is the most comfortable way to work.
• m12k 6y ago
  Agreed, if a company trusts me little enough to want to constantly monitor me like that, they trust me little enough that they shouldn't hire me in the first place.
• hellbannedguy 6y ago
  We need to put a stop to all electronic surveillance. Cheap tech/software is making it appear everywhere. It’s just going to get more pervasive in the future. I already feel like the wealthy are watching us everywhere. I would like to see most electronic monitoring made illegal. I think we need to set up laws over employer monitoring, even having cameras at work for any reason, even for loss prevention. If they decide they need to bring us in—so be it. If an employer doesn’t think you pull your weight, they can fire. All public, police electronic, license plate scanners, including ankle brackets, and alcohol monitors should be illegal. Yes—even alcohol monitors. Go back to “If he passed the field sobriety test” let him go. In certain rare situations, a blood test could be obtained. In my county, Marin County, I’m pretty convinced most DUI’s are marginal, and give our officers something to do? (Yes—I see you cops on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard salivating for something to put on your shift reports, especially after 10 pm. Don’t bother driving through Marin County after 10 pm, especially if your drive an old car, or had a glass of wine at dinner. Sorry—I walk at night, and have been seeing way to many traffic stops. I know one know my neighborhood, but I bet they are seeing the same in their neighborhoods.) I would like to see all cameras in public settings removed. I would even put back the Toll Takers. All this cheap tech, and surveillance will just get worse in the future. We got by for decades without it? We seemed to have a better society back then for the most part? Worried about security, hire a Security Guard? Worried about ethics/morality of your hires, maybe show up in church, or set an example for your employees? The only form of surveillance I was excited about was Police Cams, but most are easily disabled by the officer. The only worth while video seems like it from a passerby who has a phone? I don’t want to get into a big debate, but feel like we are at a point where the we are all being watched/photographed way too much. To all the nervous nellies out there, whom believe surveillance makes society safer/better; everyone has a nice camera at their fingertips.
  • matz1 6y ago
    electronic monitoring is just a tools, it can be use for good or bad, it would be sucks if that made illegal, I would certainly oppose it. What you want to prevent or make illegal is the usage of electronic monitoring that is harmful, not electronic monitoring itself.
  • 6y ago
• Bombthecat 6y ago
  This would be highly illegal in greensand... Wonder if they even offer service here?
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I signed up for Upwork, a couple of years ago. I knew a few people that had used the platform to hire freelancers, and they raved about it. I never got even one legit lead. Not one. I did, however, get quite a few scammers. One was quite scary. It was a local person, with a crazy project proposal, that kept trying to get me to meet them in person, in remote locations. I nuked my Upwork account, months ago. Even though I hadn’t been on it for months, I would still get occasional scammer contacts. Most were pretty transparent. They didn’t make much effort to hide what they were about. Basically 419 approach. Cofounders has been similar, but scammers try to get me to contact them outside of the system, and Cofounders has been quite responsive to my reports. I have kept my Cofounders account, as I have received legit contacts (none of which have panned out, but that’s the nature of the beast). I did try TopTal, a couple of years ago, but that didn’t work out. I won’t get into it, but I don’t think we’re a particularly good “fit.” Just a few days ago, I had to report a scammer on LinkedIn that had declared themselves to be one of my employees. It took LI three days to do anything, and they never acknowledged my increasingly frantic reports. Like so many of these types of outfits, they provide no way to establish a way to actually contact people. You just have these one-way, opaque “Report” buttons, with no acks. Scammers are very clever. I expect them to game this quite quickly. It’s bad times. I pine for the “good ol’ days,” when there was some Honor to be found, but there’s no putting the candy back in that piñata.
  • Softcadbury 6y ago
    Can you say more about what these scammers want? Do they want you to work for them for free?
    • 7800 6y ago
      That’s what I’ve heard. They may lead you on to keep you on the hook in case they need you without even getting work from you. This isn’t really a scam; it’s just about them wasting your time. And there are so many suckers that they can be picky about who they do this to. If you really want to freelance or have a startup, you have to be able to differentiate these people from legit opportunities. That can be extremely difficult; someone that seems like a scammer could be ready to pay a great rate or invest in your company; someone else that sounds legit could be wasting your time.
• mesaframe 6y ago
  That's for when you are working on an hourly basis. I don't know what's wrong with that. That's only to safeguard clients from get billing for hours the freelancer didn't work. You can work for a fixed price and you won't be tracked.
• smusamashah 6y ago
  Some friends work on upwork like this 4 hours a day while being monitored as you said. The pay is very good and don't care too much about this monitoring now which they might have in the beginning. It's tiring but it works.
  • sitkack 6y ago
    I am a private person, I don't really like working in public. But in the end I really wonder how much of it matters. I think most people look like they are doing next to nothing and are mostly ineffective as well. I think monitoring is a poor form of feedback, organizations where this would be necessary are effectively non-conscious entities. Think an AI that manages the gig-employees the keep the vent tubes on the Windy's DeepFriedExtrude units clean. It just needs to track cleaner consumed per increment and movement in front of the kiosks.
• fecak 6y ago
  I can't speak for all freelancers, but I do think you're missing some things. I've completed 1000+ projects on Upwork with a 95%+ success rate over the past few years (mostly resume writing and executive bios). As a freelancer, you can simply refuse the monitoring feature. I would never accept a project where the client wanted screen shots. I use Google Docs so my activity is tracked there pretty accurately as it is, but I think most freelancers aren't taking the monitored projects. I'm not sure what you're asking about the 'client questions', but you are able to ask questions before accepting an offer or even making an offer. I have had clients make me an offer before any dialogue took place, but that's rather rare, and I always clarify my work process with clients before accepting offers. Upwork is not my primary source of income - I have a private resume writing business that I run - but I use Upwork because it's brought me quite a bit of business without having to do any marketing (at the cost of 20% of my earnings). I'm happy to give them 20% based on the volume of business that comes my way there. I primarily have used fixed price projects as well, but mainly because time tracking in Upwork is a bit cumbersome. You need to track in 10 minute increments, and my workflow often finds me in documents multiple times per day, but for short periods of time. That's not conducive to time tracking, so I try to set fixed price agreements. I've been pleased with my experience on Upwork, but I know part of that is because I've had the benefit of being one of the higher ranked writers there for a few years and I have a larger stream of income from other sources, so I have the luxury of turning down quite a bit of work there if it doesn't meet my preferred criteria.
  • wyclif 6y ago
    Fascinating commentary, especially because I've often wondered what it takes to break in to the resume/executive bio writing world. I'm fairly well aware of best practices, but I don't have any experience.
    • fecak 6y ago
      My main advantage as a writer is 20 years of recruiting experience, mostly for east coast US startups. Being a good resume writer (and maybe any good writer?) is really about knowing your audience. And when you've written a lot of resumes it becomes a bit easier. The voice is tricky for some people.
• corobo 6y ago
  > Are people aware Yup. Well, I am anyway. I signed up and they wanted that installing. I've not been back haha. If the work is done.. you pay me, that's the deal we have. I'm not installing spyware for some weirdo to watch me work.
• DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  Since I learned what upwork was the hard way, I not only stay away from it but also reject any other consultant who says that this is usually the platform they source their projects from. At first sight the problem seems to be poor quality engineers/skills. The true issue is that its race-to-the-bottom pricing strategy (one that gets hand-wavily justified by intrusive surveillance / screen recording) attracts the worst of the worst employers who do not understand SDLC and requirements. personal anecdote: few years ago I joined a failing company which was massively behind and which did everything wrong you could possible do wrong, but where I knew its founders and investors and believed I could turn things around. We used upwork because the boss was convinced it was cost effective ("8 engineers for the price of 3" the boss liked to say) and so all our engineers came from various low-cost countries via upwork. The same engineers were also completely lost since nobody managed requirements for them. And so the product (an MVP) which was promised to be ready 2 years ago was still unfinished (with no completion date in sight). These "contractors" had no agency or motivation to get things done. They were all not skilled for what was expected. It was the fault of the management not upwork, but still I ended up canceling every single contractor from upwork except 1. I expect any external contractor to think critically of requirements they are given and raise flags if something is off. Upwork doesn't deliver this. They give you people who are stuck between a rock and a hard place and who can't afford to ruffle feathers. Both because they need the money but also because the management themselves doesn't think they're capable (e.g. "how could they be taken serious if their work only costs $25/hrs" - "of course they're not important and we can easily replace them at any time"). Upwork attracts people who don't understand the pricing of their skills. From over 100 people I was forced to engage with on that platform not a single one undwerstood what requirements and deadlines are. Unless you fully specify what exactly is to be done (and also how) you will never get what you asked for. The real issue however isn't the engineers but Upwork itself who attracts this type of client base. Since that experience I fared well to not only give prospective engineers a pass that say they use the platform a lot but also any clients who use upwork in any shape or form.
  • ryandrake 6y ago
    Cool story, and sadly not unusual. I wonder if you (or anyone) ever managed to convince "boss" that the poor quality was due to these deficiencies, and that maybe cost was not the most important thing to optimize for.
• mhitza 6y ago
  Most of the time you can opt out of the monitoring, but if you use that monitoring feature Upwork offers payment protection. Say that I clock in 20 hours and the client refuses to pay the invoice, I still get paid by Upwork (some caveats exist of course). Where there is more trust between client and contractor, the later might just enter their hours manually.
• DebtDeflation 6y ago
  >the app takes random screen captures six times per hour—once per 10-minute billing segment This is horrible. Also easily defeated if you have a second computer with which to do non-work stuff or just run the Upwork app inside a VM. As a client of the freelancer, I'd be far more interested in the quality of the final deliverable than making sure they didn't goof off while producing it.
• ryanSrich 6y ago
  I’ve used and have found great engineers on UpWork. None have used that tracking tool. It’s all been manually reported time. I’ve also interviewed and have encouraged questions before moving on.
• sleepyhead 6y ago
  First time using Upwork last week and I was shocked to see these screenshots from the freelancer. Not only problematic for the freelancer but also a huge potential GDPR issue for me. Luckily the project did not include personal data but if it had I would have to inform all my customers and the local DPA about a data leakage. Having a freelancer work on PII is one thing, it would have been solved with a contract, but for the data to be stored on Upwork servers is something else. Yes you can ask questions, both in the job form and in the chat before hiring someone.
• sidlls 6y ago
  UpWork primarily connects laborers in underdeveloped regions to people having at least some spare capital in other regions (mostly developed regions). Each of these groups sees an exploitable value in the other. "Clients" see people willing to work practically for free (relatively speaking), and freelancers/agencies in these regions are quite happy turning in marginal work for 1/10th (or less) the wage a person in a developed country might charge.
  • rtx 6y ago
    I live in a third world country and regularly hire contractors for USA through Upwork. It saves me a lot of time and I don't have to compete with other employers.