17 ms·

I hired a contractor on Upwork once and he worked alongside us in our Slack workspace. He did great work for a few weeks and then I suspected him of outsourcing

• givemeethekeys 4y ago
  In construction, parts of projects are routinely subcontracted out. The primary contractor is on the hook for ensuring quality. I don't see why software projects can't be the same.
  • TylerE 4y ago
    Construction has standards, licensure, bonding...
    • echelon 4y ago
      Startups are supposedly fast and agile enough that perhaps they can evaluate contractor work week over week. If the work is good, I'd be fine with the above arrangement so long as I wasn't working in an industry that required regulation (PCI compliance, etc.)
    • encryptluks2 4y ago
      The United States has employment laws. Hiring someone as a contractor and then treating them like an employee also likely violates US law.
      • roywiggins 4y ago
        I feel like there has to be a legal difference between treating someone like an employee and requiring, say, your contractor Bob to be the one signing in with their credentials bob01 and not his subcontractor Bill.
        • encryptluks2 4y ago
          Why would it matter who is signing in as long as whoever does the work follows the same agreement standards? Sounds an awful lot like controlling what will be done and how it will be done, which is the definition of an employee.
          • roywiggins 4y ago
            I guess I can't imagine a situation where Bill is contracted at a temp agency, turns around and hires Bob, and when Bob shows up with Bill's badge and is refused entry, and Bill somehow wins a lawsuit on the theory that Bill must be allowed to subcontract and anyone he subcontracts to must be allowed on-site to perform the work, no matter what. Like, not giving out your password (or badge, or key, or whatever) to someone else is a pretty core job responsibility!
            • encryptluks2 4y ago
              If they are contracted at a temp agency, then they are taking on the risks Bill would be an employee of the temp agency... Employee misclassification is frequently abused so don't get me wrong, I think it happens a lot, but in many cases people are misclassified.
      • happyopossum 4y ago
        The employee / contractor thing may be a violation of IRS regulations (depends on a lot of factors). Lying to obtain a contract, and lying about who is doing the work and who has access to any sensitive materials related to the work is straight up fraud, so I wouldn’t want to get into a legal pissing match over it.
  • mannykannot 4y ago
    The person or entity who hired the prime contractor is also on the hook. If you are in that position, it is better to detect and stop a contractor doing things behind your back than it is to explain that you didn’t know that a contractor subcontracted the work to the person who installed the backdoor.
  • Kalium 4y ago
    They can be, provided that disclosure is handled up-front and the contract is structured for it. Dropping that on someone who had every reasonable expectation - and possibly even contractual language - about you doing the work yourself is quite a different matter.
  • jackconsidine 4y ago
    They certainly can be the same. In this case the contract I had with this person stipulated that they would be doing the work and this person denied having another person involved ahead of time. Moreover, there were security clearances associated with this person and expanding the footprint was a relevant consideration for the project.
    • mh- 4y ago
      You hired a contractor from Upwork for a project requiring clearance?
      • jackconsidine 4y ago
        Sure. Not state-level clearance with capital letters, but access to sensitive infrastructure etc
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > In construction, parts of projects are routinely subcontracted out. The primary contractor is on the hook for ensuring quality. > I don't see why software projects can't be the same. Contractors can't automatically give subcontractors access to the plans, the construction site, and so on. The contracting agreement will have provisions about who can access the site, how they get approved, on what terms, and so on. Becoming a construction contractor doesn't give someone carte blanche to invite other people to a site without regard to the terms of the contract. Likewise, a software contractor can't just decide to share your codebase and design documents with a subcontractor because it almost certainly violates many of the contractual clauses they agreed to.
    • NesiG93vXQiSM8j 4y ago
      > The contracting agreement will have provisions about who can access the site, how they get approved, on what terms, and so on. I would definitely expect all of that to be handled by the primary contractor (i.e. the person who specializes in construction sites). No?
      • PragmaticPulp 4y ago
        The terms are negotiated between the company and the contractors. Being a contractor doesn't automatically grant someone the right to delegate access to sites and such. I think a lot of people in this thread have misunderstand what the law is actually saying. The law doesn't say that if you're given contractor status you can do whatever you want. The law says that if the job is misclassified as a contracting position when it should be a full-time position, then the employee is owed benefits and such. If you sign a contract with a company that says you will not share the code, design docs, system access credentials, physical building access, or other common stipulations, you can't automatically ignore those because you're a contractor.
      • SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
        I mean, yes, that’s right. The primary contractor runs the job site, manages who’s allowed to be on the site, and will absolutely complain if the known subcontractors smuggle in random unauthorized people to run cabling. It’s not like they’re being obnoxious just to make money; in construction, as in software, there are many regulatory and compliance related reasons that who does the work matters.
• brightball 4y ago
  I have concerns about a similar situation. We live in a weird world.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• colordrops 4y ago
  Is this against Upwork rules? What's the problem, assuming the work was done according to spec?
  • beachy 4y ago
    All sorts of information being shared with a completely unknown and unvetted person somewhere in an unknown part of the world?
    • leetrout 4y ago
      Depends on the contract. Part of being a contractor by IRS standards is being able to subcontract. > Personal performance of services: An independent contractor should have the freedom to hire assistants or subcontract work to other workers or firms at his or her expense (this is where profit or loss could enter the picture). If you require the worker to perform the work personally, that's a sign of control and therefore indicative of employee status.
      • RussianCow 4y ago
        Legally, maybe. In practice, when I was freelancing, I don’t think any of my clients would have been okay with me subcontracting the work. Amongst other reasons, I think most clients wouldn’t be happy with the idea that they could have paid someone else less to do the same work. (And yes, I understand that there’s a management aspect to subcontracting that may justify the difference, but most clients wouldn’t see it that way if they were expecting you to do the work by yourself.)
        • SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
          I don’t feel sympathy for that, because to me the very aspect of contracting is that you should be able to subcontract out the work. If they wanted me specifically to do the work, then they should have taken the time and effort and paid the taxes to hire me as a W2 employee. You can’t have it both ways.
• eek2121 4y ago
  I've been working remote for almost a decade, and most of the companies I've worked for have pulled me into the office at some point. All expenses paid of course. No, it does not stop an employee from outsourcing work, however a decent contract will. Employers should also not frown upon those that have this type of behavior unless they specifically call this out in a contract or the employee handbook. Note that I've never attempted to outsource my work since I like writing code and I get paid an awesome enough salary as it is, but I don't blame those that do unless they are breaking the rules. I actually got laid off from a job because the lead programmer on my team was doing this. He had 3 folks working in India full time. He told me about it prior to the layoffs over beers. 3 folks on my team were let go. Note that we all found jobs within a month. The last time I spoke with him, he was still doing it. The only time he does any work is when the company has meetings he is asked to attend.
• a-dub 4y ago
  "The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the payer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done." independent contractors are free to sub out work. this is the law. they also probably should not be on your slack unless you're considering the whole thing a consulting arrangement. i understand where you're coming from, especially in trying to make use of upwork in some actually useful way for your business. but you should also be aware of the law. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-defined https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
  • jackconsidine 4y ago
    Yeah I get this and it doesn't apply here. The payer in this case did not have the right to control only the result of the work which is the crux of the situation. The law, nor the linked resource, stipulates that any 1099 relationship can be subcontracted out by anyone, let alone without disclosure. If that were the case the explicit option to hire onshore vs offshore on sites like Upwork would be meaningless, or a matter of arbitrage.
    • arcticbull 4y ago
      Not having the right to control only the result makes them an employee which in turn makes them eligible for benefits and so on. This is the specific difference between a contractor and an employee. The problem is that you can't just have what are effectively employees but on a contract basis under law. It opens you up to liabilities, as Uber has been experiencing. The closest I think you could get is actually contracting a PEO that takes the individual under employee status and assigns them specifically to your company under contract. Being an employee of the PEO means that they can in fact control these aspects of the job, and you aren't contracting them, you are contracting the PEO who subs out to them.
      • cma 4y ago
        It seems intuitively like you can't just ghost in someone who didnt even sign the copyright assignment stuff with the right party, ndas, or undergo a possible background check.
• L0stLink 4y ago
  This is so unethical and sadly not rare. I have had people reach out to me (twice, recently) on LinkedIn to interview for them (using names and credentials of people who have work authorization for USA) and the offer is usually a fixed rate + commission per job per month for the lifetime of the job. They hire skilled engineers to secure the jobs for them while outsourcing the actual work. So the scam can go further than just outsourcing the work to people with potentially far lower skills.