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I can practically guarantee (without bothering to check) it's against Upwork's rules, and in many jurisdictions a form of fraud. 1. Legal/compliance/tax proble

I can practically guarantee (without bothering to check) it's against Upwork's rules, and in many jurisdictions a form of fraud. 1. Legal/compliance/tax problems 2. If Upwork were to allow this, it effectively allows bad actors to reset their reputation whenever they want 3. If you're willing to lie about this, do I really want you working for me? 4. Just because you approve of them and think they're safe doesn't mean I do, and you're sending my confidential company secrets and source code to them None of these are problems if you're upfront about it, but lying and claiming you're doing the work when you're actually outsourcing it is very bad.

ryandrake 4y ago
I wonder, would you (or others complaining about subcontracting) be OK with it if the prime contractor was totally above board, disclosing the fact that he is subcontracting and allowing you to "vet" the subs? In other words, is it the misrepresentation that's the problem, is it your need to scrutinize the subcontractors, or is it simply that the prime contractor isn't personally toiling sufficiently for you? Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. A client is paying some agreed amount of money for some agreed results in some agreed time period. What difference does it make if the contractor personally types in the code or if he finds 5 Indian guys to do it? I put in some hours in the world of defense/government contracting, where in many cases, the prime contractor never does any work at all. His only job is to "be the prime contractor" but he subcontracts everything, and I mean everything out to others as soon as the ink is dried.
- jackconsidine 4y ago
  Yeah I definitely wouldn't care if it was disclosed ahead of time. In my case it was not disclosed and ultimately denied when asked. It represented a security threat to a system where we specifically federated access to specific people.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- bee_rider 4y ago
  > In other words, is it the misrepresentation that's the problem, is it your need to scrutinize the subcontractors, or is it simply that the prime contractor isn't personally toiling sufficiently for you? There seem to be quite a few comments specifically calling out the misrepresentation as the main problem. I guess we could speculate that the motivation is actually that they want the prime contractor to toil for them, but I dunno. Caring who exactly is toiling seems kind of weird and controlling, we should be generous to the community and not ascribe weird motivation to them if they've got some other perfectly reasonable reason to care.
- acdha 4y ago
  > I wonder, would you (or others complaining about subcontracting) be OK with it if the prime contractor was totally above board, disclosing the fact that he is subcontracting and allowing you to "vet" the subs? Yes, the misrepresentation is the key part. For example, if I grant you access to a server that doesn't mean that I want a bunch of randos I never meant having access to the same server as you — if nothing else, you'd want them to have had whatever you consider necessary security training and you'd want your ops people to know that a connection from Romania isn't an immediate sign that you've been hacked. This is especially true when you're crossing country boundaries and things like IP law or similar concerns vary widely. Most contracting agreements cover things like handling corporate IP carefully and I'd expect at least a request to confirm that this is okay. Now, there are cases where it might be more forgivable: for example, if I'm hiring you to work on a project which involves an open source component and you turn around and hire one of the developers on that project to add a feature we need, that seems entirely reasonable because it's a) not my IP and b) totally above board that J. Random Maintainer made those commits and shipped v1.2.3 which you're using. Similarly, if you found an artist to contribute assets but didn't give them access to my server or a copy of our code, that seems fine, too. None of that seems anything like the situation described, however. > I put in some hours in the world of defense/government contracting, where in many cases, the prime contractor never does any work at all. His only job is to "be the prime contractor" but he subcontracts everything, and I mean everything out to others as soon as the ink is dried. Yes but speaking from experience on the .gov side they do that with the full knowledge of the agency and a contractor will be terminated and banned from future work if they violate security policies such as having unauthorized people access a government system or sharing source code without authorization.

ryandrake 4y ago

I wonder, would you (or others complaining about subcontracting) be OK with it if the prime contractor was totally above board, disclosing the fact that he is subcontracting and allowing you to "vet" the subs? In other words, is it the misrepresentation that's the problem, is it your need to scrutinize the subcontractors, or is it simply that the prime contractor isn't personally toiling sufficiently for you? Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. A client is paying some agreed amount of money for some agreed results in some agreed time period. What difference does it make if the contractor personally types in the code or if he finds 5 Indian guys to do it? I put in some hours in the world of defense/government contracting, where in many cases, the prime contractor never does any work at all. His only job is to "be the prime contractor" but he subcontracts everything, and I mean everything out to others as soon as the ink is dried.

jackconsidine 4y ago
Yeah I definitely wouldn't care if it was disclosed ahead of time. In my case it was not disclosed and ultimately denied when asked. It represented a security threat to a system where we specifically federated access to specific people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bee_rider 4y ago
> In other words, is it the misrepresentation that's the problem, is it your need to scrutinize the subcontractors, or is it simply that the prime contractor isn't personally toiling sufficiently for you? There seem to be quite a few comments specifically calling out the misrepresentation as the main problem. I guess we could speculate that the motivation is actually that they want the prime contractor to toil for them, but I dunno. Caring who exactly is toiling seems kind of weird and controlling, we should be generous to the community and not ascribe weird motivation to them if they've got some other perfectly reasonable reason to care.
acdha 4y ago
> I wonder, would you (or others complaining about subcontracting) be OK with it if the prime contractor was totally above board, disclosing the fact that he is subcontracting and allowing you to "vet" the subs? Yes, the misrepresentation is the key part. For example, if I grant you access to a server that doesn't mean that I want a bunch of randos I never meant having access to the same server as you — if nothing else, you'd want them to have had whatever you consider necessary security training and you'd want your ops people to know that a connection from Romania isn't an immediate sign that you've been hacked. This is especially true when you're crossing country boundaries and things like IP law or similar concerns vary widely. Most contracting agreements cover things like handling corporate IP carefully and I'd expect at least a request to confirm that this is okay. Now, there are cases where it might be more forgivable: for example, if I'm hiring you to work on a project which involves an open source component and you turn around and hire one of the developers on that project to add a feature we need, that seems entirely reasonable because it's a) not my IP and b) totally above board that J. Random Maintainer made those commits and shipped v1.2.3 which you're using. Similarly, if you found an artist to contribute assets but didn't give them access to my server or a copy of our code, that seems fine, too. None of that seems anything like the situation described, however. > I put in some hours in the world of defense/government contracting, where in many cases, the prime contractor never does any work at all. His only job is to "be the prime contractor" but he subcontracts everything, and I mean everything out to others as soon as the ink is dried. Yes but speaking from experience on the .gov side they do that with the full knowledge of the agency and a contractor will be terminated and banned from future work if they violate security policies such as having unauthorized people access a government system or sharing source code without authorization.