6 ms·

Meh, that's a dishonest title. Yes, Upwork are moving everybody on the 10% fee. But they previously had a progressive fee: * 20% fee for the first $500 earned

by sph 4y ago

Meh, that's a dishonest title. Yes, Upwork are moving everybody on the 10% fee. But they previously had a progressive fee: * 20% fee for the first $500 earned from a client * 10% fee between $500 and $10,000 earned * 5% fee after the first $10,000 earned Those figures are per client. Start a new job with someone else, you start from the lower bracket again. So they were basically living off short term contracts and low paid freelancers. Now it penalises everyone the same, but 10% is much more reasonable than 20% I've been trying to stay afloat in this terrible hiring market through Upwork, and I'm ambivalent. Without it, I'd pretty much be broke. But even with a profile that has been created in 2012, has $50k billed, I've only been able to find short term consulting or sysadmin jobs paid terribly, and lost 20% off each of them because of the prohibitive lower bracket.

desaiguddu 4y ago
IMHO, most of the Upwork jobs are upwards of $1000 if it's a serious client. A large number of freelancers & agencies have built a stable clients on Upwork from years together. It will be a little revenue shock for them. Or eventually clients will pay more to cover the costs. Let's assume you are a freelancer with a client relationship of 40k * 20% fee for the first $500 earned from a client - $100 * 10% fee between $500 and $10,000 earned - $ 950 * 5% fee after the first $10,000 earned - $ 1500 New model - 40k Am I missing anything here? * 10% fee of any amount - $ 4000
- sph 4y ago
  True, your figures seem correct. I guess the problem is that I haven't had any luck finding any serious client, due to the competition and race-to-the-bottom. Some clients want quality, of course, but in this economy if it's a lottery to find a job in the real world, it's a lottery for those billing upwards of $100/h on Upwork. So what's left is small contracts where being a seasoned expert to deal with emergencies is more important than being cheap.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    In general, you're probably an at least somewhat known quantity for clients that aren't especially price-sensitive (so bill in the $100s/hr range) or you're a name in a hat along with a bunch of people who will just take anything they can get. The middle-ground seems like a difficult place to be.
- safety1st 4y ago
  Yeah, a lifetime 10% just for making the introduction is pure exploitation. On the buyer side we have been defrauded by Upwork providers and the company did absolutely nothing. Clear cut case of illegal activity and ToS violation, Upwork did nothing other than take our money. The FTC needs to beat this gang of criminals into the ground. They are a racket from top to bottom. Fraud shouldn't pay. Exploitation of workers shouldn't pay. Breaking the law shouldn't pay.
  - fatfingerd 4y ago
    I don't know, it seems like an impossible market for an honest middle man to me. 10% of short term contracting being a total bust where a worker should none-the-less be paid seems like a cost companies had that dealt with the lowest of job agencies. If those job agencies could afford to reimburse its because they were taking 50%.
  - mulvya 4y ago
    Lifetime, in theory. In practice, you can move the relationship off Upwork after 2 years. See https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043210654-Move-Outside-of-Upwork https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043210654-Mo...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - nidnogg 4y ago
      Has anyone paid this fee? I think when it gets to the point of dropping 12% of a freelancer's annual income to just talk outside of the platform it's simply not worth it.
      - Uvix 4y ago
        If you wait two years per grandparent's post, the fee is only $1, which probably is worth it. If you want to convert sooner, it's a percentage of the income for that specific client/freelancer relationship, and not total work for the freelancer. So it is probably a more palatable amount, assuming the freelancer has multiple clients.
whitemary 4y ago
[flagged]
muzani 4y ago
The problem with the new pricing is that matchmaking value drops the longer a contract goes on. Once the relationship and trust is established, they can go around Upwork for 0%.
nnurmanov 4y ago
I could not find a ClickHouse expert for some project, not sure where to look such people
- sph 4y ago
  Not a direct answer but: don't look just for ClickHouse experts. When you hire a plumber, do you only hire experts of that exact brand? 90% of the job I apply for, on Upwork or otherwise, are always looking for an expert in a particular niche technology, and hire only based off that small nugget of information. I have been doing Elixir full time since 2016, and got a contract with someone that was looking for a Phoenix.Socket expert—a small WebSocket server module part of a larger framework—and the interviewer spent 30 minutes drilling down how much I know that small piece of logic. In this case it's like hiring plumber asking them how much experience they have in square zinc kitchen sinks. Given that I couldn't convey how dumb that is, I had to lie and say that in all of my 7 years with Elixir I have been using Phoenix.Socket pretty much daily. And as expected, it was a bog standard job doing nothing more complicated than an intermediate Phoenix tutorial. If someone has a lot of experience in databases, and in competitors to ClickHouse they might be good or better than someone that claims to be a world class expert in ClickHouse and nothing else. (Not to pick on you in particular, but as a true generalist this hiring pattern has been bugging me more and more as my breadth of experience grows.)
  - sleepychu 4y ago
    When I'm hiring an employee, I'm looking for you! A generalist who will apply their wealth of database experience to my problems and learn what they need for my specifics along the way. I expect to pay some on ramp time where I don't get much in return. When I'm hiring a contractor, I'm not really interested in paying them to learn, I'm interested in getting my need fulfilled as efficiently as possible. If the problem I have is my square zinc kitchen sink it makes sense to find someone who already knows about them.
    - sph 4y ago
      Makes sense, but I do not completely agree. In my 11 years of experience as a consultant, people hire me because they need a square zinc sink fixed, but as soon as they see that I know much more than that, they ask me to redo the living room wall and trim the topiary. Being an expert gets me through the door, being a generalist keeps me around. The problem is that the square sink expert filter is the biggest obstacle to getting a contract. Reason why with 17 years of total experience, I'm still without a job after 4 months, my longest jobless stint in my entire career (to be fair, I'm pivoting towards starting my own business rather than keep being rejected by clueless recruiters)
webmobdev 4y ago
Yes, milking the lower end is just unfair and will obviously create resentment in freelancers. A really long time back I complained to them that their fees were unfair (I think about the time when eLance and oDesk merged). And their reply was educational to me - "Why are you paying the fees? Bill it to your client or share the cost with them?". And I did start doing that. Few clients were ok with that because the <$500 crowd are the "cost conscious" (to be polite) crowd. The higher brackets were somewhat more easier to convince because they had more to lose and thus felt the indirect payment through UpWork offered them some protection. But yeah, even 10% is still high if they are also charging the other party too.
- bombcar 4y ago
  All fees get paid by the customer in one way or another, it's just how it's advertised and how you think about it. With business-related things it's better to have it upfront in my experience.
  - qwytw 4y ago
    > All fees get paid by the customer in one way or another In theory only partially if the freelancers are competing with those who are not using the platform and just bill their clients directly.
benatkin 4y ago
Not a dishonest title. The word "bracket" refers to this sort of thing at least with tax brackets.

by sph 4y ago

desaiguddu 4y ago

IMHO, most of the Upwork jobs are upwards of $1000 if it's a serious client. A large number of freelancers & agencies have built a stable clients on Upwork from years together. It will be a little revenue shock for them. Or eventually clients will pay more to cover the costs. Let's assume you are a freelancer with a client relationship of 40k * 20% fee for the first $500 earned from a client - $100 * 10% fee between $500 and $10,000 earned - $ 950 * 5% fee after the first $10,000 earned - $ 1500 New model - 40k Am I missing anything here? * 10% fee of any amount - $ 4000

sph 4y ago
True, your figures seem correct. I guess the problem is that I haven't had any luck finding any serious client, due to the competition and race-to-the-bottom. Some clients want quality, of course, but in this economy if it's a lottery to find a job in the real world, it's a lottery for those billing upwards of $100/h on Upwork. So what's left is small contracts where being a seasoned expert to deal with emergencies is more important than being cheap.
- ghaff 4y ago
  In general, you're probably an at least somewhat known quantity for clients that aren't especially price-sensitive (so bill in the $100s/hr range) or you're a name in a hat along with a bunch of people who will just take anything they can get. The middle-ground seems like a difficult place to be.
safety1st 4y ago
Yeah, a lifetime 10% just for making the introduction is pure exploitation. On the buyer side we have been defrauded by Upwork providers and the company did absolutely nothing. Clear cut case of illegal activity and ToS violation, Upwork did nothing other than take our money. The FTC needs to beat this gang of criminals into the ground. They are a racket from top to bottom. Fraud shouldn't pay. Exploitation of workers shouldn't pay. Breaking the law shouldn't pay.
- fatfingerd 4y ago
  I don't know, it seems like an impossible market for an honest middle man to me. 10% of short term contracting being a total bust where a worker should none-the-less be paid seems like a cost companies had that dealt with the lowest of job agencies. If those job agencies could afford to reimburse its because they were taking 50%.
- mulvya 4y ago
  Lifetime, in theory. In practice, you can move the relationship off Upwork after 2 years. See https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043210654-Move-Outside-of-Upwork https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043210654-Mo...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nidnogg 4y ago
    Has anyone paid this fee? I think when it gets to the point of dropping 12% of a freelancer's annual income to just talk outside of the platform it's simply not worth it.
    - Uvix 4y ago
      If you wait two years per grandparent's post, the fee is only $1, which probably is worth it. If you want to convert sooner, it's a percentage of the income for that specific client/freelancer relationship, and not total work for the freelancer. So it is probably a more palatable amount, assuming the freelancer has multiple clients.

whitemary 4y ago

[flagged]

muzani 4y ago

The problem with the new pricing is that matchmaking value drops the longer a contract goes on. Once the relationship and trust is established, they can go around Upwork for 0%.

nnurmanov 4y ago

I could not find a ClickHouse expert for some project, not sure where to look such people

sph 4y ago
Not a direct answer but: don't look just for ClickHouse experts. When you hire a plumber, do you only hire experts of that exact brand? 90% of the job I apply for, on Upwork or otherwise, are always looking for an expert in a particular niche technology, and hire only based off that small nugget of information. I have been doing Elixir full time since 2016, and got a contract with someone that was looking for a Phoenix.Socket expert—a small WebSocket server module part of a larger framework—and the interviewer spent 30 minutes drilling down how much I know that small piece of logic. In this case it's like hiring plumber asking them how much experience they have in square zinc kitchen sinks. Given that I couldn't convey how dumb that is, I had to lie and say that in all of my 7 years with Elixir I have been using Phoenix.Socket pretty much daily. And as expected, it was a bog standard job doing nothing more complicated than an intermediate Phoenix tutorial. If someone has a lot of experience in databases, and in competitors to ClickHouse they might be good or better than someone that claims to be a world class expert in ClickHouse and nothing else. (Not to pick on you in particular, but as a true generalist this hiring pattern has been bugging me more and more as my breadth of experience grows.)
- sleepychu 4y ago
  When I'm hiring an employee, I'm looking for you! A generalist who will apply their wealth of database experience to my problems and learn what they need for my specifics along the way. I expect to pay some on ramp time where I don't get much in return. When I'm hiring a contractor, I'm not really interested in paying them to learn, I'm interested in getting my need fulfilled as efficiently as possible. If the problem I have is my square zinc kitchen sink it makes sense to find someone who already knows about them.
  - sph 4y ago
    Makes sense, but I do not completely agree. In my 11 years of experience as a consultant, people hire me because they need a square zinc sink fixed, but as soon as they see that I know much more than that, they ask me to redo the living room wall and trim the topiary. Being an expert gets me through the door, being a generalist keeps me around. The problem is that the square sink expert filter is the biggest obstacle to getting a contract. Reason why with 17 years of total experience, I'm still without a job after 4 months, my longest jobless stint in my entire career (to be fair, I'm pivoting towards starting my own business rather than keep being rejected by clueless recruiters)

webmobdev 4y ago

Yes, milking the lower end is just unfair and will obviously create resentment in freelancers. A really long time back I complained to them that their fees were unfair (I think about the time when eLance and oDesk merged). And their reply was educational to me - "Why are you paying the fees? Bill it to your client or share the cost with them?". And I did start doing that. Few clients were ok with that because the <$500 crowd are the "cost conscious" (to be polite) crowd. The higher brackets were somewhat more easier to convince because they had more to lose and thus felt the indirect payment through UpWork offered them some protection. But yeah, even 10% is still high if they are also charging the other party too.

bombcar 4y ago
All fees get paid by the customer in one way or another, it's just how it's advertised and how you think about it. With business-related things it's better to have it upfront in my experience.
- qwytw 4y ago
  > All fees get paid by the customer in one way or another In theory only partially if the freelancers are competing with those who are not using the platform and just bill their clients directly.

benatkin 4y ago

Not a dishonest title. The word "bracket" refers to this sort of thing at least with tax brackets.