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They must already be making a killing as they don’t do much; I mean their platform is so depressingly badly written, I don’t quite understand how you can get it
by anonzzzies 4y ago
They must already be making a killing as they don’t do much; I mean their platform is so depressingly badly written, I don’t quite understand how you can get it to that state. They want (it’s in the rules) you to stay in their chat and communication system, but it is basically unusable for anything serious, so no one does. There is the impossible invoicing more people here mentioned; my accountant keeps asking if they cannot just send 1 invoice once per month that it is clear instead of the vague warble they send once a week.
Their ‘recruiters’ are just friendly community chatters who talk a lot to people with that automatically (you get them too in the recommended list) match the skills (in their profile; there is of course no way to tell if they actually do match the skills you need; I needed an AD expert for 1 year and the recruiter introduced me to the perfect person; in a chat they admitted to me that they had worked with it once a long time ago…).
This is ready for disruption. But not by something like Toptal. Which should be mentioned, if you want to talk about greed…
- anovikov 4y agoThey are losing money and have always been. They are spending a ridiculous amount of money to bring in clients through ads and other marketing channels, and the whole thing simply doesn't look too sustainable.
- anonzzzies 4y agoAh, I did not know that. It looks like a goldmine considering the amounts that streams in. But yeah, if they spend a lot on acquisition; that goes very fast.
- anovikov 4y agoThis seems to be happening due to the nature of the freelance work itself. It simply can't work at scale in a win-win fashion: if you want to attract immense volume of clients the way Upwork does, you are inevitably looking for those who don't know what they are doing, and are lured by advertisement. And that's pricey. I've been there for 15 years and made millions; i believe whole freelancing thing exists simply due to the systematic fallacy.