Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

Really, what it comes down to from my perspective is that freelancer is not geared toward the type of freelancing we're trying to do: making a living as professionals in a first-world country.

As professionals, we have reason to want to grant limited account access to a secretary, accountant, or sub-contractor. This feature existed on vWorker, but not Freelancer.

As professionals, we want to be rated and visible based on delivering quality work on time and on budget and making our clients happy. On vWorker, ranking/visibility was based entirely on revenue x client rating, with a bonus "top worker" designation for never missing a deadline or having a bad rating. On Freelancer, we level up by following you on social media, get badges for logging in every day for a year, and generally get ranked according to tangential criteria. It's distracting, and appears unprofessional to clients who are being asked to "level up" and "earn badges" themselves when all they want to do is hire us.

As professionals, we don't bid until we've already come to terms with the client. On vWorker, we'd regularly have dozens of messages with clients establishing the details of a project, discussing timelines, etc. and then we'd put in a bid with that full understanding. Freelancer seems geared toward submitting a large number of bids without having ever really discussed terms -- the sort of thing that might work for "transcribe a 10 minute audio clip", but not for projects measured in months and costing $x0,000 to complete.

As professionals, we want to pay our $50 monthly fee and our 2% per-contract cut, use the site to connect with clients with real large-scale contracts, and get paid on a reasonable timescale. Trying to do that on freelancer is an exercise in frustration.

The problem is you, not the developers on that site. When you say its simple what that really means is that you cannot or will not pay more than a very small amount of money, and/or even worse, you are unable to comprehend the complexities of the task.

When you post a project and say "its simple", good developers know to avoid you because you are unrealistic and have very little money.

Maybe you even put a number on the project (like $50) or something) advertising just how cheap you are.

One other thing that people say is that freelancers "can't think". What a bunch of horseshit. People who put projects on freelance sites do so because they cannot or will not pay a market rate in the US. That means that the projects were underfunded. Which means that the schedule is inadequate from day one.

Which translates into constant pressure on developers to deliver. Because of the nature of those sites, developers have no choice but to deliver the minimum set of unpolished work that meets only exactly the requirements specified. The number one reason this is necessary is because any attempts by the developer to clarify various issues unforeseen by the client will generally not be comprehended and will simply be assumed to be 'delaying tactics' preventing the completion of their 'simple task'.

So in order for the client to see how complex the task really is and actually come up with new designs, a working system is required. If a freelancer were to try to make his own decisions for the client in regards to application design, the client is very likely to demand the work scrapped and another approach taken.

I am a freelancer. I live in the US. And I have dealt with my share of cheap bastards on sites like odesk and vworker. I have been extremely selective in choosing clients, and still run into all of the issues I mentioned. I feel very bad for all of the Indian programmers who are stuck with assholes who are even cheaper and stupider than the ones I ran into.

You get what you pay for.