Ask HN: Can Freelance be free?

Accountability is the reason I use platforms. I know that I could get thrown under the bus, but when everything works as it should, it's not a problem. I am not satisfied with sometimes the high commissions and cut throat competition, but there is at least the safety that I will get my payments. They are in charge in managing the legitimacy of the other user and myself. It seems that the problem arises from the "reputation" points and I think that the best way to solve that is coming up with a new system than an arbitrary 5 star review system

Yes, it absolutely can be. If you hire a designer, a lawyer, a builder, you probably don't do so via middlemen like Upwork.

That hiring freelancers, freelance developers in particular, often works differently is an outlier, not the norm.

There are various reasons for this but it has something to do with development work being organised and its value being measured as if it were manual assembly line labour, i.e. it's often measured in terms of time spent instead of value created. It also has something to do with freelancers often saying something along the lines of "I'm just a developer. I just want to code.", thereby both shifting responsibility for their work to somebody else and not recognising the true value of their work.

This needs to change. Freelancers need to take responsibility for their work (as in: "I'm not just two hands. I design and create solutions."). Clients on the other hand need to get out of the hourly mindset as well if they want to get real value instead of an anonymous commodity with the constant need for oversight.

can you tell more about this? What exactly do you mean by "brokers"?

As a freelancer, the problem with sites like Upwork is that you are relying on a third party to source your work, which is how you make a living. Not only that, but they make it extremely hard / difficult / against the rules to work with the client outside the site. It's such a ridiculous cash grab, I really don't see how so many people think it's worth it.

If you (in general) find yourself over-reliant on Upwork, you should ask yourself why you are relying so much on it, especially when it could be pulled out from under you at any time. Is there a reason you need to source your work on Upwork? Have you tried to find work on your own but failed? Or is the momentum of your years on Upwork causing you to continue? Spend some time identifying your weaknesses that caused you to rely on upwork, and try to remedy them.

It's quite interesting that there are countless massive, free job sites and job listing platforms, and yet somehow Upwork is plundering contract workers by taking a cut of the action. They seem like a regressive antique. It'd be equivalent to Monster.com or Dice.com taking a sizable part of my salary if I find a job through them - few would consider such a thing to be reasonable or fair.

I think a more open platform needs to exist to counter Upwork's abusive, greed-oriented approach. It should be job and task listing supported (businesses placing wanted ads for all types of traditional jobs and contract work). Zero fees should be taken out of the pockets of the workers. There are plenty of well-demonstrated examples for how to build successful reputation communities that would enable a superior, anti-Upwork approach.

Whoever does this successfully will easily overtake the Upwork platform, for exactly the same reason Stackoverflow rapidly overtook Experts Exchange. It's kind of strange that Stackoverflow / Stack Exchange hasn't already extended their platform in a way that would put an end to the value proposition of Upwork; it seems like an obvious target for them.