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Why you should never use Upwork

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Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#231

I think UpWork deserves the negative PR now... They will be more careful from now on..

I don't know; they get bad reviews pretty much daily on r/freelance, but who knows; maybe the front page of HN will be more persuasive.

Until it mysteriously fell off

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe cultural differences. I know a lot of people in Germany who do, and refuse the siren call of throwing Marx' books down in their bosses' offices. Then again, workers here also enjoy a lot more protections than in other countries, so maybe it's the lack of feeling at odds with the company so much.

Maybe it's because a lot of Germans are renting their homes which creates insecurity for the unemployed and protects employers from such antiauthoritarian actions.

Compared to home owners that have mortgages to pay? (If you're the kind of person that can pay for a home with cash, you also can buffer a few months of rent easily)

+ German workers have a lot more protections from actual surveillance compared to many other countries (video surveillance, E-Mail and Internet monitoring, ...).

The actual implementation still depends on the company and the job, as probably everywhere. People that have to be there certain hours to be reachable by customers etc have different attitudes than people who can do their job and leave once they are done for the day, some people mind disruptions more, some people don't care or feel under-paid, ...

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you really want to get into a legal battle as an individual with a law firm?

That's what you consult an actual lawyer for. In my country, if they'd interfered with existing business relationships causing expected revenues to be lost, they'd made potentially libellous statements that caused a major source of expected future revenues to permanently block access, there was ample written evidence that they did these things deliberately and that actual losses were and would continue to result, and…

Well, maybe I'm just jaded by a recent experience with a former business partner who was an attorney himself. They guy had provably stolen over $100K from the company and our attorney basically charged us $20K to let him go. It was a valuable lesson to me to never go into business with an attorney again.

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but for example in my last office job the 3 company founders tended to be walking along the main hallway of the office a lot for various reasons, and my desk was behind a glass wall along that hallway, and in one gig i was in an open plan office where people were moving around me and everyone else all the time.

You are very accepting of severe authority and surveillance

Working in an open-plan office where people expect that it looks like you are working is "very accepting of surveillance"?

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#235

Here's the link to close your account if anyone is interested: https://www.upwork.com/UserSettings/profile/close-account

Done. Thanks for posting. Can't believe this guy's experience. I used UpWork for a few gigs earlier this year but stopped browsing for gigs when the new fee structure was implemented. This is enough for me to say no thanks to ever using it again.

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#236

Closed my account. Interestingly there's very few reasons for closing you can select from the closure page. You can't even choose an 'other' category to write in the reason.

I noticed that. They should at least add an option that mentions their fee structure changes. I stopped using upwork the day those were announced. This story was enough motivation to officially close my account.

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#237
It's a real shame. I used Elance for around four years (as a client, not a freelancer). This was before Elance merged with Odesk and became upwork.

I'm sure elance had issues. But I noticed a marked uptick in problems when the upwork migration became. The Elance interface was old school, but very functional.

Upwork was confusing. The migration was a mess and made me a freelancer by default, as I had also had a minor freelance profile on elance that I had never used. Took weeks to resolve.

The desktop app....actually, I don't remember the issue, but it led to me leaving the platform entirely. I think messages took ages to load.

I will eventually look for new freelancers, and I'll need to figure out a replacement when I do. It sounds like Upwork is not a great place to be for a freelancer now – and that means the quality ones will be elsewhere.

As a client, I want freelancers to be able to make money, and to denounce bad clients. By catering excessively to clients, Upwork is going to select for toxic clients.

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what you consult an actual lawyer for. In my country, if they'd interfered with existing business relationships causing expected revenues to be lost, they'd made potentially libellous statements that caused a major source of expected future revenues to permanently block access, there was ample written evidence that they did these things deliberately and that actual losses were and would continue to result, and…

Well, maybe I'm just jaded by a recent experience with a former business partner who was an attorney himself. They guy had provably stolen over $100K from the company and our attorney basically charged us $20K to let him go. It was a valuable lesson to me to never go into business with an attorney again.

I'm sorry to read that. It sounds like you got screwed by not one attorney but two.

For what little it might be worth, not all legal systems are quite that bad.

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#239
post #16

Totally agree with the article, and I am more than certain that such acts and extortionate behaviour are widespread on the platform. It seems it is part of their business model to allow clients in developed countries to find people in developing countries (all with weak legal systems and corruption) to commit illegal acts (both violations of public and private law). Just look at how many jobs involve rewriting, scrap…

Christmas gifts in October? Have I missed something?

Re: Why you should never use Upwork

#240
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When i'm in the office i'm supposed to be working, and the machine is supposed to be used for work purposes. Not for entertainment or other personal things. I don't know one engineer who actually does this. The company doesn't own you. They can't dictate your life, thinking anything else is wrong. You own the labour, ergo you own the company, if their business process can't fit itself in your life, they can fuck ri…

Maybe cultural differences. I know a lot of people in Germany who do, and refuse the siren call of throwing Marx' books down in their bosses' offices. Then again, workers here also enjoy a lot more protections than in other countries, so maybe it's the lack of feeling at odds with the company so much.

A footnote: Germany is notorious for its policy of keeping workers' wages down. This obviously doesn't apply to programmers, but it's worth at least adding parenthetically to your statement that workers "enjoy a lot more protections than in other countries".
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