171–180 of 359 posts
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Genuinely curious: why would you accept a job to do the impossible? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding and his refusal to pay was totally separate from the fact his whole idea was flawed?
Refusal to pay is directly related to the lottery "system". Buyer was an idiot. One reason I never hire from freelancer sites. Every coder has been burned by some idiot and it affects my purchase ability.
I haven't been active there in a couple of years. The signal to noise ratio makes the website useless. Not enough quality projects and not enough projects with realistic budgets.
But the problem with fraud is beyond serious. I am very careful with who I do business with, and screen customers as much as possible, but their platform really makes it easy for fraudsters to screw you over. I got a couple of issues there over the years. They both were very small amounts, like $200 or so. In one occasion the customer just reversed the payment, stole my code and freelancer.com did absolutely nothing to stop him. In another incident, the customer did not release the payment after completion of the project and I had to settle to accept only his initial deposit as payment, which was like 20% of the agreed price.
The company is also very fee hungry. There are hidden fees everywhere for everything you do in that website. The website itself is also terrible. Customer support is the worst I've ever dealt with.
There are much better ways to find customers than these kind of websites. On the other hand, if you are looking for developers there are plenty of good ones there, just avoid all the Asian body shops and your chances of successfully finding someone are actually not that bad.
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Classic victim blaming. What you say is mostly true, but it completely glosses over the potential issues raised by this post. So what if the author made a mistake about using Freelancer.com? That doesn't change the fact that what Freelancer is _supposedly_ doing here is incredibly shady and they should be held accountable. The only real issue I have with the author's post is there are a lot of details missing. What d…
Does anybody have a theory as to why victim-blaming is such a popular response on HN? I don't see it nearly as much elsewhere.
HN commenters tend to be cerebral know-it-all types who genuinely enjoy argumentation and like to pick things apart. They also tend to identify as independent thinkers and they like to demonstrate their intellect by taking unconventional positions.
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"unskilled indian labour" huh? There are tens of Indian entrepreneurs who have set up Billion dollar companies in US. Don't forget that Microsoft and Google CEOs are Indian too!!
Skilled Indian labour is also outbid by the unskilled Indian labour.
The only reason why its Indian right now is because British occupation taught them English. It also doesn't hurt that they have the second most populous country in the world.
And I know its anecdote, but I've met a number of fakers here in the US. Nothing special or "Indian-like" that makes lying about your abilities.
Then again around 08 I considered padding and lying about my resume. Nothing I couldnt do, but it does look more acceptable to put down a bankrupt business as a source. Hard to.. Check.
Well, first let me say that my experience as someone who has hired on freelancer has been very good. I have found some excellent developers there. But I'll also point out that (1) I spec my projects pretty carefully, almost to the point of 'hell I might as well build it myself'; and (2) I pay. And when the project is harder than I originally thought, I don't say "tough shit you signed a contract dumbass" but rather I…
As I read through the comments I was composing in my head almost the identical response as yours. Thanks for saving me the time. My spidey sense started to tingle around "I'll spare you the details", then I was curious as to the other side of the story when I read "I must have stepped on a few toes". But once I got to the father dying and the bad car accident that caused all savings to be depleted by medical bills I…
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> Why should the number be based on living costs? Because that's basically the whole point of globalisation. Both parties benefit, I don't see what the problem is.
> Both parties benefit, I don't see what the problem is. The problem, as always in this kind of situation, is how unequally the benefits are distributed. If the investor pays 4-5 times (and that's a low end) less for something, while the worker gets 10% more compared to doing the same locally then it's unfair, even if both sides "benefit". It's also natural for investors to seek the lowest prices they can get. That's…
Stay away from Freelancer.com They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the buyer's payment method. Note that this is after completing the project fully and leaving feedback for each other. I left the money on my Freelancer account, becasue they are/were having issues with Skrill withdrawals. It was there for about a month and they sud…
Their web application isn't the canonical source of whether they owe you money or not, a court decides that. I don't know in which jurisdiction Freelancer are based, but if there is a low cost small claims procedure, sounds like that would be worth you time. In the UK in a variety of circumstances you can petition a court to issue a wind up ("liquidation") order for a company if it refuses to service its debt to you.
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Developers in the developing world typically don't use iPhones and Macbook pros. You can easily get a "good enough" machine for 10% of the price of a Macbook.
If you use shitty tools, you get shitty results.
SETUP AUTOMATIC WITHDRAWAL OF YOUR EARNINGS. Don't leave your money on the outsource platform. To do so invites unnecessary risk. Don't work if you can't withdraw your money.
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Developers in the developing world typically don't use iPhones and Macbook pros. You can easily get a "good enough" machine for 10% of the price of a Macbook.
If you use shitty tools, you get shitty results.