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Freelancer.com has ruined my life

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Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#191

Post by quickben »

mantas wrote: post #17
nik736 wrote: post #10

I don't understand why he would blame Freelancer and not himself. How do you even sleep at night if you rely completely on one platform? It's also widely known that all those sites suck and the same story happens over and over again.

All of those platforms are designed to make developers platform-exclusive. The rating on a platform is extremely important to get new projects. You're shown higher, as more "relevant" offer and so on. At the same time, it's hard to have enough of good and recent feedback on multiple sites. The market is so saturated that staying relevant (in platform's and clients' eyes) is getting hard. Even if you work on a single…

So the harder, and more long term rewarding option, is to stay away from platforms.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#192

Post by wool_gather »

watwut wrote: post #165
Casseres wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that smarter people are more likely to victim-blame because it's harder to imagine themselves falling victim to whatever situation. For most problems, they seem like they could have been easily prevented by either being more knowledgeable about the situation or thinking things through beforehand. After reading a lot of the discussions here, and considering that most of us are here for the pursuit of knowledge…

I don't think inability to imagine bad luck or own mistake is proof of intelligence. It is proof of ego or arrogance or an attempt to mask I security. Smart people made mistakes in the past, smart people can imagine situations where they become victims (whether by own fault or not). Some smart people do have inability to imagine themselves in other people's shoose - but dumb people are often similarly disabled

You're right, it's a one-sided kind of intelligence. Maybe what Casseres said would be better phrased "people who are proud of being smart".

The fact that it's one-sided smarts, the fact that one is probably not as smart as one thinks, and the ability to imagine another person's shoes, are all life lessons that may click into place at different times for different people.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#193

Post by freeflight »

arnvald wrote: post #112
featherverse wrote: post #51

All of those "freelancer" websites are scams. Freelancing is about not working for other men. It's about being your own boss. Those websites are not really freelancing, they're temp agencies hiring out short term contract work. That is not freelancing. Those websites all share specific qualities: The salaries are too low, the service quality is poor, and you'll be outbid by unskilled indian labor 90% of the time. Put…

Your comment is unfair. These websites are not scams. A couple of years ago I was looking for 10-15h/week gigs and using one of competitors of freelancer.com proved to work for me. Was it annoying to bid for gigs? Yes. Was the quality of their service low? Yeah, I'd say so. Were salaries low? For someone coming from Eastern Europe - not at all. On top of that, I always got money on time, which is not always the case…

> For someone coming from Eastern Europe - not at all.

> Yes, you will be outbid by competitors from cheaper countries, but hey, welcome to reality where half of the stuff you buy is produced in China, because you compete with people and companies from all around the world.

That's what a race to the bottom looks like, if this trend keeps on going it won't be long before everybody has the income of somebody working in India, without even living there.

This is not meant as an attack on the OP (or India), most people would act the same way if they'd be in that situation, just a somewhat scared observation where the future seems to be heading.

And it's not like we got any good solutions for any of this, bringing the living standards up for everybody won't work, due to resource and economic constraints, so down it is.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#194

Post by gexla »

bkanber wrote: post #157
BjoernKW wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all a contractor focuses on is her day job how is that different from traditional employment? Being able to focus on your day job while leaving everything else to another party is what employment is for. I'm all in favour of outsourcing the work that you're not good at or that's not part of your core business. However, in my opinion as a software development freelancer marketing and sales is a key part of your bus…

> However, in my opinion as a software development freelancer marketing and sales is a key part of your business. That is 100% your opinion. It is far from a rule that you should expect others to adhere to, especially given that there are tons of services out there that promise to remove that need. It's almost as if different people design, build and execute their lives differently, using different values. You're get…

In what universe is marketing and sales not a key element of a business?

That's like saying Samsung doesn't have to put effort into marketing and sales just because it's important for Apple.

Sales and marketing IS a universal truth in business. Try telling shareholders/stakeholders that it's not.

That a business sells software is irrelevant. That a business is run by one person is irrelevant.

Outsourcing your marketing changes nothing. That should be one channel of many. There are no services which remove that need (though they may make that claim).

As others have mentioned, people seem to be getting freelancing and employment mixed up. The wording "freelancer" seems to be putting this through some sort of warp which changes the laws of physics.

Perhaps the issue is that this person is really an employee getting painted as a business as a target for getting screwed over. Perhaps this person wants to be an employee, but the harsh world is pushing this person to be a business. But if you are a business, you need to model your work as a business if you are going to survive.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#195

Post by nickjj »

Like most marketplaces, they are only interested in making themselves profitable. Always remember that.

Working at freelancer.com or similar sites is saying:

"I should spend a large portion of my life to become an expert in my craft, and then I should agree to have my privacy stripped away from me while I race to the bottom and undercut my competition because I will actively place myself into situations where I have the highest competition to ensure I receive the lowest rates. Lastly, I will bust my butt and bend the world to satisfy clients who take advantage of me."

By the way, if anyone is interested in making $ on their own as a freelancer I wrote a mini-guide on how to get your first paying client by tomorrow at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-fre....

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#197

Post by Exuma »

jondubois wrote: post #189

I worked for Freelancer.com briefly as a software engineer at their HQ in Sydney for about 1 month (that was in the year before their IPO) - I was fresh out of university. The culture within the company was toxic. They treat developers like crap - Both those who use the platform and those who work at HQ. They fired me after 1 month during my probation because I was too slow to implement a feature because I was spendi…

In their defense, the one thing that bothers me most is if I specifically tell someone to code something a certain way (for example, to skip tests on this project), and they don't listen and do it anyway because "it's the right way." I on the other hand know what is right for my project... not the person I'm hiring. That's why I asked X person to do it a specific way.

Btw Im not saying they arent toxic, they sound like pieces of shit. Just pointing it out more generally.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#199

Post by raverbashing »

gardenpuppet wrote: post #150
raverbashing wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways these issues can be mitigated Require that the bid contains a snippet on how they intend to solve the problem. Or if it's something obvious/non-explainable, require that the bidder put their favourite fruit on the bid. Something simple that lets you know they didn't just copy and paste the thing Also pick the middle of the road proposal price-wise.

Last time I looked, unless this is an hourly rate job, this is not possible. (Hourly rate is free form) You have three or four fields, each 200 char max. Can't really do much more than say "I can do this" and draw attention to your reviews if you have any. For me this is one of the many red flags on this site. If you're very focused then you can make it work, but for common garden jobs, not so much.

It doesn't have to be a wall of text, just something like 'using library Blah should work' or something

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#200

Post by jondubois »

Exuma wrote: post #197
jondubois wrote: post #189

I worked for Freelancer.com briefly as a software engineer at their HQ in Sydney for about 1 month (that was in the year before their IPO) - I was fresh out of university. The culture within the company was toxic. They treat developers like crap - Both those who use the platform and those who work at HQ. They fired me after 1 month during my probation because I was too slow to implement a feature because I was spendi…

In their defense, the one thing that bothers me most is if I specifically tell someone to code something a certain way (for example, to skip tests on this project), and they don't listen and do it anyway because "it's the right way." I on the other hand know what is right for my project... not the person I'm hiring. That's why I asked X person to do it a specific way. Btw Im not saying they arent toxic, they sound li…

They didn't give me any instructions about how to implement the feature. I had just arrived 2 weeks earlier and there was a lot of code there so it would have been impossible for me to get it to work (without breaking existing stuff) if I did not write tests.

Also this is a company that handles business transactions; high-value stuff; there should have been more tests.

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