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Freelancer.com has ruined my life

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Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#291
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norwegian bankruptcy law also used to (probably still is, but I haven't worked in Norway for nearly 20 years) have a similar system where employees had that kind of protection at no cost for non-payment of wages. All you need to do is to file and the company would need to show up in bankruptcy court and explain why they should be put under administration (and really the only valid reasons would be that they don't owe…

the op isn't an "employee" in this case probably not even a "worker"

They presumably still have a contract where he does work for compensation.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#292
post #279
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is the type of stuff I'm talking about. But you can take these things so much further if you branch away from "just development skills" too. I never talked to a food truck person yet but I bet there's lots of ways you could have turned that unfulfilling contract into something more interesting. No business owner really cares about a site redesign. They just care about "how do I get more customers?". If you…

I get what you're saying, but it's also clear that you haven't ever talked to a food truck person. They're not paying you $1000 for a wordpress site, and they're never paying $1000 on retainer. The rest is also a total fantasy. This is a misleading example because restaurants and food already operate on razor-thin margins; restaurant software is legendarily hard to break into and make money in. Source: tried to start…

That did sound weird to me too on the food truck side. Most of them seem to go from place to place almost on a whim, and the customers go to them because they're pretty good and right there. I don't think anything on the internet is ultimately going to do that much for them. Their customers either already see them because they see the truck, or they aren't going to bother travelling halfway across the city for it. I like food trucks all right, but I don't think anybody likes any particular food truck so much that they'd travel for 20 minutes to find a particular one.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#293

I wonder why nobody has filled the gap of a job-agency for smart people (10x developers if you will) that are looking for short-term jobs (e.g. when in between jobs/projects or when their current startup is not ramen-profitable yet).

Because 10x developers are probably in very high demand and are hardly out of work. I know one such person and he makes a pretty penny on contract work with nonstop offers he has to decline 99.9% of the time because he simply can’t handle more work.

But there must be 10x developers out there starting a business and who are not yet ramen-profitable?

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#294
post #151
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A friend of a friend got such an order for Tesco, our biggest supermarket chain, a few years ago. Needless to say, their invoice was paid very soon after that.

I would love to know more details as well. I have a UK based client that has gone silent with significant unpaid invoices. Can you share details of how to file such an action?

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suing probably won't help. The freelancer desperately needs money now. Suing requires you to spend money now in hopes of getting money down the road. Since Freelancer.com is based in Australia and the person they screwed probably isn't, suing would require sending spending a lot of money they don't have on an Australian lawyer, probably well more than the $3600 that's at stake. And if Freelancer.com is malicious or d…

See this comment by someone who remotely sued Freelancer.com in small claims court with successful results: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626228

Nice! That's impressive of Australia. In SF, I'm pretty sure that physical presence is required for small claims.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#296

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…

Good to see you post defamatory things under your own name in a public forum Jonathan.

https://github.com/jondubois

Matt is a nice guy, shame if this comment got to him directly.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 disagree - I think it's about recognizing the realities of the situation and the best way to resolve it. The OP has learned that Freelancer.com is rather shady, and they essentially ripped him off of an amount of money that's rather modest by professional standards. The best way for OP to move forward is likely to learn how to do business as a freelancer without using these types of middlemen and write off the money lost to their mishaps. He could try suing for it, but my impression is that collecting an amount of money worth the time is unlikely. Better to spend the time establishing direct relationships with clients that need the work done and pay on time rather than trying to collect a pittance from Freelancer.com.

On the contrary, I find those who shout "Victim Blamer!" often ignore or discount the realities of the situation out of a quest for perceived justice. Getting such justice is often a long and expensive process that may actually leave the victim in an overall worse position, when it is possible at all. When there is a straightforward and practical plan that will put the victim back in a good situation without regard to causing any so-called "justice" to happen to the so-called "bad guy", well, sometimes it's best to just let it go. Karma will get them in the end.

That's not to say that there aren't situations where we do need some justice. I'm just saying pick your battles here. Not everything is worth fighting about, and things that are worth a fight are worth making sure you can win.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#298

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…

>Nice to see you post defamatory posts using your real name on a public forum Johnathan.

>https://github.com/jondubois

>Matt is a nice guy, shame if this comment got to him directly.

I noticed this reply to your comment - it was here briefly but has now been deleted. This "Matt" referred to is presumably the CEO. The comment seems to read like a freelancer.com employee trying to threaten you? Your observation on their corporate culture may not be far off...

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, because India's revenue is growing, that's how you get developing countries out of the mud. Look how China developed since they became the world's factory.

Revenue is of no use when nobody is being paid living wages anymore. As good as China is doing, it still hasn't solved the basic issues and a growing middle class in China (and India) is only gonna worsen the situation. I don't believe this planet can sustain billions of people living with the same standards/ways like Northern American or Western European people do, that's a pipe dream equal to "Everybody can be a mi…

so we are selecting who is gonna die so everybody raise to our standard of living? Are we selecting some people who we will purposefully maintain in poverty so that we keep our standard of living? Or are we reducing our standard of living down to some sustainable world average?

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#300

I once had a disagreement with Freelancer over a few hundred dollars. I was a buyer, rather than a seller, the job didn't get done, and I was trying to withdraw the funds I put in. So, although in the US, I filed a small claims case in New South Wales. This can be done entirely on line. It's possible to request court hearings by telephone. So you can do a small claims case remotely. Within 8 hours after filing the ca…

The disturbing implication here is that Freelancer has little incentive not to push any given debtor to a legal process, given that this escapade cost them but a little personnel time to respond.
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