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Freelancer.com has ruined my life

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Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#321

Post by arvinsim »

greenyoda wrote: post #261
arvinsim wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use shitty tools, you get shitty results.

A developer's primary tool is their intellect. Using an expensive Macbook or a particular programming language won't magically make a lousy developer into a good developer. Note that all the hardware and software that were used to create the original internet or Unix or Emacs (dumb 80x24 CRT terminals hooked up to mainframes or mini-computers running low-level languages) were shitty tools by today's standards, yet am…

Try doing modern development with those old tools.Let's see if you are as productive as you think.

It's insane to think that modern tooling doesn't affect results at all.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#322

Post by jrgnsd »

jimnotgym wrote: post #163
crevizniq wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one: https://www.toptal.com

Does anyone have experience of working with them as a contractor?

I've done a couple of contracts through them. For the most part it's beem a good experience.

They try to vet the clients as well as the coders / talent, but it's not perfect process so sometimes a dud falls through the cracks. They do have solid procedures for both the client and freelancer to follow if either party isn't happy, which includes the person who set up the engagement initially.

Much better than the other sites.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#323

Post by jhgjklj »

Single source of income is by definition at the mercy of the source. If one thinks that one could have had a disciplien to save, think again that savings has limitations. You can not save much as an employer and if you get screwed in your mid 30's, you don't have much savings to live off and also can not start over either. The only option is look for multiple incomes and if you are not capable, do not marry or take any personal commitments that affect other people. I know it sounds harsh but that's also make logical sense. Since you now have time, either save more or fight to change the situation so that the next generation of humans does not have to suffer this. Depressing but logical thought.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#324

Post by raarts »

pmorici wrote: post #47
PeachPlum wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here at vWorker. Did great work, ranked in the 100s, but it was not sustainable. To top it off I got a job to implement a forex trading algorithm. He had a system to buy/sell on signals. But when it came down to it, it didn't trade profitably. He wouldn't believe the code worked, and I couldn't convince him his scheme was flawed because it worked when he did it manually - and I've watched his youtube videos of h…

Sounds like the time I decided to try one of these sites and ended up with a client who wanted software written to pick winning lottery numbers based on some system he'd devised to analyze past winning lottery numbers. Of course such a thing will never work in a fair lottery. Guy refused to pay the $10 price after the "work" was done. Validated my suspicions that those types of site are a total waste of time even if…

I dealt with a pair of founders that prided on having grown their company without needing funding.

Turned out they deliberately forced every freelancer and supplier into arbitration. Complained about the quality and just withheld payments. It always ended up in settling, which meant that in the end they paid less.

Of course they had to find new ones every time but hey, the market is huge.

Ended up settling too.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#325

Post by gitanovic »

lsmod wrote: post #73

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…

this to mefeels like an unpaid advertisement from freelance.com

reason being that the report feels bogus, and is posted were lots of skilled labor can be found

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#326

Post by lsmod »

gitanovic wrote: post #325
lsmod wrote: post #73

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…

this to mefeels like an unpaid advertisement from freelance.com reason being that the report feels bogus, and is posted were lots of skilled labor can be found

This is a legitimate claim. You might wanna take a look at this[0]. I've blocked out the project title and the buyer's name, becasue i don't want my real name associate with my HN handle.

Dark Red: Buyer's Name

Turquoise: Project Title

[0]https://i.imgur.com/LpTYbse.jpg

P.S.

Not sure how you got the "unpaid advertisement" idea from my original comment. That is a complete opposite of an advertisement. However, it advertises the fact that you can get work done for free. Maybe that's what you are trying to say :)

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#327

Post by AlbertoGP »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #272
Dangeranger wrote: post #215

What this story and the comments here tell me is that the market for a developer focused contract bid site is ripe for competition. There are only a few well known branded marketplaces in the industry, and they all seem to be quite poor in the eyes of skilled developers. Maybe there is a continuous decline towards the bottom after a marketplace becomes a certain size, but I wish that there were more options to find c…

I’m a designer and clients always ask me if I can recommend a developer. I can’t seem to network with any good developers who I can honestly recommend to my clients. I even started a freelance slack group in hopes of broadening my network but that hasn’t really done much.

Hi, I've tried to find some way of contacting you, looked though your post history but nothing came out.

I'm interested in joining your freelancer group, and see whether I could be useful to some of your customers. As others have mentioned, remote work from sites like Elance/Upwork and PeoplePerHour (I'm currently in both) has dwindled in the last years, and by now most of my work comes from repeat customers instead of new leads from there.

I guess your customers ask for web development: the last finished job that I can show you is a balloon sculpture design tool for a business in Australia: http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/design_tool.html#grid

The full source code can be seen right there: http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/index.js

You can find a couple other examples in my portfolio: https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#328

Post by fooker »

freeflight wrote: post #193
arnvald wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why is a race to the bottom worse than getting paid 40 times more and spending 100 times more for housing and healthcare?

(Comparing Bangalore or Mumbai to San Francisco, since you mentioned India.)

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#330

Post by chrischen »

Slightly off-topic but is Trustpilot trustworthy? As a company they've approached me before but from what I understand Freelancer.com pays trustpilot to maintain reviews, and from the looks of it they have a decent 4 star review there...
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