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Freelancer.com has ruined my life

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Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#331

Post by a_imho »

GordonS wrote: post #270
a_imho wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the prices offered on freelancing sites are fair? Would you be willing to work for such prices? Why do you think freelancing is considered a race to the bottom? Why do you care which ISP someone uses when committing to a repository or login to VM? On the other end of things, would I move to a more expensive neighborhood if that meant I will get a bigger salary? While I don't know about you or your friend…

> would I move to a more expensive neighborhood if that meant I will get a bigger salary We're talking about different countries here. It's not quite so simple to just move to another country. > Fair is when equal work is equally compensated So it's unfair that an Indian dev working in India for an Indian company earns less than a US dev working in the US for a US company? Different countries have very different econ…

You are dodging the questions.

You don't even have to move to another country, salaries vary wildly throughout a country and there are obvious outliers think NYC, SV or even London. And then we are talking about contracting/freelancing/remote work. If you want to have a job done, why do you care what is the purchasing power of the contract fee in a given country?

By the way, if dev A and dev B works for the same company on the same project in the same position one in location A and the other in location B, they should be equally compensated.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#332

Post by vbezhenar »

robjan wrote: post #102
vbezhenar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone or Macbook price is roughly the same everywhere. Cost of living is a tiny part of expenses for a competent worker.

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.

It won't be cheaper than in US either, more likely the opposite. My point wasn't specifically about Macbook, a lot of things are of the same price in every country. Buying home, local food or human services isn't one of them, but cars, electronics, branded food, clothes won't differ much.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#333

Post by gspetr »

gressquel wrote: post #8

let me piggyback on this thread. this is my freelancer.com experience as a hirer https://medium.com/@ss88/freelancer-com-my-horrible-experien...

Don't hire asians, hire from Eastern Europe instead. It might be more expensive, but not by a lot and the quality is exponentially better.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#334

Post by nickjj »

Frondo wrote: post #319
nickjj wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it's clear I haven't talked to a food truck person because I lead off my reply literally saying I haven't heh. I used that as an example because the parent comment was talking about a food truck site he made for someone. I can't force you into believing anything and that's fine but I don't think I need to defend myself here. I have no agenda. I'm only bothering to share this stuff (along with the 100+ other po…

OK, but you're basically saying, "my techniques work, except the example I'm presenting is entirely fictitious" -- and I know that it is a totally nonsensical example that simply has nothing to do with reality. My point is that, especially if you're offering courses or trying to teach people, stick to what you know about from experience, not what you imagine might work based on an extrapolation from first principles.…

It sounds like your mind is made up.

Continue working on freelancer.com and I'll continue helping businesses grow while living my dream as a freelancer.

For reference I have been doing what I wrote for 2 decades and it certainly works. Good luck!

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#335

Post by freeflight »

fooker wrote: post #328
freeflight wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

I didn't even compare the two, obviously having insane high living costs is another issue, but it's not nearly as bad as this current race to the bottom of labor costs.

In Western Europe pretty much the whole low-income sector has been taken over by Eastern Europeans, working for weeks, sending home most of the money they make, working in conditions that nobody should have to work in (reversing labor rights progress) sleeping in their cars/group housing. I realize this sounds like some Brexit tale, but it is a very real thing that's been going on for quite a while and is one of the reasons for the stagnating real wages.

It's great for companies, cheap labor, it's not so great for the local populations who have to compete with foreign labor prices while having to come up with enough money to pay local living costs for their whole family.

Case in point: Try paying 100 times more for housing and healthcare in LA, once the vast majority of people are getting paid like call-center agents in India, won't work, can't work.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#336

Post by freeflight »

nraynaud wrote: post #299
freeflight wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Who's selecting? I'm merely stating the obvious: Depending on how you count, there are around 1 billion people living in the "developed world" and it's already wrecking havoc on the environment and even the human psyche.

Yet people think it's viable to extend that same kind of lifestyle to additional 6+ billion people? Let's not forget that a large part of these 6 billion people are not even close to a Chinese or Indian middle class, but are stuck way below the poverty line. And it's not like India or China have solved environmental issues, imho there is massive "environmental debt" building up in India and China, people merely tend to ignore those in light of high renewable adoption rates, but that's only one part of the issue, waste management is another one.

As much as I wish it'd be possible, I simply don't see how this is supposed to work out with constantly rising living standards for everybody. So the other outcome is most likely that standards won't rise for everybody, but rather that they equalize on a "middle level", which still means close to a billion people gonna have to "lower" their standards and a couple of billion have to rise theirs quite a bit.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#337

Post by hedora »

xelxebar wrote: post #313
hedora wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found their EULA, and it has some crazy stuff in it. For instance, they can terminate your account becase: ... 8) to manage any risk of loss to us, a User, or any other person; or 9) for other reasons. And if they terminate the account they can keep all the money they owe you. Also, it claims contractor aren’t their employees. Instead they are “unsecured creditors”. There’s also a bunch of stuff about how they can…

IANAL, but as far as I understand EULA don't have the last say on things like this. The courts decide if the terms are reasonable. Apparently, there is no repercussion for putting non-enforcable conditions in an EULA, so companies are encouraged to throw as much self-serving protection language in there as possible in the off chance that it will stick.

I believe that is correct (I am also not a lawyer).

They are international, so I wonder if they can venue shop to some country where this is enforceable and first world courts don’t have much influence.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#338

Post by moltar »

swalsh wrote: post #72
moltar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which dreamland you get paid USD$155 per hour for Node.js work?

I regularly charge clients around $110. so $155 will get you just a bit over an hour of work from someone who knows what they're doing. If you're not a freelancer, but rather a salaried person... take some times to calculate how much your employer is paying for your benefits, and all the costs associated with employing you. It's typically around 2x your "hourly" wage.

Nice. Where do you find clients? I live in Canada and work remote. Have a ton of experience (web dev since ‘98), but don’t have these kind of contracts. :/

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#339

Post by lsmod »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #255
lsmod wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. They have a registered office located in Australia. It was a relatively easy job (took me about an hour and a half) and I only charge $75. So, not sure if it'll be worth the hassle.

From my experience: First, set a date by email when you expect payment, if that doesn't happen, send registered mail to their office demanding in no unclear terms that they pay what they owe you plus the postage for the registered mail. Payment was prompt. Oh, and don't do business with them.

Thanks for the reply. I might give this a try.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#340

Post by featherverse »

nraynaud wrote: post #299
freeflight wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Everybody's going to die. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
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