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Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

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Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#21

Post by caiocaiocaio »

I freelanced on Upwork for a bit. It was all the worst aspects of having an abusive boss (the platform itself), and all of the worst aspects of freelancing (unpredictability, getting ripped off by shifty clients).

"Creepiest shit ever" is a pretty accurate description of Upwork. If Upwork's attitudes and policies were described to me in the 90s, I would have said it was lame, unrealistic science fiction with an over-the-top villain.

If anyone wants to do freelance work, I'd recommend marketing yourself directly to local businesses, print some business cards, schmooze. It's about as much work and stress as using Upwork, and you don't have a misanthropic middleman taking their cut.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#22

Post by rurp »

chii wrote: post #6

what would be a way to start contracting if you have no existing network, no existing clients to get references?

I found work through Upwork when I was starting out as a dev and actually had a pretty good experience. Just like on the hiring side, there are a lot of bad clients you need to filter through but there are plenty of reasonable people looking to hire on the site.

It did make me nervous having so much of my income tied to Upwork and there were a few things that seemed like minor red flags, but I didn't have any awful experiences with them.

Someone with a few years of experience probably has better avenues to look at for work but it could be a good option if you're looking to get experience and build out a freelance network.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#23

Post by rhema »

>Their rules state that you must have the Upwork Desktop App on you computer which installs some sort of video malware onto your laptop AND have your webcam visible and on at all times so that the customer success agent can audit that you looked like you were working through the webcam while staring at a screen. How is that not the creepiest shit ever?

Compare this to the Upwork App's description https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211064098-Log-T... .

It seems pretty reasonable. By default, it snaps a picture every 10 minutes. If you do not want to upload a snapshot, it removes the 10 minutes from your recorded hours. It captures info about how often you used keystrokes and clicked, but not what you typed or clicked.

The benefit of using the app is instant approval and payment.

On my reading, it looks like the author failed to take a 10 minute survey in 3 days, losing his work hours. That seems like a pretty reasonable ask that he failed on.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#24

Post by atiff »

burlesona wrote: post #10

As a buyer I had a few good experiences finding contractors on Upwork. If “no one should ever use it,” does anyone have a good suggestion for a better place to find good freelance coders for small projects?

I have used Turtle for 2 projects and had an exceptional experience with both.

Very well vetted devs, excellent platform and framework for managing them, and human customer service at (currently underpriced IMO) $55/hr.

The two apps I’ve used Turtle for:

- React site for my business - Ongoing Node integration work at about 10/hr per week.

https://www.turtle.ai

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#25

Post by tima101 »

burlesona wrote: post #10

As a buyer I had a few good experiences finding contractors on Upwork. If “no one should ever use it,” does anyone have a good suggestion for a better place to find good freelance coders for small projects?

GitHub worked well for me when I was hiring freelancers in the past and nowadays when I occasionally freelance.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#26

Post by msadowski »

I've been using UpWork for over a year now and never had a dispute so far.

The author is right in saying that UpWork only guarantees payment when time tracking using their app. Where he is mistaken though is where he says that the app requires camera to be on at all times. There is such an option but personally I'd never go for a project like this. And yes, the app will take the screenshot of the stuff you are working on.

I don't get why author's customer would launch a dispute over not completing a 10 minute survey. Given that it was an hourly project I bet there were issues with communication and perhaps the author should have double checked with the client before closing the job.

UpWork is far from being flawless but for me it has been working quite ok.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#27

Post by kradroy »

jp8585 wrote: post #18

Long term upwork Data Scientist here. It seems he had a bad experience, that could have happened on any other place / platform. There are always horror stories about how platforms deal with conflicts (think PayPal, Stripe, Uber...) Out of >30 contracts I had, only 1 resulted in a dispute, and it was decided in my favor. I do agree the whole monitoring thing is absurd and I generally don't take jobs from clients that…

The monitoring app is a hoop I guess. I would hate it too because it's a form of control over the work.

I once had a client who, at the negotiation of the contract, wanted me to work from an "office" (an in-laws quarters) for a specific set of hours each week. His desire for that was because he wanted to make sure he was getting his money's worth; that if I said I was charging him for 10 hours, I was spending 10 hours on the task.

I told him that, along with other stipulations, would qualify me as an employee. He and his fiance/business partner insisted it didn't. That was troubling because his fiance was a lawyer.

I declined to take the project.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#28

Post by pdkl95 »

> the dataset contained ... demographic attributes like race ... to predict actual work performance

Regardless of the original intent, that's a request to launder a protected class into an opaque "work performance" metric. Also, while they are not on the unfortunately short list of protected classes, using demographics like age is probably going to create similar discrimination problems.

If you want to know about job performance, use data that is at least theoretically related to someone's performance. While machine learning is going to find some sort opf signal in whatever pile of data you feed it, that doesn't mean it actually predicts something complicated like job performance. When you feed it a bunch of general demographics, it's going to find one of the signals that we know are present throughout existing demographic: the institutional discrimination and similar problems of the past.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#30

Post by hiccuphippo »

rhema wrote: post #23

>Their rules state that you must have the Upwork Desktop App on you computer which installs some sort of video malware onto your laptop AND have your webcam visible and on at all times so that the customer success agent can audit that you looked like you were working through the webcam while staring at a screen. How is that not the creepiest shit ever? Compare this to the Upwork App's description https://support.upwo…

Yeah no. No kind of spyware is reasonable.
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