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LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

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Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#131

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211064098-Log-T... > It’s easy to bill your time using the Upwork desktop app. ... > When you have logging turned on, the app takes random screen captures six times per hour—once per 10-minute billing segment. Anything visible on your screen will display in your Work Diary, but you have the option, in Settings, to choose whether the screen captures your entire desktop or o…

What's next, brainwave scanners that only pay you for hours that has atleast 20% gamma wavelength.

And I thought Snow Crash was far-fetched...

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#132

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211064098-Log-T... > It’s easy to bill your time using the Upwork desktop app. ... > When you have logging turned on, the app takes random screen captures six times per hour—once per 10-minute billing segment. Anything visible on your screen will display in your Work Diary, but you have the option, in Settings, to choose whether the screen captures your entire desktop or o…

We need to put a stop to all electronic surveillance.

Cheap tech/software is making it appear everywhere. It’s just going to get more pervasive in the future. I already feel like the wealthy are watching us everywhere.

I would like to see most electronic monitoring made illegal.

I think we need to set up laws over employer monitoring, even having cameras at work for any reason, even for loss prevention. If they decide they need to bring us in—so be it. If an employer doesn’t think you pull your weight, they can fire.

All public, police electronic, license plate scanners, including ankle brackets, and alcohol monitors should be illegal. Yes—even alcohol monitors. Go back to “If he passed the field sobriety test” let him go. In certain rare situations, a blood test could be obtained. In my county, Marin County, I’m pretty convinced most DUI’s are marginal, and give our officers something to do? (Yes—I see you cops on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard salivating for something to put on your shift reports, especially after 10 pm. Don’t bother driving through Marin County after 10 pm, especially if your drive an old car, or had a glass of wine at dinner. Sorry—I walk at night, and have been seeing way to many traffic stops. I know one know my neighborhood, but I bet they are seeing the same in their neighborhoods.)

I would like to see all cameras in public settings removed. I would even put back the Toll Takers.

All this cheap tech, and surveillance will just get worse in the future.

We got by for decades without it?

We seemed to have a better society back then for the most part? Worried about security, hire a Security Guard? Worried about ethics/morality of your hires, maybe show up in church, or set an example for your employees?

The only form of surveillance I was excited about was Police Cams, but most are easily disabled by the officer. The only worth while video seems like it from a passerby who has a phone?

I don’t want to get into a big debate, but feel like we are at a point where the we are all being watched/photographed way too much.

To all the nervous nellies out there, whom believe surveillance makes society safer/better; everyone has a nice camera at their fingertips.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price contracts. Find someone else for this hell.

> And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price contracts. Find someone else for this hell. Can you explain why you think this? Courses/books on freelancing I've looked at generally strongly advise getting away from hourly, so it's interesting how both extremes of this advice exist. My hypothesis is a lot of freelancers get burned on their first projects because there's a learning curving in controlling scope cr…

I’m out of that game but for me it depended on the work. I mostly did security assessments, which were extremely simple to time box and were much easier to sell as fixed bid.

Longer architecture or implementation work were hourly.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a client like this for new freelancers/employees that are working full time or larger jobs. It is intrusive but 100% is needed for some people or they take the piss. I'm too busy to follow their workload and sit there estimating times of jobs match hours. I check it one a week for ~10min to see hours logged per day and quick random to check its not loads of time wasting. It feels intrusive but there is little d…

What if I sketch out a solution to a complex problem for most of the day and then execute it in an hour? This will only catch the most ridiculous abuse that will be visible from results as well and harm everybody else. And, if it's not visible in the results... why do you care?

I think the way you work, even if you produce stellar results, in some cases will actually be a worse fit than a lower-quality solution that takes longer but involves some kind of draconian control mechanism, because it's also about feeling in control, not just results. These draconian control solutions mostly work as a very crude way to care for the mental health of employers, managers etc., with disproportionate negative impact on the employed; but giving up control is always risky, and feeling risk isn't fun, and dealing with that in a healthy way is something lots of people who get into such positions have never had a chance to properly learn, or even realize it's a problem at all. But such people often do have power and leeway to put in such controls unilaterally, and the further up you go on the food chain, the easier it becomes to isolate oneself from the consequences of such thinking, and doing things differently on the lower levels may require those further up to at least tolerate such an approach; but if they're deeply insecure themselves, wouldn't they perceive such a stance as weak or soft? Won't that hurt my chances for advancement? Will it look like I didn't do my due dilligence if I actually do get screwed with? There are lots of orgs that work like that.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#135

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/211064098-Log-T... > It’s easy to bill your time using the Upwork desktop app. ... > When you have logging turned on, the app takes random screen captures six times per hour—once per 10-minute billing segment. Anything visible on your screen will display in your Work Diary, but you have the option, in Settings, to choose whether the screen captures your entire desktop or o…

This would be highly illegal in greensand... Wonder if they even offer service here?

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price contracts. Find someone else for this hell.

> And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price contracts. Find someone else for this hell. Can you explain why you think this? Courses/books on freelancing I've looked at generally strongly advise getting away from hourly, so it's interesting how both extremes of this advice exist. My hypothesis is a lot of freelancers get burned on their first projects because there's a learning curving in controlling scope cr…

Recommend getting away from hourly, or recommend going for fixed-price only?

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And as a freelancer, I will never take fixed-price contracts. Find someone else for this hell. Can you explain why you think this? Courses/books on freelancing I've looked at generally strongly advise getting away from hourly, so it's interesting how both extremes of this advice exist. My hypothesis is a lot of freelancers get burned on their first projects because there's a learning curving in controlling scope cr…

Hourly works really well if you do the admin in enough detail. Try to agree, on paper, about number of hours per period as you can. And that then actually makes it into 'sprints' of fixed price. I used to send over an email at least weekly with; 'X is going to take me at least 35 hours, are you ok with that?'. Of course X has to be small enough to not overshoot by a massive amount of hours and also you cannot trigger…

I'm not completely against hourly and what you describe sounds decent as long as the client has a realistic budget and is reasonable about estimates. It's hard to do fixed price when there's a lot of unknowns or there's an unpredictable workload for example. I see people mention day and week rates as well, but this forces you to work in minimum increments which is less flexible.

I just can't stand getting into scenarios where you start considering eating hours from your timesheet so the client doesn't get annoyed e.g. because you didn't feel you were being 100% productive for whatever reason, you got sidetracked by a hard to explain/justify bug, you went for a walk to think about a problem, you're going over budget, you think because you had to learn something new you shouldn't charge for the time, because part of a meeting included some casual chat. It's a lot of stress to the client too having to keep track of unpredictable costs.

There's such a different feeling to working where you're not having to keep an eye on the clock having thoughts like "that's 30 minutes up already, I better find a solution to this soon or my timesheet will look bad".

Fixed price lets you just get on with things and focus on actually being efficient instead of worrying about how efficient you're looking.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#139
post #94

It will be interesting to see a third public company building a work marketplace. Upwork and Fiverr are already a godsend when you build a startup. But they still leave a lot to be desired. From a buyers perspective, Upwork feels more solid than Fiverr. In terms of freelancers and system functionality. One thing that is annoying on both platforms is that they send you an invoice after every gig. The first one that wi…

> the weakness of both, Upwork and Fiverr is that they focus too much on the demand side. Yes, they only attract marginalised developers. Any "good" developer will be working full time in a well paid job. In the unlikely event that they want to choose to be a contractor, they probably have the capacity to set up their own gigs. The whole business model of Upwork and Fiverr is predicated on some sort of unhealthy comb…

Neo-liberalism I’ll give you, but I’m having a hard time finding the mild racism. As a buyer in fiverr, I know the country the contractor is in and I think that’s it. It’s been a few months since I bought a logo there.

I suppose I could think “I don’t like people from country X, so I won’t offer any work to someone from there”, but if I thought that way, it seems my preferences are easier to enforce in other contexts than in these gig platforms.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? There are products especially for europe that do monitoring like this.

A lot of stuff is more or less illegal. Especially in employment, as long as nobody sues, nobody cares. And which freelancer would sue? Or which employee, as far as that's concerned? And even if, worst case is a small fine for the employer. Unfortunately.

You are wrong here. In Europe, the fines after such a behavior for bigger companies could be easily in millions, even tens of millions of euros. That's why I am not aware of a single big company here doing it.

Even those that have US branches with detailed monitoring there don't dare to run anything similar here. Once you get used to be treated like a human being its hard and irrational to accept anything less.

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