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LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

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Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#191

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #178
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a freelancer. All the rave reviews were from clients. After the fact, I asked around for friends that had tried it as freelancers, and they all had similar stories to mine. It seems that Upwork is really a platform for offshore work. Some of these folks are undoubtedly good, but it's probably a crapshoot, which, to be fair, is also the case for local talent. With cheap offshore work, you can try out a couple of ou…

It's been years since I was on Upwork (started w/ Elance) and I felt similar frustrations. Then I signed up as a buyer, posted a job similar to the ones I was seeking, and analyzed the patterns of freelancer pitches and how the system was structured. I started noticing missed opportunities. As a buyer, you only see the first few sentences of a proposal unless you hit the See More option. Most freelancers weren't maxi…

Hey, that's great advice!

Thanks!

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#192

Post by bmn__ »

gota wrote: post #186
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I signed up for Upwork, a couple of years ago. I knew a few people that had used the platform to hire freelancers, and they raved about it. I never got even one legit lead. Not one. I did, however, get quite a few scammers. One was quite scary. It was a local person, with a crazy project proposal, that kept trying to get me to meet them in person, in remote locations. I nuked my Upwork account, months ago. Even thoug…

> 419 approach What does this mean?

http://enwp.org/419_scam

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#193

Post by mhitza »

seanwilson wrote: post #31

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…

Most of the time you can opt out of the monitoring, but if you use that monitoring feature Upwork offers payment protection. Say that I clock in 20 hours and the client refuses to pay the invoice, I still get paid by Upwork (some caveats exist of course).

Where there is more trust between client and contractor, the later might just enter their hours manually.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#194

Post by atleta »

edumucelli wrote: post #74
orangepanda wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The remote work law in the European Union is here https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM... The specific article in question is: * "If any kind of monitoring system is put in place, it needs to be proportionate to the objective and introduced in accordance with Directive 90/270 on visual display units;" It is legal but there is a big "if" in there.

Also, it makes a lot of difference whether you are an employee or a subcontractor. These laws protect the employees. It's actually explicitly specified in this document as well:

   in the context of an employment contract/relationship,

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#195

Post by DebtDeflation »

seanwilson wrote: post #31

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…

>the app takes random screen captures six times per hour—once per 10-minute billing segment

This is horrible. Also easily defeated if you have a second computer with which to do non-work stuff or just run the Upwork app inside a VM. As a client of the freelancer, I'd be far more interested in the quality of the final deliverable than making sure they didn't goof off while producing it.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#196

Post by jraby3 »

frockington1 wrote: post #187
ldap1001 wrote: post #182

So, Microsoft tracks developer "productivity" and submissiveness via GitHub and now drives down salaries via LinkedIn. The new developer career: Work yourself to exhaustion in "open" source to get noticed. If you succeed, welcome to the underpaid gig economy at LinkedIn. As a bonus, get tracked all the time by GitHub, VSCode, vcpkg, LinkedIn and the new Microsoft in general.

I'm not familiar with Microsofts practices, how are they driving down salaries via LinkedIn?

I immediately thought the same thing. In my experience LinkedIn gives employees more options and drives salary up.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#197

Post by atleta »

bawolff wrote: post #67
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #5

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…

> For example developers, who are writing clean code and refactor their stuff before they deliver If you want that you probably shouldn't be outsourcing to freelancers in general. People aren't going to make clean code if they know they are never going to see it again and arent being paid for how clean it is.

Nah. Besides professional intrinsic motivations (some people just can't convince themselves to produce shit) it also matters what the client wants and requires.

Of course, a clueless non-technical client, esp. if they are inexperienced on top of this, will not care and thus my hire someone who works like you suggest. A bit more sophisticated client will find someone who's experienced in managing and hiring developers, a tech lead, and help them pick and sometimes giude/check-in on their freelancer. Though very few people actually do this.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#198

Post by atleta »

amelius wrote: post #89

Developers become the new Uber drivers.

Not really. First of all, most Uber drivers don't have an alternative option. At least not to be able to work in their job, e.g. as taxi drivers.

This is a huge difference, since developers are in huge demand. Then there are some of us, who actually like working with clients. So instead of sitting in a large (or sometimes small) company and doing what you are being told to do, you can discuss it with a client, sometimes convince them to take another route, etc. So for some of us the point is that it's a more versatile role. (And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with wanting to work in a larger company or not wanting to talk to clients directly. It's just different.)

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#199

Post by 3np »

jeltz wrote: post #179
3np wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think it's stupid and would never dream of going in that direction with my staff (the most talented would probably bolt fast), in principle I see nothing wrong with it as long as: 1) The employer has paid for all necessary hardware 2) If anything goes through third-party services, I can work on the tracked environment in a way that doesn't expose my personal information in any way (e.g. I shouldn't be require…

I don't feel any of that solves my main issue: that I would not want to work for someone who does not trust me. That does not seem like a good environment where I can be productive and work on things which benefit my employer. The privacy issues is not the only issue. The only case I would accept something like this is if I was working at eg the NSA, a really high value target for state actors. Then I would get why n…

Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't want to work like that either. Just saying I see it as a bad decision, not ethically or morally wrong.

As opposed to, say, controling employees bathroom breaks as is routine in retail and industrial jobs in some places. Or prohibiting/preventing unionisation.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#200

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

grumple wrote: post #147
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #128

5-10 years a lot of development work will be considered blue-collar work started with all the bootcamps, learn to code stuff, plus gameification of hiring process, covid-remote work and an increase in automation and ml tech i can see it as a plausible future

I see this take a lot. It couldn’t be more wrong. Firstly, let’s talk definitions: > A white collar worker is a person who performs professional, desk, managerial, or administrative work. > A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. But I know what you’re trying to say - that we’ll suddenly find ourselves as the contemptible lower class of workers. Just FYI though: many manual laborers…

Good points. I think we are slowly becoming commodified or at least there will be greater stratification between different types of developer with much higher salaries on one and and much lower on the other.
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