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LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

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271–280 of 341 posts

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a decision that the Microsoft CEO gets briefed on, and can veto, but largely an independent subsidiary doing something like this doesn’t come from the mother ship.

I hope you're that forgiving by default to all leaders who's organizations / countries make controversial decisions, and aren't just being a Microsoft apologist.

Why an apologist? I don’t even think this is a decision that Microsoft or LinkedIn needs to apologize for. Is this already a scandal somehow?

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#272
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a decision that the Microsoft CEO gets briefed on, and can veto, but largely an independent subsidiary doing something like this doesn’t come from the mother ship.

> independent subsidiary I hope you will forgive me if I refuse to believe in such a thing having worked at large companies (non-Microsoft, tbf)

With a lot of large independent subsidiaries, the main company CEO’s decision is firing and hiring the subsidiary CEO and not a whole lot more. The parent company’s management often doesn’t have the bandwidth to get deeply involved so will just veto major decisions.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#273

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…

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…

Do you understand that typing the code and staring at IDE is just a small % of work? To think what and how to solve something you don't even need a computer. People who spend hours in the IDE do this mostly because of lack of experience. You interpret quality work as taking the piss...

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#274
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You can tell by how the project descriptions are written which ones to avoid. What makes you avoid a project?

The same thing that would make me pass over a resume/cover letter for a job I'm hiring for: vagueness. The more specific and transparent a posting is, the more confidence I have in the buyer knowing what they need and who they need to achieve that goal. You get a lot of amateurs/first-timers on these sites, and that's often a recipe for misaligned expectations.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They take 20% for up to $500. Then between $500 and $10K they take 10%. Anything above $10k is then charged as 5% only. And this applies to same client spanning multiple contracts. That means once you get paid $10k, regardless of current or future project(s) from same client they only take 5%. Upwork encourages long term relations between freelancers and clients. On the other hand Fiverr takes always 20%, regardless…

This always struck me as really unfair. If you're taking projects that bring you <$500, you probably really need that money and 20% is a large chunk of it.

The platform overhead is much higher for those jobs I suspect due to disputes, fraud, etc, etc.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#276
post #245

In the future your boss will assign work by auctioning JIRA tickets off to the team with a price ceiling set by freelancers on the LinkedIn marketplace. Payment will be through a bounty system. Salary is such an outdated payment structure

You may be joking, but this is already how my team has been operating for the past 6 months. Theoretically it sounds great, because you can scale up or down your engineering needs just like you scale anything on the cloud. Have 100 Github issues to fix this week? Scale up to 20 freelance devs for a week and get it done. Practically, it doesn't work. We're going to go back to hiring full-time engineers again.

Why doesn't it work? Genuinely curious!

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#277

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…

UpWork primarily connects laborers in underdeveloped regions to people having at least some spare capital in other regions (mostly developed regions). Each of these groups sees an exploitable value in the other. "Clients" see people willing to work practically for free (relatively speaking), and freelancers/agencies in these regions are quite happy turning in marginal work for 1/10th (or less) the wage a person in a developed country might charge.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be joking, but this is already how my team has been operating for the past 6 months. Theoretically it sounds great, because you can scale up or down your engineering needs just like you scale anything on the cloud. Have 100 Github issues to fix this week? Scale up to 20 freelance devs for a week and get it done. Practically, it doesn't work. We're going to go back to hiring full-time engineers again.

Why doesn't it work? Genuinely curious!

I'd guess because:

* It takes months for an engineer to be properly ramped up on a new codebase and even longer for business domain expertise. Until then they might actually be negatively productive due to onboarding questions other devs must answer.

* Enforcing any coding standards is difficult so you get a lot of technical debt over time.

edit: Also, a good engineer on a well functioning team will push back on bad or inefficient feature requirements. If you're just getting paid by feature and feel no ownership of the product then you have little incentive to do that.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#279
post #277

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…

UpWork primarily connects laborers in underdeveloped regions to people having at least some spare capital in other regions (mostly developed regions). Each of these groups sees an exploitable value in the other. "Clients" see people willing to work practically for free (relatively speaking), and freelancers/agencies in these regions are quite happy turning in marginal work for 1/10th (or less) the wage a person in a…

I live in a third world country and regularly hire contractors for USA through Upwork. It saves me a lot of time and I don't have to compete with other employers.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#280
I've only used Fiver, and only as a client. Absolutely amazing, for my passion video game project I've been more interested in the journey of getting my artwork made, and working on the video game then finishing it. Once I get all the custom models done, I might go ahead and shoot a trailer video but it's already been a blast.

One thing I would advise entrepreneurial people to do would it be to just hire people who know what they're doing for some stuff. For example if you want to build a website but you don't know how to design a ux, hop on Fiverr pay $200 for some UX mock-ups and go from there.

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