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LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

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Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#281

Post by ryandrake »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #173
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…

Since I learned what upwork was the hard way, I not only stay away from it but also reject any other consultant who says that this is usually the platform they source their projects from. At first sight the problem seems to be poor quality engineers/skills. The true issue is that its race-to-the-bottom pricing strategy (one that gets hand-wavily justified by intrusive surveillance / screen recording) attracts the wor…

Cool story, and sadly not unusual. I wonder if you (or anyone) ever managed to convince "boss" that the poor quality was due to these deficiencies, and that maybe cost was not the most important thing to optimize for.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#282

Post by varispeed »

mritchie712 wrote: post #250
varispeed wrote: post #231

It is only a matter of time that members of such services will be declared as employees and will have to be paid minimum wage and get other perks (and also have the correct tax collected at source). Otherwise how this case is different from Uber? Just because someone is not sitting in the car for hours it doesn't mean the suffering is any different.

the freelancers will likely "set their rate" on LinkedIn. Uber drivers can not set a rate. Being unable to negotiate rate is one of the primary reasons Uber is being considered an employer.

As an employee you can also set your rate and it is always up to employer to take it or leave it. There is no difference between "freelancing" and employment with that regard. I think this will be a clear case of evading employment laws at least in my country. The give away is having to use the tracker which means that employer is exerting direct control over the worker and also you don't have control over what to make (e.g. you have to work to specification set by the client). I think they didn't catch on that because nobody has reported this, but after Uber there is a clear precedent set.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#283

Post by varispeed »

tyingq wrote: post #242
varispeed wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know why those companies like Fiverr didn't get the same treatment as Uber? In the end it is a pretty much the same business model.

If you mean the California law, I think the big difference is that under AB5, workers can only be independent contractors if the work they do is "outside the usual course of a company's business" . There's no way driving for Uber can ever meet that criteria. Fiverr, on the other hand, often meets that definition. The US federal rules are more subjective, but more generally about "control". Not as stark a difference a…

In the UK this type of work would get caught by IR35, which I understand would be similar to AB5. As an employee you can also pick your own tools or figure out how to do the work by yourself - these are not determining factors at least here where I live. What tips it over the IR35 is having to log your hours and work to the specification given by the "client". This is no different than normal employment except you and the "client" don't pay the right tax and you don't get any employment rights. Probably nobody has seriously took a bite into it, but after Uber precedent this may change.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#284

Post by tyingq »

varispeed wrote: post #283
tyingq wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean the California law, I think the big difference is that under AB5, workers can only be independent contractors if the work they do is "outside the usual course of a company's business" . There's no way driving for Uber can ever meet that criteria. Fiverr, on the other hand, often meets that definition. The US federal rules are more subjective, but more generally about "control". Not as stark a difference a…

In the UK this type of work would get caught by IR35, which I understand would be similar to AB5. As an employee you can also pick your own tools or figure out how to do the work by yourself - these are not determining factors at least here where I live. What tips it over the IR35 is having to log your hours and work to the specification given by the "client". This is no different than normal employment except you an…

"As an employee you can also pick your own tools or figure out how to do the work by yourself"

That hasn't really been my experience doing software development as an employee. They mandate lots of things like methodology (scrum, scaled agile, etc), tools like their standard IDE, coding standards, style guides, mandatory use of JIRA or similar, SCM standards, which languages are allowed, and so on. I'm aware some places might be highly flexible, but I assume that's less common.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#285

Post by easton »

thebiglebrewski wrote: post #276
vincentmarle wrote: post #268

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!

You'd run into Brooks's law pretty quickly, that is, "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later", since you have to spend a bunch of the current engineers' time to get the new people up to speed. Especially for one issue, which maybe doesn't require a lot of domain knowledge, but being neck deep you sometimes can't estimate that properly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#286

Post by jamil7 »

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.

> 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.

You realize freelancers often have ongoing relationships with their clients, right? As well as relying heavily on recommendations and referrals. Why would I risk putting shitty work out there?

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#288

Post by Jommi »

onion2k wrote: post #83
Jommi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't do this as a quality worker, you're basically subsidizing for those that on purpose try to do lower quality work.

That assumes that the quality of your work is tied to the amount of time you're actively using your computer. Time making notes in a notepad, or thinking while you walk around, or having a work-based conversation with someone, or mapping something out on a whiteboard adds to the quality of an application. Heck, I've often found that taking a break to read HN or make a cup of coffee or even watch a YT video results in…

Isnt the tool more looking at what the dev is doing rather than timing?

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#289

Post by bitbuilder »

marcinzm wrote: post #278
thebiglebrewski wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd add to that, team dynamics can't be discounted. Feeling part of a team is good for morale, and in turn productivity.

People tend to produce better work, on a faster timeline, when the respect of their teammates is on the line.

Also, with any given team and codebase, team members will tend to carve out unofficial roles that best fit their abilities. This of course increases the net productivity of the team.

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