As a client, what are my alternatives to Upwork?
As a dev I'm happy with Arc [0] & Codementor [1]. I assume clients have a good experience here as well.
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[0]: https://arc.dev
Upwork just stole $10k from me
131–140 of 140 posts
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally, I see it as a benefit to be part of a community that can help in these situations. The problem is that instead of actually solving the issue we are normalizing the idea that if you're in XYZ group you'll get proper treatment while everyone else gets screwed. If you're on YouTube and have a massive audience or are friends with someone that has a major audience you may be spared the wrath of a rogue AI th…
But at least when posts about major tech companies' customer service fiascos show up here, there is the opportunity to discuss it and shame them into doing better. If these kinds of posts are disallowed here, the companies are not going to go: "Oh, our customers cannot get redress on Hacker News, so we better improve our internal customer service processes". They are screwing up their customers regardless of where re…
> there is the opportunity to discuss it and shame them into doing better.
The problem is that we are often not the ones paying the companies we are shaming and therefore we don't affect their bottom line very much. In this case I don't think the vast majority of folks on HN are the ones hiring people on Upwork.
> If these kinds of posts are disallowed here
I'm not advocating that, really, I think the current "system" that HN has works pretty well. If it becomes a problem users will down the content hard enough that @dang and folk can figure it out.
> Maybe this is a startup opportunity: pay a fee to have your issues with company X broadcast on the social media that will be most embarrassing to them; hopefully you get redress soon.
It's an interesting idea. I suppose it depends on if the vast majority of users are interested in following a social media presence that more-or-less only puts out messages about companies doing bad things. I think major outlets like Consumerist have had success in this area in the past. The difference is that their signal-to-noise ratio is much lower and they usually only raise a ruckus about something when it directly affects thousands of people. If I'm little Timmy that needs to raise a ruckus about my GMail account being banned and I'm paying $20 to said startup to do it, they would be flooded with a lot of "news" about people getting boned.
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally, I see it as a benefit to be part of a community that can help in these situations. The problem is that instead of actually solving the issue we are normalizing the idea that if you're in XYZ group you'll get proper treatment while everyone else gets screwed. If you're on YouTube and have a massive audience or are friends with someone that has a major audience you may be spared the wrath of a rogue AI th…
> I don't like the idea that unless I'm cliqued up on YouTube, Twitter and HackerNews I "deserve" to get screwed. I don't either, but that's such a fundamental part of the human condition I have no hope of it changing before I die and I couldn't afford to lose $10k. Also, oftentimes pressure from an individual case can lead to fixes to an automated system. It seems like we do better when we can put a face and a story…
> I don't either, but that's such a fundamental part of the human condition I have no hope of it changing before I die and I couldn't afford to lose $10k.
I agree and I'll never say that people trying to solve these kinds of problems on social media networks is deplorable or pass judgement on them. I've been there. I know very well what it's like to be screwed by a large company because they doubt you'll have the reach to spread the word.
> Also, oftentimes pressure from an individual case can lead to fixes to an automated system
That seems very inaccurate, sadly. Most of these systems have closed loops where our ramblings are never integrated into the loop. My impression is that usually at best someone goes into said systems and marks it as "manual" to take it out of the system then resolves it. I imagine there are many cases where the system continues completely untouched and it's "verdict" is considered by the internal models to still be valid and the company simply cuts a check or whatever is required to brush the problem under the rug.
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally, I see it as a benefit to be part of a community that can help in these situations. The problem is that instead of actually solving the issue we are normalizing the idea that if you're in XYZ group you'll get proper treatment while everyone else gets screwed. If you're on YouTube and have a massive audience or are friends with someone that has a major audience you may be spared the wrath of a rogue AI th…
> the magical sequence of fellow accounts You're just describing being well connected, which is nothing new. It's not 'a magical sequence of accounts', it's being part of a community. > if you're in XYZ group you'll get proper treatment This still beats "XYZ group" - in this case, someone who is > stressed about the situation and being without electricity due to the war being ignored by us as well as by the company t…
> You're just describing being well connected, which is nothing new. It's not 'a magical sequence of accounts', it's being part of a community.
I don't need to be well connected or have some arbitrary requirement of being "enough" of a community member to get basic recourse in other venues. In most other cases of our lives for these kinds of basic disputes you can rely on a combination of local laws, police and small claims courts.
I agree with most of your other points overall. My complaint isn't to say we shouldn't be raising an issue, it's really more about the way we act like the problem is solved once the giant fire no longer is roaring but there are still embers that eventually reignite.
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally, I see it as a benefit to be part of a community that can help in these situations. The problem is that instead of actually solving the issue we are normalizing the idea that if you're in XYZ group you'll get proper treatment while everyone else gets screwed. If you're on YouTube and have a massive audience or are friends with someone that has a major audience you may be spared the wrath of a rogue AI th…
I don't think anyone believes on a societal level that HN support is a fix. But at the moment it is the only fix and I would bet it will not get much better.
> I don't think anyone believes on a societal level that HN support is a fix. But at the moment it is the only fix and I would bet it will not get much better.
My comment isn't exclusive to HN - it's a much more widespread issue on many social media platforms.
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#136The crazy thing with these companies are they say you violated the user agreement but doesn't mention what specific policy you violated.
Guilty with no way to prove innocence.
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any chance for a dedicated section?
Do you mean would we add a dedicated section on HN for 3rd party customer support issues? That's a legit question. This is when it's particularly helpful to have only one thing we're optimizing for [1] because it means we can replace that question with another: would it make HN more intellectually interesting? The answer is clearly no, I think, because those threads tend to be so repetitive. [1] https://hn.algolia.co…
Knowing which company, that your live depends on, know how to make things right is crucial knowledge - thus the popularity of those threads IMO.
When years of your life gets deleted in seconds, and the company starts ignoring you, that's the red flag that needs to be public.
I'm not advocating for separate section, but the public have spoken - the popularity of those threads means it's crucial part of this community.
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#138In unrelated topic, I always found the HN ranking algorithm hard to understand but this time, it is of another level. This story was ranked No.6 with 170 pts and 44 comments then I entered the comments’s section, spent just a few minutes, return back.. bum! It just disappeared from not the front page nor the 2nd neither the 3rd, it is in the 4th page, ranked 107 with 269 pts and 96 comments.
Someone manually flagged the post.
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mean would we add a dedicated section on HN for 3rd party customer support issues? That's a legit question. This is when it's particularly helpful to have only one thing we're optimizing for [1] because it means we can replace that question with another: would it make HN more intellectually interesting? The answer is clearly no, I think, because those threads tend to be so repetitive. [1] https://hn.algolia.co…
Knowing which company, that your live depends on, know how to make things right is crucial knowledge - thus the popularity of those threads IMO. When years of your life gets deleted in seconds, and the company starts ignoring you, that's the red flag that needs to be public. I'm not advocating for separate section, but the public have spoken - the popularity of those threads means it's crucial part of this community.
That's not how HN works. If it did, then the front page would be filled with sensationalism and rage and the same few hot topics repeated over and over—because those tend to get the most upvotes.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Re: Upwork just stole $10k from me
#140LOL, reminds me of PayPal