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Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

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Re: Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

#11

Post by x0x0 »

devoply wrote: post #4

I wonder if anyone in developed countries can actually make a living from something like Upwork. It seemed to me whenever I have looked at it, that it's mostly people and companies from the developing world who work for less than minimum wage or close to it in developed countries... and the expected cost matches these sorts of rates. So it does not make sense for anyone other than the most desperate people in the fir…

We're paying approx $45/us hour to someone in a developing country. I'm pretty sure that goes pretty far there.

Re: Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

#12

Post by devoply »

x0x0 wrote: post #11
devoply wrote: post #4

I wonder if anyone in developed countries can actually make a living from something like Upwork. It seemed to me whenever I have looked at it, that it's mostly people and companies from the developing world who work for less than minimum wage or close to it in developed countries... and the expected cost matches these sorts of rates. So it does not make sense for anyone other than the most desperate people in the fir…

We're paying approx $45/us hour to someone in a developing country. I'm pretty sure that goes pretty far there.

Can you elaborate on the sort of work and what you would be paying locally for the same sort of work... i.e. is it something that requires quite a bit of specialization, etc.

Re: Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

#13

Post by Roritharr »

Recently a friend of mine pointed me towards TopTracker. It's an interesting concept, having kind of a papertrail for what you worked on can be really valuable in any setting, even the most friendly ones, because even yourself can loose track of all the yaks you've had to shave to fix a certain bug or make a gizmo spin a certain way.

I've seen so many freelancers waste company time and endangering otherwise great projects in the past and have even done so myself that I really think a proper, fair and well balanced tracking suite would have benefited all parties as it would have created a much more formal and clear reminder of what screentime in this setting is for.

Obviously the flip side is that through the "invasive tracking", work stays work and everything not-work needs to happen on another machine. This means less mixing of private stuff into your work life which many consider something positive, but is counter to what the larger trends in IT are. (Corporate Campuses that fulfill every need...)

At the end of the day i'm really not sure where I stand on this, as it opens so many positive possibilities (f.e. proactive encountering of procrastination) but also so many negative ones (abuse of power). Surveillance is never an easy topic.

Re: Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

#16

Post by shawn »

nihil75 wrote: post #10

Had a dev use macro keystrokes to cheat it. worthless.

Hahaha. What? That’s awesome. What did the macros do?

I’ve always wanted to make a plausible code generator based on markov chains. It still seems like an effective way to trick people into thinking you’re working on some hard problem.

Re: Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

#17

Post by poulsbohemian »

Roritharr wrote: post #13

Recently a friend of mine pointed me towards TopTracker. It's an interesting concept, having kind of a papertrail for what you worked on can be really valuable in any setting, even the most friendly ones, because even yourself can loose track of all the yaks you've had to shave to fix a certain bug or make a gizmo spin a certain way. I've seen so many freelancers waste company time and endangering otherwise great pro…

Would you say the same thing about employees standing around the water cooler planning the company picnic or talking about their spot in the company fantasy football league?

There are good freelancers, there are poor ones. Same goes for any type of employment. This is quite apart from whether it is appropriate or necessary to micromanage their keystrokes.

Re: Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

#18

Post by x0x0 »

devoply wrote: post #12
x0x0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're paying approx $45/us hour to someone in a developing country. I'm pretty sure that goes pretty far there.

Can you elaborate on the sort of work and what you would be paying locally for the same sort of work... i.e. is it something that requires quite a bit of specialization, etc.

rails + ruby + a bit of frontend. It's not super specialized but rails can easily become a huge mess if you don't know what you're doing. So we're definitely interested in more senior talent, ideally someone that has made all the new rails eng mistakes in someone else' codebase.

We would pay more locally, but we're mostly not on upwork because of money. We just needed someone we could get soon. I will say that what $45/h gets you on upwork is far more than what you get in sfbay.

Re: Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

#19

Post by fipple »

devoply wrote: post #4

I wonder if anyone in developed countries can actually make a living from something like Upwork. It seemed to me whenever I have looked at it, that it's mostly people and companies from the developing world who work for less than minimum wage or close to it in developed countries... and the expected cost matches these sorts of rates. So it does not make sense for anyone other than the most desperate people in the fir…

"Not in San Francisco" and "easy to exploit" are very different. I had great, professional work done in Russia on Upwork. It didn't cost $200 per hour, but it didn't cost $2 per hour either. The engineer who did the work was the vendor, and I was the client, so I was definitely the boss and treated as such, but he was clearly not hurting for work and if I started behaving inappropriately he could have easily dumped me and found another client. I don't know how far his salary went where he was living, but there are many places in this world where 20 US dollars per hour can sustain a very nice lifestyle.

Re: Upwork Freelancers Who Want Guaranteed Pay Have to Opt in to Tracking Software

#20

Post by justwalt »

sparrish wrote: post #7

Even with this screenshot tracking, I've been swindled on Upwork by fake devs. They take the time to fake it, why not just do the work?

It probably has more to do with not wanting be constantly spied on. That’s how I think I would feel, anyway.
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