I’d be curious if people have tried other platforms.
I think Upwork is a huge waste of time
11–14 of 14 posts
Re: I think Upwork is a huge waste of time
#12The poster is 100% correct but kind of missing the point of the platform. Upwork is essentially a platform for US people to hire cheap, interchangeable labor in low-wage countries. Anything else that happens on Upwork (like someone actually making a fair wage) is just a happy accident.
For companies who need a random jobs done like data entry or data cleaning, it's an amazing service where an army of freelancers will fight over your meager $200 budget. They put the cheap labor through hell because they know they can - all in an effort to make the hiring experience better than hiring local help. The person hiring has 110% of the power. The first clue is that the hiring person literally gets to spy on your screen 100% of the time which is insane and not a working condition you should accept form a real job.
If you are a US/UK/other expensive place developer, you should not be using Upwork to find work unless you literally have no contacts and no experience. It's the very bottom of the barrel of consulting. You should be building your own client relationships in your own market. If you can do that, you can easily earn 5x - 10x what you can earn on a commodity platform like Upwork. But if you are in the Phillipines and you can make double a local wage helping someone far away clean up a spreadsheet, that might make more sense.
Re: I think Upwork is a huge waste of time
#13To be transparent, I have used Upwork in the past and would use it again as a client. What he's saying is pretty spot on. ANY market place that's wide spread/large enough is an efficiency system that goes to fair market value. Is there a fix that I could provide? No, because what he's complaining about, someone in India is praising. The Indian designer can get discovered. Pumps out good, solid work at 94% success and…
It's sweatshop work in India as well. Many are highly educated and they want to be hired locally, by international corporations like Oracle, and have a decent life not phoning Western clients during the night and coding. They'll complain about russian/Ukrainian and Polish working even cheaper.
Re: I think Upwork is a huge waste of time
#14To be transparent, I have used Upwork in the past and would use it again as a client. What he's saying is pretty spot on. ANY market place that's wide spread/large enough is an efficiency system that goes to fair market value. Is there a fix that I could provide? No, because what he's complaining about, someone in India is praising. The Indian designer can get discovered. Pumps out good, solid work at 94% success and…
It’s not necessarily about “fair market value”. It’s “lowest possible price” but that doesn’t account for quality, communication and cultural barriers, etc. particularly in a market where the customer typically doesn’t know enough to judge quality up front.