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Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

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101–110 of 160 posts

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#101

My company uses Upwork (as a services buyers) for hundreds of contracted hours per week, and have been for many years. We’ve never required any contractor to use screen recording for hourly work — that is optional — and have never heard of anyone using a webcam. We’ve also never disputed a single hour of work that a contractor has billed, nor have we heard any of the dozens of contractors we’ve hired mention this as…

I also have a high rate of success with Upwork for freelancers, from designers to developers, however I believe their recent changes, for example to charging to invite more than 3 candidates, is going to cause many to look elsewhere. They are increasing fees and decreasing usability. I'm open to new options.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#102
post #61

I’ve probably hired about $150,000 of contracts through up work and never once have we required the monitoring app to be used. However, we have a bit of a different approach, we will “pay” you through upwork for the first month, but if we are satisfied with your work after a month we pay you directly through PayPal or wire transfer and then we cancel the contract on upwork. Out of all of the contractors we have hired…

Might not want to post that here if you intend on keeping that account - https://www.upwork.com/legal#noncircumvention

There’s an opt-out clause, but I don’t know enough about talent acquisition costs to know whether it’s a good deal. My assumption is that recruiting agencies and internal processes are super expensive, so Upwork might be a cheaper option even with the opt-out fee.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#103
> The central computer notices just about everything. Keeps track of every key you hit on the keyboard, all day long, what time you hit it, down to the microsecond, whether it was the right key or the wrong key, how many mistakes you make and when you make them. You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed, which is why Y.T.'s mom is sliding into the first unoccupied workstation and signing on to her machine at quarter to seven. Half a dozen other people are already here, signed on to workstations closer to the entrance, but this isn't bad. She can look forward to a reasonably stable career if she can keep up this sort of performance.

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

And now, from the convenience of your home...

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#104
A lot of people from India on there posting dumb jobs. Though, dumb jobs can come from anywhere. It takes hours of sifting to find real offers. Most people want you to solve climate change for $1k or build their amazing idea they haven't thought through. It's a dumpster fire but there are real offers on there. With data science, you have to stress that it is research. You can only give probabilities, there's a chance it never works as you suspected or you don't come to a conclusion.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#105
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America?, any person self described as one, or with a significant (25%+) component of the Niger-Condorfanian cluster as per [1]. I agree the definition is arbitrary but all definitions are. The same with "tall" people. We could discuss all day long who is or isnt tall, or we could define tall as being at least 6ft 2in or whatever. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5930/1035

This is a good faith attempt and I appreciate that. First, from your link: >Our data also provide evidence for shared ancestry among geographically diverse hunter-gatherer populations (Khoesan speakers and Pygmies). Would we say that pygmies, being considered black, would be likely to make it into the NBA? Second, can we guarantee that people who self identify black, would agree that the definition of someone else's…

I agree with some things you said others not so much. By the way, being this the Internet, I am not trying to push any weird racial stuff here, I am only trying to argue for the position you can operationalize the race concept based on arbitrary but objective genetical clusters in the human population. This can be useful for myriad things: Anthropology, population genetics, hereditary disease, diet requirements design, human evolutionary history, etc etc. There is nothing wrong with the concept that there are groups of genetic markers who are different among populations in the world.

Regarding pygmies, they are a different cluster from the highly homogenous cluster of Niger Cordofian from which current African American population in America descends. From the article I cited: "High levels of heterogeneous ancestry (i.e., multiple cluster assignments) were observed innearly all African individuals, with the exception of western and central African Niger-Kordofanian speakers (medium orange), who are relatively homogeneous at large K values(Fig. 5C and fig. S15).)".

I see you are also a bit disingineous if you dont think there is a high correlation between athletic abilities and genetics. Gimme a competent geneticist, 200 hundred genomes of 15 years old boys: 100 African Americans and 100 Guatemalans, shortest dudes in the Americas. I am pretty confident that I can pick 2 teams of 5 kids just by their genome and pick the correct winner of a basketball game between them with high probability. Yeah I cannot predict individuals outcome(yet) but population wise I think it is not a crazy stretch.

On the other hand I see your point that there is no crystal clear boundary between any human group, but if you take that position you have to be consistent with it. What I mean is that I assume you are not happy with an universal definition of black (I can understand and even agree with that). But then you are forced to admit the concept of White privilege is vague too. Same reasoning. You could say "White" is a cultural concept, but I could say the same regarding "Black" so we are back to part 1.

Again I suspect we have more points in common that differences regarding this topic, I just wanted to put out there some considerations.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#106
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good faith attempt and I appreciate that. First, from your link: >Our data also provide evidence for shared ancestry among geographically diverse hunter-gatherer populations (Khoesan speakers and Pygmies). Would we say that pygmies, being considered black, would be likely to make it into the NBA? Second, can we guarantee that people who self identify black, would agree that the definition of someone else's…

I agree with some things you said others not so much. By the way, being this the Internet, I am not trying to push any weird racial stuff here, I am only trying to argue for the position you can operationalize the race concept based on arbitrary but objective genetical clusters in the human population. This can be useful for myriad things: Anthropology, population genetics, hereditary disease, diet requirements desig…

I don't have enough time to give you the response you deserve for the time you've taken, but I do appreciate your insight and will think on it.

As all parts of culture, the concept of white privilege is extremely vague, and I imagine white Milwaukee trailer park residents would be a bit offended to be lectured about their privilege. Hence why I would prefer we spend our time focusing more on socioeconomic factors of humanity rather than genetics - it just seems more useful.

I may return to edit this if I have time today but if not thank you for this discussion.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#107
post #61

I’ve probably hired about $150,000 of contracts through up work and never once have we required the monitoring app to be used. However, we have a bit of a different approach, we will “pay” you through upwork for the first month, but if we are satisfied with your work after a month we pay you directly through PayPal or wire transfer and then we cancel the contract on upwork. Out of all of the contractors we have hired…

Might not want to post that here if you intend on keeping that account - https://www.upwork.com/legal#noncircumvention

We have such a solid team now and we have lots of other channels for hiring people now but thank you!

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#109

My company uses Upwork (as a services buyers) for hundreds of contracted hours per week, and have been for many years. We’ve never required any contractor to use screen recording for hourly work — that is optional — and have never heard of anyone using a webcam. We’ve also never disputed a single hour of work that a contractor has billed, nor have we heard any of the dozens of contractors we’ve hired mention this as…

I used to work on Upwork and almost all of the projects required screen logging. I think this was before there was any webcam thing in it.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#110
post #92
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best athletes are extremely intelligent and driven people. The over-representation of black people in athletics is most definitely related to their under-representation in other fields.

Or it might just be because basketball is the preferred sport of a lot of black people in the US, so they are more likely to play it and become good at it. If you look at hockey, it is mostly white. That doesn't mean being white gives you an advantage in playing hockey. It just means way more white people enjoy hockey compared to black people.

> If you look at hockey, it is mostly white. That doesn't mean being white gives you an advantage in playing hockey. It just means way more white people enjoy hockey compared to black people.

I suspect it's more that playing hockey implies a certain socioeconomic stratum (hockey is an expensive sport).

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