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Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

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Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#141

Post by wsc981 »

rangeofmotion wrote: post #68
caiocaiocaio wrote: post #21

I freelanced on Upwork for a bit. It was all the worst aspects of having an abusive boss (the platform itself), and all of the worst aspects of freelancing (unpredictability, getting ripped off by shifty clients). "Creepiest shit ever" is a pretty accurate description of Upwork. If Upwork's attitudes and policies were described to me in the 90s, I would have said it was lame, unrealistic science fiction with an over-…

It blows my mind that UpWork does so well as a platform. I have never had a good experience using it. And I don't know anyone who says good things about it. I think there is a real market opportunity for a startup that can provide a way to connect businesses who need short-term or specific project work (i.e. they don't want employees) with freelancers who want to work in that mode while (and this is important) avoidi…

I feel you should check out Codementor, as to me they are that kind of a platform: https://www.codementor.io

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#142

Post by daveFNbuck »

TrackerFF wrote: post #119
rahimiali wrote: post #37

I'm surprised that the complaint is about getting paid, rather than pointing out that Upwork facilitated an illegal and immoral system to be built. You don't get to use "demographic information" like "race" or "age" or probably many of the columns the post mentions to make hiring decisions. For the sake of the jobs industry, the author should change their post to say this.

I feel there's such a huge potential for serious sampling bias in data like that, I wouldn't be comfortable to train classifiers on it. Any company with dubious ethics could easily manipulate the data (collection) to match their intentions.

Things like job performance usually have a subjective component, so the training data will already have human bias built in without any intentional manipulation.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#143

Post by [deleted] »

komali2 wrote: post #69
opwieurposiu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it is not possible for race be related to job performance you must not have watched much NBA basketball.

You can't make effective prediction off this stereotype. It is useless. There is nothing inherent in "being black" that leads to greater basketball performance. Also, define "black," good luck. Being tall, maaaaaybe. But not perfectly so, and there's no useful correlation between tallness and race, considering that the NBA generally just selects for the most skilled basketball players. Then you get into all the cultu…

[deleted]

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#144

Post by DocTomoe »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #50
opwieurposiu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it is not possible for race be related to job performance you must not have watched much NBA basketball.

Or Sherpa people carrying luggage up Mt Everest... There's a difference between acknowledging some correlations, and using them as statistical tools in the job market. The latter is thankfully illegal or at least frowned upon.

When they built New York's skyscrapers, they hired predominantly people from the Mohawk tribe to do riveting a three hundred feet above ground because they lacked fear of heights.

At what point does a correlation become useful as a statistical tool?

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#145

Post by masonic »

3131s wrote: post #67
opwieurposiu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it is not possible for race be related to job performance you must not have watched much NBA basketball.

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.

I haven't read pertinent studies in awhile, but it used to be that all top sprinters were of West African ancestry due to a disproportionate amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers in the leg muscles.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#146

Post by masonic »

Baeocystin wrote: post #113
bsder wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

You can play a pickup game of hockey with something to thwack around as a puck, a stick, and some skates, all of which are dirt cheap. I think it's kind of a stretch to make any socioeconomic predictions when the much simpler correlate is that hockey is cheap and easy to play (and thus will have a larger talent pool to draw from) when you live where local ponds freeze over in the winter, and those parts of the countr…

ice hockey is very resource consumptive, both in terms of money and familial time) attention. Ice hockey requires both equipment and ice-time; both are costly and don't have parallels in other sports.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#147

Post by sergioj97 »

masonic wrote: post #146
Baeocystin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can play a pickup game of hockey with something to thwack around as a puck, a stick, and some skates, all of which are dirt cheap. I think it's kind of a stretch to make any socioeconomic predictions when the much simpler correlate is that hockey is cheap and easy to play (and thus will have a larger talent pool to draw from) when you live where local ponds freeze over in the winter, and those parts of the countr…

ice hockey is very resource consumptive, both in terms of money and familial time) attention. Ice hockey requires both equipment and ice-time; both are costly and don't have parallels in other sports.

Why does it require more time than any other sport such as basketball?

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#148

Post by dual_basis »

wsc981 wrote: post #140
caiocaiocaio wrote: post #21

I freelanced on Upwork for a bit. It was all the worst aspects of having an abusive boss (the platform itself), and all of the worst aspects of freelancing (unpredictability, getting ripped off by shifty clients). "Creepiest shit ever" is a pretty accurate description of Upwork. If Upwork's attitudes and policies were described to me in the 90s, I would have said it was lame, unrealistic science fiction with an over-…

I've tried Upwork in the past and the platform made me miserable. I've been using Codementor for the last year or so and been very happy with them. For the past year I've worked for a US client and since a few weeks I work for an Australian client. Why I like Codementor: - The payments are done on time and they don't extract some platform fee as far as I know for the freelance jobs. Or it's invisible to me (perhaps m…

If you're charging $80/hour but then work more hours than you charge your effective hourly wage is less than $80/hour. This is an incredibly low wage (less than half) for typical web design work in my area (New England).

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#149

Post by greendestiny_re »

social_quotient wrote: post #133
danj wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Care to share a channel or exchange some knowledge? We buy about 50k hours a year off of upwork, would love to learn how others are doing it. John @ curtisdigital . com

The e-mail address isn't working, neither is info@. You might want to take a look into that.

Re: Data scientists shouldn't use Upwork

#150

Post by caiocaiocaio »

jammygit wrote: post #56
caiocaiocaio wrote: post #21

I freelanced on Upwork for a bit. It was all the worst aspects of having an abusive boss (the platform itself), and all of the worst aspects of freelancing (unpredictability, getting ripped off by shifty clients). "Creepiest shit ever" is a pretty accurate description of Upwork. If Upwork's attitudes and policies were described to me in the 90s, I would have said it was lame, unrealistic science fiction with an over-…

Any tips for freelancers who are recent engineering grads? I have some portfolio items, but I still can’t claim more than 1 year experience

I can only speak for myself, doing mostly web dev/maintenance for local businesses at this point in my life.

I started trying to freelance online, with little success. When I mentioned to a dentist that I was freelancing he asked me to fix his old website. A small store owned by a friend asked me to make a website. Later the dentist asked me if I had cards to give to a friend.

About 75% of my business since then has been word-of-mouth. The rest has been me contacting local businesses that don't have websites. Business cards and flyers are supper cheap.

That being said, after three years, I'm only now starting to feel comfortable. There were very long dry spells, in between short periods of intense business, and word-of-mouth takes a very, very long time to operate (hence me reaching out to businesses without websites). I had to depend on my wife financially for stretches. I've also had to learn design, which is a much different skill-set to programming and has been very difficult. The main reason I went down the freelance path is because in my last salaried job, my boss developed substance abuse issues and unpredictable behaviours, which lead me to having a burnout. It's been hard but it's gradually starting to pay off. For all the difficulties, it is much more rewarding than watching all the value I generate go to some guy with a business degree who got through college doing elementary algebra.

Anyway, that was a fun rant, hope it was helpful to someone.

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