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LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

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Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#321

Post by cutemonster »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #164
Softcadbury wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more about what these scammers want? Do they want you to work for them for free?

Yes, for some, but I never followed up enough to find out more. I think the scary one may have been legit (in their own world), but they were clearly unhinged, and I didn't want to have anything to do with that. Since the approach is often pretty much equal to a 419 approach, I suspect that there would be a point where you give them some sensitive financial information, or pay "licensing fees," or something. Maybe th…

Silly question, but if they:

> Maybe they would send you one of those wonderful "more than the agreed-upon amount" third-party checks

Then, won't they lose money?

Or the checks would be invalid, worthless?

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#322

Post by fecak »

seanwilson wrote: post #317
fecak wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hourly rate is $100, which is not the highest, but there are experienced writers for far less. In part because of the cumbersome billing process, my hourly projects are often less expensive. A few minutes here and a few minutes there adds up.

Why not charge a fixed price though? Simple billing, no time spend on time tracking + predictable price to the client.

Most of my work is fixed price. Probably 90%+.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#323

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

cutemonster wrote: post #321
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for some, but I never followed up enough to find out more. I think the scary one may have been legit (in their own world), but they were clearly unhinged, and I didn't want to have anything to do with that. Since the approach is often pretty much equal to a 419 approach, I suspect that there would be a point where you give them some sensitive financial information, or pay "licensing fees," or something. Maybe th…

Silly question, but if they: > Maybe they would send you one of those wonderful "more than the agreed-upon amount" third-party checks Then, won't they lose money? Or the checks would be invalid, worthless?

> Or the checks would be invalid, worthless?

That's the scam.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-spot-avoid-and-rep...

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#325

Post by bawolff »

hnarn wrote: post #130
robjan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is if you are an employee you are more likely to need to make changes to your own messy code so there is an incentive to keep it clean

All I'm saying is that I don't think it's as simple as "you either have incentive or you don't", because if it was, then developers writing bad code that they themselves had to go back to wouldn't exist, but they clearly do. I'm one of them and I talk to a lot of them daily. To say that "of course this freelance code is garbage, they're paid peanuts" is naive, because it implies that: a) Well paid engineers always wr…

> Badly paid engineers don't care about code quality if they don't get paid for it, which isn't true because open source is a thing.

When you do open source, you are the one who has to live with the results. Forever. I think open source proves the point you're arguing against.

Besides, the argument is not that they are paid peanuts, just that they are being paid for other things. The incentives are not lined up for freelancers to give high investment up front to reduce long term maintenance costs. That doesnt mean every freelancer writes crap code, just that on average its not a system that selects for easily maintainable code.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#326

Post by confidantlake »

codesuela wrote: post #87
AmericanChopper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am myself a contractor so I’m not trying to shield myself from anything. They are however not simple to spot at all. I mean, I can spot them quite easily (at least I think I can). But I tend to work for people who hire me because they lack the skills that I have (or at least the skills I convince them I have). Their ability to evaluate the quality of my work, or reason about the problems I report to have with their…

If the client does not have the competence to spot bad work, how are screenshots gonna help?

This. I am not sure I as an engineer could tell the difference with screenshots. How could someone without programming experience do so?

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#327

Post by bawolff »

newswasboring wrote: post #296
bawolff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-end, by definition, is not a large percentage of workers. High end is the workers on the high end of the compensation scale. Those type of people arent going to be on a site like upwork, but they make a hell of a lot more than $100/hr.

You are conflating price and quality. If there are two top level people equally good one will undercut the other. And if one lives in Bangalore and the other in SF the first will undercut massively. SF living expenses are an exception on a global market place.

High end goods and services are not races to the bottom.

For example, when was the last time you saw an airline undercut their competitors' first-class ticket price? How many sports-car manufactures get in price wars with their competition?

If your services are supply-constrained and there is a string market, you can charge whatever you want (to an extent, at least many times your cost of living), your cost of living doesn't matter when setting your prices in that situation. Your value is what the market dictates, not how much it costs you to buy a loaf of bread.

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#328

Post by seanwilson »

varispeed wrote: post #311
tyingq wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"what IDE you are using are immaterial when it comes to whether you are employed or not." It's not, though. It's one aspect of behavioral control. For US Federal purposes, for example: "Type of instructions given, such as when and where to work, what tools to use" "Degree of instruction, more detailed instructions may indicate that the worker is an employee" "Training a worker on how to do the job" https://www.irs.go…

In my country for example Upwork would fail for these reasons: Substitution - I understand that you cannot subcontract the work without the client knowledge and approval. That means the service is most likely personal. Even if the client agrees etc. and the subcontractor is only allowed to be from the Upwork pool (e.g. the client could hire them directly) then that also doesn't count as substitution. Control and dire…

> Substitution - I understand that you cannot subcontract the work without the client knowledge and approval. That means the service is most likely personal.

Do you know the rational behind this one? Obviously when you hire a solo freelancer you want to work with that particular freelancer. Why would this single clause being false mark you as being an employee?

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#329

Post by z0xz0xz0x »

DC1350 wrote: post #245

In the future your boss will assign work by auctioning JIRA tickets off to the team with a price ceiling set by freelancers on the LinkedIn marketplace. Payment will be through a bounty system. Salary is such an outdated payment structure

Oh god. I really hope this is not the case or I would stop working in this profession

Re: LinkedIn is building a gig marketplace

#330

Post by crucialfelix »

robjan wrote: post #123
hnarn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> arent being paid for how clean it is To be fair, a lot of full-time developers in big companies also do not get paid for how clean the code is, because no one cares. I'd probably lean more towards personal character deciding this than just looking at people behaving only and always as incentives tell them to in any situation. Some people take pride in their code and some don't.

The difference is if you are an employee you are more likely to need to make changes to your own messy code so there is an incentive to keep it clean

Or you keep trying to get time for refactoring and cleanups, but instead the product team keeps pushing for urgent new features and the project manager keeps questioning why development is getting slower and the defect rate is getting higher.
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