I have experience on Upwork both hiring and being hired. From hiring perspective, the person I interviewed was not the person who actually did the work. Being hired via Upwork, it was a challenge to even land an interview; I'd bid things and be in a pool among 10+ other people internationally with lower rates. I've worked in software in the US for over 10 years. The other aspect is that often those hiring on Upwork don't know what to look for, or have unrealistic expectations. I did find a few mutually successful gigs, but didn't make as much as I could have in industry. I decided that working for a normal company was more advantageous.
Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
51–60 of 208 posts
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#52I got burned by something like this. I hired an editor (not on Upwork) who had worked for a number of very famous authors (people you've heard of, people who've sold millions of copies). They did a fantastic sample edit, and the quality of the work dropped off precipitously by about the 20% point of the manuscript. The best-case scenario is that they just didn't care, because I'm a nobody and because of the novel's l…
The term of art for this process from the MBA side is "Extracting the value from the brand". The editor developed the reputation for good work, which had some value. Now they're cashing in by selling the brand attached to poor work. The reputation is decaying at some rate, but slower than the editor is extracting money.
Notice, for example, you're not helping it decay, your story can't be tied to the bad actor. You have good reasons for this, but it's why the scam works.
The key correlate to understand from "Extracting value from the brand" is that when the process is complete, there is no value left in the brand. It's explicitly setting up a con, defecting from the iterated prisoner's dilemma. Lying with more words.
My favorite examples of this pattern are from other areas of endeavor: Kitchen Aid mixers, which used to be an industrial quality offshoot of Hobart and now is trash; and Singer, which used to be a superb sewing machine, and now is trash.
But you can see the pattern in many places.
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#53Just wanted chime in with second a second anecdote that I was going to post. We needed a Django developer. Put an ad on Upwork at the high end of the recommended salary range. The ad specified US Eligible worker for legal reasons. Of the 10 or so applicants, seven flat out refused to appear on webcam so I decided to talk to the eighth. This person claim to be in Seattle. Having lived there I asked them two relatively…
Refusing to be on web cam without a compelling reason is a huge red flag by itself.
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#54Just wanted chime in with second a second anecdote that I was going to post. We needed a Django developer. Put an ad on Upwork at the high end of the recommended salary range. The ad specified US Eligible worker for legal reasons. Of the 10 or so applicants, seven flat out refused to appear on webcam so I decided to talk to the eighth. This person claim to be in Seattle. Having lived there I asked them two relatively…
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Congrats, you're the problem.
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#55Just wanted chime in with second a second anecdote that I was going to post. We needed a Django developer. Put an ad on Upwork at the high end of the recommended salary range. The ad specified US Eligible worker for legal reasons. Of the 10 or so applicants, seven flat out refused to appear on webcam so I decided to talk to the eighth. This person claim to be in Seattle. Having lived there I asked them two relatively…
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Definitely is a societal problem; to me that means we need a societal solution.
Namely individuals have to call out bad behavior to the point it’s regulated. Not so much in this case by the market but by government regulation to hold two sided marketplaces accountable for almost literal fraud by one party.
In this case it’s easier as more a legal question as opposed to a skill question.
I would penalize Upwork for the wage differential times three. Notice Upwork would be responsible, not the other side.
It should also be easy for the ”wronged” side of this transaction to pursue such a claim.
The non-irony here is the tremendous amount of effort, ie periodic screenshots, logs etc. that make sure Upwork gets paid.
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#56Just wanted chime in with second a second anecdote that I was going to post. We needed a Django developer. Put an ad on Upwork at the high end of the recommended salary range. The ad specified US Eligible worker for legal reasons. Of the 10 or so applicants, seven flat out refused to appear on webcam so I decided to talk to the eighth. This person claim to be in Seattle. Having lived there I asked them two relatively…
Refusing to be on web cam without a compelling reason is a huge red flag by itself.
There have been good A/B studies showing significant changes in response rate to resumes with and without photos. How someone looks doesn't seem like it should be correlated with their ability to draw a picture or choose a search algorithm.
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#57I'm looking for advice on a similar issue. Somebody is impersonating me on dating sites and blackmailing women. They convince their victims to send nude photos, and then they threaten to send the photos to their families. The scammer (or scammers) use photos of me that used to be publicly available on social media. They also use my real name, presumably so that the victims see a legitimate LinkedIn profile when they…
Facebook has a similar problem. They’ve known about it for more than a decade…it was probably reported long before I reported it, but I first saw and reported in in 2008. But recently a friend of my mom was taken for $1000, so they’ve obviously not taken the simple steps necessary to prevent it.
The scam is basically to find someone with a lot of friends and copy their profile, pictures and all. Once they’ve done that, they reconnect and have an emergency that requires the friend send money. People naturally see the profile photo and name and think their friend is in real trouble.
With all of Facebook’s efforts to de-anonymize users, how is it possible that they’ve done nothing to prevent foreign scanners from blatantly copying accounts?
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Refusing to be on web cam without a compelling reason is a huge red flag by itself.
There have been good A/B studies showing significant changes in response rate to resumes with and without photos. How someone looks doesn't seem like it should be correlated with their ability to draw a picture or choose a search algorithm.
I'm unsure if this is at all equivalent. I'm pretty sure I'd see someone in person before covid forced remote work (thankfully), physically, and that confirms the identity of who I'm talking to to a huge extent.
How you interact with someone is just as important, if not more important, than if they can choose the correct algorithm.
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#59Just wanted chime in with second a second anecdote that I was going to post. We needed a Django developer. Put an ad on Upwork at the high end of the recommended salary range. The ad specified US Eligible worker for legal reasons. Of the 10 or so applicants, seven flat out refused to appear on webcam so I decided to talk to the eighth. This person claim to be in Seattle. Having lived there I asked them two relatively…
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This is an interesting read, i'm thinking more and more about how to play the system a little better because I feel like if you don't you are the one getting played.
In most big companies, unless you actually do something wrong or there is a hardcore metric they are monitoring you by, then it's very easy to do a fairly poor job and slip underneath the radar, because there are only a few things people see you doing, everyone else is too busy trying to deal with there own life and not get fired themselves.
Re: Tell HN: Upwork has an impersonation problem
#60Interesting enough, years ago I worked on upwork. And now, I get emails from developers in India asking if they can partner with me, use my account to get customers and then split the profits.
I have always said no, but this is another way upwork may have an impersonation problem. Using accounts with a great track record, then selling the login information to someone else to pretend to be them. Then when you hire someone, it isn't actually them.