Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It • Hacker News Board

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#61

Post by skeeper » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 8:18 AM UTC

phantom_oracle wrote: post #57

A lot of people are mentioning "let's build a clone that is better and will do us greater justice", but ask yourself, with 14 million entrenched users, how is building an upwork clone any different to "let's build a twitter/facebook clone"? The merger did precisely what they wanted it to do: Give a single player a dominant market-share. This single player will then engage in price-flooring practices until they've sna…

We should not aim to create a clone. We should aim to make something right, fair, and better - the way it should've been done in the first place.

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#62

Post by skeeper » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 8:24 AM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #59

skeeper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They seem to be alienating certain groups of freelancers deliberately.

Ebay tried the same trick in the past, chasing off the platform thousands of small "unproductive" sellers. The problem is that this sellers were also specialized buyers spending money and many hours chasing rare items in Ebay AND showing their trophies to all their family and friends to see. Ebay lost not only some fine and loyal buyers, but also tons of great free advertising. In the end this lead to losing a lot of…

Regardless of how you analyze it, it was clearly a mistake because the platform is literally driving many freelancers away (many contracts are short-term or <$500 contracts). The least kind thing they could have done is make the announcement about the pricing change at least one year prior the implementation, so that affected freelancers could take appropriate actions. Profit-wise, it could be considered a smart move, but even that is an uncertainty.

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#63

Post by skeeper » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 10:04 AM UTC

The Medium article above has gathered almost 4,000 views today and yesterday. We got amazing support. Getting close to 6,000 views. We should keep on sharing this with everyone out there!

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#64

Post by skeeper » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 1:48 PM UTC

This article is close to 6,000 total views. More support!

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#65

Post by skeeper » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 3:51 AM UTC

tobltobs wrote: post #60

phantom_oracle wrote: post #57

A lot of people are mentioning "let's build a clone that is better and will do us greater justice", but ask yourself, with 14 million entrenched users, how is building an upwork clone any different to "let's build a twitter/facebook clone"? The merger did precisely what they wanted it to do: Give a single player a dominant market-share. This single player will then engage in price-flooring practices until they've sna…

I don't think you can compare the situation with twitter or facebook. Those are actually good at what they are doing. But upwork is such a crap (in my experience as a client, for freelancers it must be horrors) that a lot of people would jump ship as soon as there would be an alternative. But sadly all alternatives like guru or freelancer.com are as bad or even more (missing words to describe those clusterfucks) as u…

"But upwork is such a crap (in my experience as a client, for freelancers it must be horrors)... sadly all alternatives like guru or freelancer.com are as bad or even more" --- That's true!

Re: Upwork is Changing Again and What We Can Do About It

#66

Post by zimbatm » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

skeeper wrote: post #53

zimbatm wrote: post #4

Why is a central authority controlling the market again ? What we need is interfaces for the customer and workers that can be matched together by a broker. It's probably quite hard to find the right interface but it would then benefit everyone. Here is a simpler example for a Uber-like implementation: * Taxis would be advertising their current position and whenever they they are free or not with their phone. * Potent…

Could you explain more? Platforms like Upwork serve as interface or broker between customers and workers. Are you referring to something different?

Upwork is a monolith. It's a broker but also holds the developer and customer data. Competing brokers cannot enter the market without having to ask developers and customers to duplicate their data.

If the developer had it's own service (like his personal website) that hold the list of services that he provides, his availability and general price. Then brokers could connect to this and match it with customer requests. Same on the other side, a customer should be able to submit his project proposal and let the various brokers pick it up and match the appropriate developers.