Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#2Why would a guy with enough personal funds to tackle any project decide to focus on home improvement? How boring and inconsequential to the future of humanity.
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#3As a remote worker having my every activity recorded is not my idea of remote work. UpWork by default requires running their app and taking times screenshots. I'd rather not use anything that's remotely related to UpWork TBH...
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#4Why would a guy with enough personal funds to tackle any project decide to focus on home improvement? How boring and inconsequential to the future of humanity.
Because there is absolutely no rule that says that what you work on has to be, or even should be, "consequential to humanity". Sometimes people work on things because it's personally interesting to them, and that's absolutely fine.
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#5Why would a guy with enough personal funds to tackle any project decide to focus on home improvement? How boring and inconsequential to the future of humanity.
People start a business first and foremost to profit by way of ROI.
People live in homes,one can argue home improvement is improvement of the quality of life for people who live in homes which is very relevant to the future of humanity.
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#6Why would a guy with enough personal funds to tackle any project decide to focus on home improvement? How boring and inconsequential to the future of humanity.
:-) I would love to be on a debate meeting-room to argue with you on this for hours :-)
I was attracted to it because skilled manual labor was practically abandoned by techies. 15 years after I started oDesk there are plenty of startups that are tackling the problem of building global/remote teams around engineers. Nobody is helping the crew that comes to my home to fix my fence or driveway or floor.
I saw a space that is as big as 10% of the workforce of most countries, the skilled, often licensed technicians that work in the home improvement, construction industry - that huge slice of the workforce still remaining abandoned by the techies - by the disruptors. By people that tout wanting to "shape the future of humanity".
You may find it surprising that the answer here is both around remote work and pretty advanced technology that enables a remote architect/civil engineer/drafter to draft/design/spec and a "local" customer to visualize the end result ahead of time and a local crew to follow the instructions/spec and build.
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#7As a remote worker having my every activity recorded is not my idea of remote work. UpWork by default requires running their app and taking times screenshots. I'd rather not use anything that's remotely related to UpWork TBH...
Just hired a remote developer via Upwork. Looks to me that he's installed a script to open random files in our repo and move the mouse around. There are ways around it. Based on his output over the last 7 days he won't retain this contract....terrible stuff.
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#8As a remote worker having my every activity recorded is not my idea of remote work. UpWork by default requires running their app and taking times screenshots. I'd rather not use anything that's remotely related to UpWork TBH...
Just hired a remote developer via Upwork. Looks to me that he's installed a script to open random files in our repo and move the mouse around. There are ways around it. Based on his output over the last 7 days he won't retain this contract....terrible stuff.
There is not much difference between hiring a local developer vs hiring a remote.
Would you ever say:
Just hired a local developer. He has been sitting on his desk playing games and reading HN? Terrible stuff?
If that were to happen the problem would not be the "local" developer scene. It would have been most probably your hiring practice or your bad references.
My point here is that there is no free meal when you try to hire a remote person via Upwork. The only difference is that you leverage the global talent pool and most probably you can find someone in weeks as opposed to months (or never).
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just hired a remote developer via Upwork. Looks to me that he's installed a script to open random files in our repo and move the mouse around. There are ways around it. Based on his output over the last 7 days he won't retain this contract....terrible stuff.
There is not much difference between hiring a local developer vs hiring a remote. Would you ever say: Just hired a local developer. He has been sitting on his desk playing games and reading HN? Terrible stuff? If that were to happen the problem would not be the "local" developer scene. It would have been most probably your hiring practice or your bad references. My point here is that there is no free meal when you tr…
> Would you ever say: Just hired a local developer. He has been sitting on his desk playing games and reading HN? Terrible stuff?
Yes, I can definitely see that happening. And the main upside of an onsite developer in that situation is that a 'local'/onsite developer is much easier to identify when they are just sitting at their desk and much easier to encourage them to do otherwise. As much as people hate the "manager looking over my shoulder" feeling, it is very important in most workforces because the vast majority of remote workers (in my experience) will absolutely take advantage of the "remoteness" and use it to slack off. Sure, if you're a small or top tier company you might be able to solve this by making your hiring practices more strict, but the reality for most managers is that you must hire some of these less-than-ideal candidates and mentor/watch them, and being remote makes that harder.
I'm generally for the remote work model and this type of issue can mostly be solved by changing the way you interact with your team and do checkups, but regardless I find it strange that someone like yourself who is presumably very experienced in the remote work space would imply that there is no difference between a local slacker and a remote slacker.
Re: Upwork founder goes all-remote in next startup
#10Why would a guy with enough personal funds to tackle any project decide to focus on home improvement? How boring and inconsequential to the future of humanity.
:-) I would love to be on a debate meeting-room to argue with you on this for hours :-) I was attracted to it because skilled manual labor was practically abandoned by techies. 15 years after I started oDesk there are plenty of startups that are tackling the problem of building global/remote teams around engineers. Nobody is helping the crew that comes to my home to fix my fence or driveway or floor. I saw a space th…
Please don't spend hours arguing with people that don't get it haha. Home improvement has been such a pain in the butt for me and I just can't see it not being a problem for millions of people. Best of luck!