Click-bait title. Some thoughts by a discouraged person in a globalised world and a general conclusion that doesn't make any sense if you read the article.
Maybe the OP shouldn't look for projects in oDesk-type websites. I don't do that and I'm really happy working as a freelancer.
For anyone wondering how to find freelance projects. You should go and look for local clients, networking, contact companies that look for developers and try to persuade them that they can count on you too, etc.
It's a really, really, really big sea of possibilities nowadays for developers.
The page's actual title is "...become Upwork freelancer", which is fairly specific and not click-baity IMO. (It looks like the HN title is the same now, changed from just "become a freelancer.")
> You should go and look for local clients, networking, contact companies that look for developers and try to persuade them that they can count on you too, etc.
Every time in these discussions people ignore the fact that there're thousands of developers outside of US/EU who can't just "look for local clients". Not so many companies want to hire a remote employee without some kind of protection.
I'm working via Upwork and I personally know over 20 developers from Eastern Europe who work there too. We all would be incredibly happy to work directly, without the app that takes screenshots every 10 minutes, and for US rates instead of $20-35/h on Upwork. But it's not that easy until you're a known developer with a good reputation.
>It's a really, really, really big sea of possibilities nowadays for developers.
If you are in the silicon valley or at least in some 1st world country - sure, you have a lot of possibilities and ridiculously high pay.
The sad truth is that exactly same skillset can be valued 10x less or 10x more depending on your location.
I've been working as a freelancer for a bit more than a year now and let me offer a counter perspective.
This article is a report from the absolute bottom. Part of the problem is the clientele: data scraping jobs are the shadiest, worst-paid jobs you can take on as a programmer. Also, offering the client to pay what they think is fair is a monumentally bad idea.
The bigger problem is the perception of value. I regularly get requests for doing insane amounts of work (usually it involves cloning a multi-million dollar site or app) for less than I charge for a single day. There are "idea people" out there, who think the goal to success is paying someone 300 bucks to implement a clone of the Android app store. It's a real example by the way. I mainly get my work through the Who Is Hiring thread on HN, and although the overall client quality has been high, it's unavoidable that over half of all requests are absolute bogus.
I suspect I'm not the only one having this experience. Now, these inquiries can be effortlessly ignored (I usually do answer them back with or without a short statement why I'm not taking the job) - however, if you're just scraping by, these "gigs" can totally demoralize you.
To an average person, programming is not a valuable thing, and they do not view it as skilled labour. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. After high school, twenty years ago, a friend and I got into freelancing. A lot of inquiries were pretty much the same as they are now. My friend used to say we should rebrand ourselves as the Web Sherpas, named after the local people who often get hired for grating or dangerous work on behalf of tourists yet receive little compensation for it.
To the freelancer just starting out I say: don't get suckered into these kinds of debates, be friendly but firm in rejecting malicious "job offers". Holding out until the right client comes along can be tough, and you're going to need a financial buffer to do this. But it's definitely the only way to go. People taking $15/hour data scraping jobs are part of the problem because they help distort the value perception of our profession (plus they help making the internet a worse place). Don't be that person.
>To an average person, programming is not a valuable thing
+1
And any changes you are asked to make are not "easy" nor "quick" nor could they "do it in an hour if I knew how"
I like to give the example that if you were having a house built, when they were putting the final touches to it, painting the walls, screwing lightbulbs etc. It may delay the house being ready, it may cost a bit more if you decide you want to move the house by 1 metre to the left, change the load bearing walls.
Yet they think similar changes to a project should take no time nor cost a thing.
And the best of all "just build something so I can see it then I will know what I want" but I won't pay you for that.
>To the freelancer just starting out I say: don't get suckered into these kinds of debates, be friendly but firm in rejecting malicious "job offers". Holding out until the right client comes along can be tough
Can also be impossible if you have bills to pay, a family to support, are just starting out. I've been there (move to the tropics with a young family during the economic down turn, the few contacts I had who had promised work before I left were unable to deliver when I arrived (took the best part of two years wandering around the world to get to the destination).
But good clients are out there. I still do the odd bit of work for a couple of clients I got in the early days (<$15 ph data scraping jobs lol). Financially these days isn't worth doing, but they paid on time, offered to pay for time to discuss changes, offered pay for changes, so like to help them out with the odd bits of work they have as they have had many problems with freelance devs (just like I had with other clients)
I've been a freelancer for almost 4 years and I have yet to make money via any sort of website. The clientele's expectations are borderline delusional for the price they want to pay.
I get all of my contracts through recommendations from past clients and colleagues and can charge from $60 to $90 per hour (the most I charged was $250 per hour for a job I didn't want to do and didn't expect the client to accept).
If you can write a scraper which performs against any real world data, your new rate is $100 per hour [+]. Your first month you spend 140 hours of pounding the virtual pavement looking for clients outside of the markets for lemons that are the freelancing sites. You spend 20 hours on delivery. Now you have the same $2k that you'd have if you killed yourself working on PayPeanutsGetMonkeys.com and you have the nascent beginnings of an actual freelancing business -- a pipeline, people who are interested in working with you but might not have a project at the moment, a happy client who you can do additional work for and solicit for introductions to peers, etc. Three months later you're at 70% utilization and you start working up your rates.
And yes, this works from the Philippines almost exactly as well as it works from Gifu. There a mere one hour off each other and there is no social advantage that the Japanese engineering community gives you that you cannot trivially duplicate from any cafe in southeast Asia with reliable Internet.
[ + ] Journeyman rates for programming work, trivially paid by a variety of businesses across the first world capable of hiring professionals. This is far under the going rate for people whose primary skill is writing concisely threatening letters, for example.
Your first month you spend 140 hours of pounding the virtual pavement looking for clients outside of the markets for lemons that are the freelancing sites.
This is the part many people have problems with, myself included. Any tips?
If you can write a scraper which performs against any real world data, chances are you're not in the business of selling yourself by the hour.
The type of scraping projects you see on the freelancing sites typically require minimal skill and can be completed with off-the-shelf tools, many of which are open source. Folks doing these kinds of projects are not realistically going to build a book of business filled with clients paying $100/hour. You can find decent freelancers in the United States charging less who are capable of doing more sophisticated work.
UpWork has really worked out great for me. Sure there are people who want you to either work for free (require some code up front or as a test), or want you to work for low wages (usually it is around a tenth of what I'd normally charge) but these aren't problems: just politely inform them that you cannot do the work. No big deal!
I've gotten good connections on UpWork that have brought in real value for us.
The trick is to avoid looking for work on platforms like oDesk (now Upwork) where the world is underbidding you. It’s a positioning and deal flow issue. Ideally you want clients to refer you on to other clients. And maybe you should call yourself a contractor, agency, solo developer—something like that—instead of a “freelancer.”
So it’s possible to do well if you quit your job and work as a freelancer, but you need to spend time handling the business side of things: marketing (e.g. social media presence, open source contributions, writing articles, attending events) and sales (getting referrals, closing leads, etc.)
Are you speaking from experience? I've found plenty of great gigs on these freelancing sites. You just have to dig a bit and know what the "crap" jobs are, so you can avoid them altogether. The world is not underbidding you. Most times, you negotiate directly with the client and the bids are just a formality.
The next part is to set the price for the job. Usually I would say: Ok, data scrape will cost you $75.
That's still ridiculously low by any measure. I wouldn't take you seriously at that price point. Because, here is why: I was charging that much 5 or 6 years ago.
How about $7,500 for manual data scraping?
On a related note. A friend of mine asked the other day if I can develop for him a GPS/Google maps solution that would take 6 months to develop for a serious Full-Stack developer.
He works on a multi-billion dollar company but he wants the solution for himself to show off his productivity to his bosses. He wants it on a "$50" budget.
I'm guessing you have fallen at the same scenario where the lady is paying it from her pocket instead of big corp bank account.
He lives in the Phillipines, which obviously changes the scale of cost.
I had done this a few times in the past and would routinely charge just $100 for scrapes because I had written a robust enough application that the actual work involved (creating a manifest file) took about 5 minutes. I was attempting to work at scale.
Eventually I just got sick of oDesk. I had a regular job and was just looking for beer money anyway and the vast majority of jobs were essentially content stealing for some half-assed SEO purpose. I'd ask people if they'd read the TOS of the site in question and that's when communication would stop. Or they'd come and say "how about $15" and then I would quit communicating.
The lesson is good here - this site (and others like it) are filled with cheap, low-skilled programmers and clients with iffy intentions.
I'll also say that "5 star" doesn't mean much on this site. Reputation is established not by merely having a good aggregate score.
People want stuff for free. The web is free. They expect next to free for skills that take at least 10 years to actually master. Skill level similar to a doctor.
I clicked through the the article, verified that the title was the same as HN, read the early line "Couple days ago some R.D. from United States contacted me. She wanted to do website scrape.". I stopped reading. Clickbait, ignorant of real freelance work, thinks being contacted about a pathetic scraping job means freelance is worthless? Give me a break. Become a real developer who can find real clients worth the effort, and freelance is 100% viable. How the hell is this getting any traction? Puh-please.
You asked someone who obviously has no clue what it takes to actually DO the work to value your work. Hence the response you got was someone thinking... "damn.. how hard is it to write a crawler, I can think that through in my head, step by step, easy as pie."
You learned a great lesson - value must be shown and substantiated, clearly and succinctly. People outside of your head have no idea the effort it took you to understand and do what you do. You're putting the onus on them to recognize the effort when it's YOUR responsibility to convey and stand by exactly that.
As you deal with more senior and exec management, you'll come to find that playing dumb is quite often a finely honed skill that preys upon situations exactly like this... which left unchecked, is setting yourself up for a sudden realization down the road you're killing yourself to deliver on a silly deadline at well below your normal rate.
Step back and breathe this lesson in, it's so much more to your benefit than simply defaulting to indignance.
Upwork is basically where businesses and entrepreneurs go to outsource work to people living in countries with a lower cost of living. It's a place that's excellent for startups who know how to extract maximum value from foreign workers (I've seen people making upwards of 10,000+% profit from doing this which is honestly crazy) but terrible for the workers themselves. Well ... at least in some instances.
As far as I can tell: most of the jobs on offer at Upwork can be done by complete amateurs but that isn't necessarily the quality you can expect. They have some pretty amazing virtual assistants and not everyone there does mediocre work. Just don't expect to earn a Western wage there without substantial effort (there are US companies who hire in staff as needed but these jobs are like drops of water in the desert.)
Freelancing in IT is kind of a fantastic global phenomenon really. It allows foreigners like this guy to work "in" another country without being blocked by the artificial market distortion of immigration restrictions. Perhaps there are plenty of freelancers willing to make a web scraper for $15. In that case, this guy's got to find what advantages he has over them so he can compete. Just because American employees get paid more doesn't mean everybody else doing the same type of work also deserves to be paid more if the market decides not to. American employees have a special value of being on site in person which is a service Russians and Filipinos can't provide.
This is just one of those examples where experienced freelancer will see flag "avoid!" for such kind of clients.
The truth is that places like odesk/up work/anything is just big market. There are clients willing to hire low-rate developers and micro-manage them, but at the same time there are clients who want to hire top talents from the marketplace to deal with complex tasks and get really top solutions.
Somehow I could find really interesting work in high-load startups with 4M visits/m, OpenSource or even Y-combinator startups with good culture.
To be clear, during ~10 years of experience I was at both sides of barricades: hiring developers/designers/marketeers and being software developer/freelancer myself.
So it's just experience grew into skill when you had all that shit like non-paying/rude/time wasting clients and feel how to avoid that.
I am Indian and taken back by your comment about Indians/Filipinos. I worked as a freelancer on oDesk; fulltime; around five years ago for more than a year. It was great. I was charging far higher than $15/hr
Probably you should bid for better jobs than scraping websites. I assure you, you be undercutting many Indians/Filipinos by your rate..
It takes some effort to find jobs where clients are willing to pay a premium for quality.
I've used Upwork before - if you are experienced enough, you can easily filter the client by a combination of amount spent, average hourly rate paid, prior feedback by contractors, feedback given to contractors and their estimate price (or expertise) for the project. Apply/respond only if the client matches your filter.
But as others have mentioned here, it is cut-throat competition - you have to be patient and very choosy.
I've worked remotely for some time(I'm from Brazil) and gave it up, it's not worth it. I burned out on one of the jobs. The sad truth is that the "remote worker dream"(for ppl not in the 1st World) is a lie, most good companies won't risk putting relevant work for remote workers to do and if they do it'll be because they're clueless or because they need REALLY CHEAP work. It's a suckers game, even if you win, you're losing. I'm now working locally and I started making more than I did with the precious dollars at the first post-remote job and I also made friends, got more challenged, learned and growed more and basically my life became much more satisfying and with much more positive possibilities. My life improved immensely in everything, sane hours, respectful relations, less anxiety.. The effects really are innumerable.
In lame remote working there is a very clear power assymmetry going on, you're there because dollars are worth more than your currency and you'll accept subpar work and subpar pay because maybe it will pay off in the currency arbitrage, the employer knows that, trusts in your naive belief that there's gonna be quality work to do as you saw at the blogs, HN and 37signals-like stuff and he has and endless supply of willing(but maybe not capable) people, the hour-pay will always be at the lowest possible. Both sides of it have multiple reasons to not trust each other and will try to take the most value out of the transaction, and even when there's good faith on both ends there are still way too many pitfalls(e.g.: cultural stuff, deep prejudices) and the chance of success will remain low, then the good ones leave and the crap stays, it's toxic. If you're a good developer I think it's a waste of your life to be in this game, I'd only take it for "youre-gonna-retire-early/take-6-month-vacations" money(plus sane hours, weekends, holydays, relevant work, no micromanaging and other basic dignity stuff), absent that, I recommend exploring your local possibilities, even if it means learning to live with your country standards(or, middle class standard, since you're an IT worker), give up the illusion.
I used to get contracts through oDesk/UpWork as well ( https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~015eaccf9967b4f9f4 )
However the quality of the jobs I can apply for are a continuously going backwards, even if the quality I am able to deliver is really high compared to many other freelancer on the platform. This is why I almost do not use UpWork to do my freelancing anymore.
Quit my job 2 years ago and went freelance. I earn just a bit more than before but I have way less stress and quality of life improved. All my clients are contacts I gathered over the years, never had to look for a client online. My advice is, before you quit make sure you are networked enough to pull it off on your own. Maybe it's a good idea to plan spending the last couple of months at your regular job arranging your first freelance gig before quitting.
It's awesome to hear that you're doing well doing freelance work. Do you have any tips for how to find clients, especially the first ones when you can't get them through existing ones?
Is there much of a difference between freelancing and software contracting? I've met a handful people who are part of a company (read: agency) of 1-5 and making really good money ($60/hr+). But they're also in the Bay Area.
The author gives one bad example and extrapolates that to all of freelance. I've found plenty of well-paying gigs on these sites. As with most things in life, it takes hard work and lots of failure to get there. It's really that simple. The author shouldn't have pursued that job from the beginning. Recognize a loser and move on.
I understand your frustration, but you dug that hole for your self. If you want $15/h, tell the client that. Or give a quote. When you just leave it to them, of course they will low ball you.
(Context: I'm a top rated freelancer on UpWork that's been using the platform for a year)
Ivan, one of the main reasons you're encountering those types of clients is that your hourly rate is competitive with other freelancers in other parts of the world that will do the same job for $3/hr.
Here's my advise for you:
1) Increase your rate to around $50/hr. Trust me there are plenty of clients that are willing to pay higher rates.
2) Don't bid on every project that comes along. Only focus on projects that you really want to be a part of.
3) If you don't have a portfolio then build some demo sites where you can showcase your work. Given that you like building scrapers you should be a simple web service that does exactly that.
4) Only take hourly jobs OR fixed rate jobs where the client provides a clear, documented scope document that you both can agree to.
5) Don't be afraid to say no. The biggest issue with freelancers in other parts of the world is that they say yes to every single thing....don't be that guy. Clients will respect you more for it.
6) Don't hand the source code over until you have been paid.
7) Stand your ground anytime a client challenges your rate. You're a professional and not a cheap commodity.
I have solidarity with your point of view. However, I'm French and I once lived in Australia for 3 years. And I can tell you that their programmers know what they're doing, better, on a massive scale, than the French IT sector. They know when to align behind the boss (which is surprising for a French guy) but still know how to stir internal debate, they have understandings of marketing and economics, they master several languages each, they output software faster with better quality. We get paid twice more in Australia than France, and the job requirement was twice higher. It's not even personal skills, it's sometimes how we act in teams.
We need to be humble, fellow Indian/Fillipino guy/girl. Yet they hired me, because as Agile as they are, they don't know anything about CMMi-based corporations ;)
SandGorgon's Law of Outsourcing Analogies [1] - "As an online discussion about PROGRAMMING grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving outsourcing or Indians approaches 1, if Godwin’s law has not already been satisfied"
you missed part "without any programming skills". I know there are good coders from those countries, I was talking about those who underbidding and work for $1 per hour doing manual/low quality work
I rather you paste the entire phrase. On a first glance, it captures right away my attention. But yeah dude he said "for some" so I just skip that and continue reading.
People are going to try their luck in negotiations. That's what they do.
"Would $15 be fair to you for this category?"
Counter-offer with something that you think reflects the value you're going to provide. Will she take it? Maybe yes, maybe no - you get idiots in every line of work. If she doesn't take it, and you're dealing honestly, it's her loss.
At the end of the day though, you did let her open. That's kinda on you.
I'm a bit confused on that part though, the offer says $15/hour, why did the author write as if the the offer was $3/hour? Isn't that the pay for manual data entry?
[+] [-] drinchev|10 years ago|reply
Click-bait title. Some thoughts by a discouraged person in a globalised world and a general conclusion that doesn't make any sense if you read the article.
Maybe the OP shouldn't look for projects in oDesk-type websites. I don't do that and I'm really happy working as a freelancer.
For anyone wondering how to find freelance projects. You should go and look for local clients, networking, contact companies that look for developers and try to persuade them that they can count on you too, etc.
It's a really, really, really big sea of possibilities nowadays for developers.
[+] [-] _yosefk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivm|10 years ago|reply
Every time in these discussions people ignore the fact that there're thousands of developers outside of US/EU who can't just "look for local clients". Not so many companies want to hire a remote employee without some kind of protection.
I'm working via Upwork and I personally know over 20 developers from Eastern Europe who work there too. We all would be incredibly happy to work directly, without the app that takes screenshots every 10 minutes, and for US rates instead of $20-35/h on Upwork. But it's not that easy until you're a known developer with a good reputation.
[+] [-] crdoconnor|10 years ago|reply
Yeah, definitely not. Bottom feeders all the way.
[+] [-] anonmeow|10 years ago|reply
If you are in the silicon valley or at least in some 1st world country - sure, you have a lot of possibilities and ridiculously high pay. The sad truth is that exactly same skillset can be valued 10x less or 10x more depending on your location.
[+] [-] mrfusion|10 years ago|reply
Have you tried doing rfps?
[+] [-] Udo|10 years ago|reply
This article is a report from the absolute bottom. Part of the problem is the clientele: data scraping jobs are the shadiest, worst-paid jobs you can take on as a programmer. Also, offering the client to pay what they think is fair is a monumentally bad idea.
The bigger problem is the perception of value. I regularly get requests for doing insane amounts of work (usually it involves cloning a multi-million dollar site or app) for less than I charge for a single day. There are "idea people" out there, who think the goal to success is paying someone 300 bucks to implement a clone of the Android app store. It's a real example by the way. I mainly get my work through the Who Is Hiring thread on HN, and although the overall client quality has been high, it's unavoidable that over half of all requests are absolute bogus.
I suspect I'm not the only one having this experience. Now, these inquiries can be effortlessly ignored (I usually do answer them back with or without a short statement why I'm not taking the job) - however, if you're just scraping by, these "gigs" can totally demoralize you.
To an average person, programming is not a valuable thing, and they do not view it as skilled labour. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. After high school, twenty years ago, a friend and I got into freelancing. A lot of inquiries were pretty much the same as they are now. My friend used to say we should rebrand ourselves as the Web Sherpas, named after the local people who often get hired for grating or dangerous work on behalf of tourists yet receive little compensation for it.
To the freelancer just starting out I say: don't get suckered into these kinds of debates, be friendly but firm in rejecting malicious "job offers". Holding out until the right client comes along can be tough, and you're going to need a financial buffer to do this. But it's definitely the only way to go. People taking $15/hour data scraping jobs are part of the problem because they help distort the value perception of our profession (plus they help making the internet a worse place). Don't be that person.
[+] [-] user_0001|10 years ago|reply
+1
And any changes you are asked to make are not "easy" nor "quick" nor could they "do it in an hour if I knew how"
I like to give the example that if you were having a house built, when they were putting the final touches to it, painting the walls, screwing lightbulbs etc. It may delay the house being ready, it may cost a bit more if you decide you want to move the house by 1 metre to the left, change the load bearing walls.
Yet they think similar changes to a project should take no time nor cost a thing.
And the best of all "just build something so I can see it then I will know what I want" but I won't pay you for that.
>To the freelancer just starting out I say: don't get suckered into these kinds of debates, be friendly but firm in rejecting malicious "job offers". Holding out until the right client comes along can be tough
Can also be impossible if you have bills to pay, a family to support, are just starting out. I've been there (move to the tropics with a young family during the economic down turn, the few contacts I had who had promised work before I left were unable to deliver when I arrived (took the best part of two years wandering around the world to get to the destination).
But good clients are out there. I still do the odd bit of work for a couple of clients I got in the early days (<$15 ph data scraping jobs lol). Financially these days isn't worth doing, but they paid on time, offered to pay for time to discuss changes, offered pay for changes, so like to help them out with the odd bits of work they have as they have had many problems with freelance devs (just like I had with other clients)
[+] [-] robotkilla|10 years ago|reply
I get all of my contracts through recommendations from past clients and colleagues and can charge from $60 to $90 per hour (the most I charged was $250 per hour for a job I didn't want to do and didn't expect the client to accept).
[+] [-] WhitneyLand|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patio11|10 years ago|reply
And yes, this works from the Philippines almost exactly as well as it works from Gifu. There a mere one hour off each other and there is no social advantage that the Japanese engineering community gives you that you cannot trivially duplicate from any cafe in southeast Asia with reliable Internet.
[ + ] Journeyman rates for programming work, trivially paid by a variety of businesses across the first world capable of hiring professionals. This is far under the going rate for people whose primary skill is writing concisely threatening letters, for example.
[+] [-] YooLi|10 years ago|reply
This is the part many people have problems with, myself included. Any tips?
[+] [-] 7Figures2Commas|10 years ago|reply
The type of scraping projects you see on the freelancing sites typically require minimal skill and can be completed with off-the-shelf tools, many of which are open source. Folks doing these kinds of projects are not realistically going to build a book of business filled with clients paying $100/hour. You can find decent freelancers in the United States charging less who are capable of doing more sophisticated work.
[+] [-] odonnellryan|10 years ago|reply
I've gotten good connections on UpWork that have brought in real value for us.
[+] [-] firasd|10 years ago|reply
So it’s possible to do well if you quit your job and work as a freelancer, but you need to spend time handling the business side of things: marketing (e.g. social media presence, open source contributions, writing articles, attending events) and sales (getting referrals, closing leads, etc.)
[+] [-] ahallock|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tagfolder|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|10 years ago|reply
That's still ridiculously low by any measure. I wouldn't take you seriously at that price point. Because, here is why: I was charging that much 5 or 6 years ago.
How about $7,500 for manual data scraping?
On a related note. A friend of mine asked the other day if I can develop for him a GPS/Google maps solution that would take 6 months to develop for a serious Full-Stack developer.
He works on a multi-billion dollar company but he wants the solution for himself to show off his productivity to his bosses. He wants it on a "$50" budget.
I'm guessing you have fallen at the same scenario where the lady is paying it from her pocket instead of big corp bank account.
[+] [-] nkozyra|10 years ago|reply
I had done this a few times in the past and would routinely charge just $100 for scrapes because I had written a robust enough application that the actual work involved (creating a manifest file) took about 5 minutes. I was attempting to work at scale.
Eventually I just got sick of oDesk. I had a regular job and was just looking for beer money anyway and the vast majority of jobs were essentially content stealing for some half-assed SEO purpose. I'd ask people if they'd read the TOS of the site in question and that's when communication would stop. Or they'd come and say "how about $15" and then I would quit communicating.
The lesson is good here - this site (and others like it) are filled with cheap, low-skilled programmers and clients with iffy intentions.
I'll also say that "5 star" doesn't mean much on this site. Reputation is established not by merely having a good aggregate score.
[+] [-] x5n1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] developer1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zer0defex|10 years ago|reply
You asked someone who obviously has no clue what it takes to actually DO the work to value your work. Hence the response you got was someone thinking... "damn.. how hard is it to write a crawler, I can think that through in my head, step by step, easy as pie."
You learned a great lesson - value must be shown and substantiated, clearly and succinctly. People outside of your head have no idea the effort it took you to understand and do what you do. You're putting the onus on them to recognize the effort when it's YOUR responsibility to convey and stand by exactly that.
As you deal with more senior and exec management, you'll come to find that playing dumb is quite often a finely honed skill that preys upon situations exactly like this... which left unchecked, is setting yourself up for a sudden realization down the road you're killing yourself to deliver on a silly deadline at well below your normal rate.
Step back and breathe this lesson in, it's so much more to your benefit than simply defaulting to indignance.
[+] [-] Uptrenda|10 years ago|reply
As far as I can tell: most of the jobs on offer at Upwork can be done by complete amateurs but that isn't necessarily the quality you can expect. They have some pretty amazing virtual assistants and not everyone there does mediocre work. Just don't expect to earn a Western wage there without substantial effort (there are US companies who hire in staff as needed but these jobs are like drops of water in the desert.)
[+] [-] brzd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Asbostos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] armabiz|10 years ago|reply
The truth is that places like odesk/up work/anything is just big market. There are clients willing to hire low-rate developers and micro-manage them, but at the same time there are clients who want to hire top talents from the marketplace to deal with complex tasks and get really top solutions.
Somehow I could find really interesting work in high-load startups with 4M visits/m, OpenSource or even Y-combinator startups with good culture.
To be clear, during ~10 years of experience I was at both sides of barricades: hiring developers/designers/marketeers and being software developer/freelancer myself.
So it's just experience grew into skill when you had all that shit like non-paying/rude/time wasting clients and feel how to avoid that.
[+] [-] negamax|10 years ago|reply
Probably you should bid for better jobs than scraping websites. I assure you, you be undercutting many Indians/Filipinos by your rate..
[+] [-] lenomad|10 years ago|reply
I've used Upwork before - if you are experienced enough, you can easily filter the client by a combination of amount spent, average hourly rate paid, prior feedback by contractors, feedback given to contractors and their estimate price (or expertise) for the project. Apply/respond only if the client matches your filter.
But as others have mentioned here, it is cut-throat competition - you have to be patient and very choosy.
[+] [-] br_smartass|10 years ago|reply
In lame remote working there is a very clear power assymmetry going on, you're there because dollars are worth more than your currency and you'll accept subpar work and subpar pay because maybe it will pay off in the currency arbitrage, the employer knows that, trusts in your naive belief that there's gonna be quality work to do as you saw at the blogs, HN and 37signals-like stuff and he has and endless supply of willing(but maybe not capable) people, the hour-pay will always be at the lowest possible. Both sides of it have multiple reasons to not trust each other and will try to take the most value out of the transaction, and even when there's good faith on both ends there are still way too many pitfalls(e.g.: cultural stuff, deep prejudices) and the chance of success will remain low, then the good ones leave and the crap stays, it's toxic. If you're a good developer I think it's a waste of your life to be in this game, I'd only take it for "youre-gonna-retire-early/take-6-month-vacations" money(plus sane hours, weekends, holydays, relevant work, no micromanaging and other basic dignity stuff), absent that, I recommend exploring your local possibilities, even if it means learning to live with your country standards(or, middle class standard, since you're an IT worker), give up the illusion.
[+] [-] mimo84|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyriakos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rnprince|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chejazi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alrs|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahallock|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] troels|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdalton|10 years ago|reply
Ivan, one of the main reasons you're encountering those types of clients is that your hourly rate is competitive with other freelancers in other parts of the world that will do the same job for $3/hr.
Here's my advise for you:
1) Increase your rate to around $50/hr. Trust me there are plenty of clients that are willing to pay higher rates. 2) Don't bid on every project that comes along. Only focus on projects that you really want to be a part of. 3) If you don't have a portfolio then build some demo sites where you can showcase your work. Given that you like building scrapers you should be a simple web service that does exactly that. 4) Only take hourly jobs OR fixed rate jobs where the client provides a clear, documented scope document that you both can agree to. 5) Don't be afraid to say no. The biggest issue with freelancers in other parts of the world is that they say yes to every single thing....don't be that guy. Clients will respect you more for it. 6) Don't hand the source code over until you have been paid. 7) Stand your ground anytime a client challenges your rate. You're a professional and not a cheap commodity.
[+] [-] erbdex|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tajen|10 years ago|reply
We need to be humble, fellow Indian/Fillipino guy/girl. Yet they hired me, because as Agile as they are, they don't know anything about CMMi-based corporations ;)
[+] [-] sandGorgon|10 years ago|reply
http://www.lambdacurry.com/2010/07/sandgorgons-law-of-outsou...
[+] [-] tagfolder|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] norbytess2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Asbostos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6d0debc071|10 years ago|reply
"Would $15 be fair to you for this category?"
Counter-offer with something that you think reflects the value you're going to provide. Will she take it? Maybe yes, maybe no - you get idiots in every line of work. If she doesn't take it, and you're dealing honestly, it's her loss.
At the end of the day though, you did let her open. That's kinda on you.
[+] [-] hdra|10 years ago|reply