But the copyright information (Copyright by Stanford University) has been ripped off from all the files and replaced with "Copyright (c) 2015 Upwork". No reference to stanford CS or anything like that, just copy and paste.
Which is very wrong in my book.
I wrote them a message and after some fruitless exchanges with 4 or 5 different support people, I've decided to just let it go.
The incompetence of the interview assignment, coupled with robotic support answers quickly convinced me not to waste any more time with this bunch.
Totally agree with the article, and I am more than certain that such acts and extortionate behaviour are widespread on the platform.
It seems it is part of their business model to allow clients in developed countries to find people in developing countries (all with weak legal systems and corruption) to commit illegal acts (both violations of public and private law). Just look at how many jobs involve rewriting, scraping, penetration testing (really a guise for hacking others sites) modifying existing copyrighted content to circumvent laws.
Upwork as middleman profits -- and takes a blind eye to all this corruption - since cross border police investigations are so difficult to manage when dealing with corrupt countries.
In my case, I had my competitors procuring hackers off Upwork to take down my site. We found out because one person who was contacted on Upwork to bring my site down actually contacted me via my site and provided screenshots and other evidence. There was literally a job posted requesting contractors to take my site down.
We raised this with Upwork. They did nothing.
Guess what they said?
Their customer support asked if I had proof that my site had been hacked by the specific person who posted the job on Upwork and that if had suffered financial loss as a result of the hacking! It wasn't merely enough for their client to procure contractors on the platform to commit an illegal act. They wanted proof that I suffered financial loss!!
However, I can say that we are considering a civil suit against them. It would be interesting to see how this impacts their brand.
Note: Please forgive the messy and unstructured writing. I've been writing it while walking the streets of Central London shopping for X-mas gifts.
I'm not surprised in the least. One of the reasons I have avoided UpWork/Elance is that it seems like every other job is for something blatantly unethical (and perhaps illegal). I don't even have to ask for details for such jobs, anyone technical can figure out exactly what they're trying to do (rip off competitor, cheat Google, flout some service's ToS, etc. etc.).
Please do go through with it for all the obvious public service reasons on to 8 of your own recompense. IANAL but it seems there's a vase for criminal negligence there too.
Apologies for the capitals, ladies and gentlemen. Please can I remind all of you to be Civil.
I've just received an email from the man himself, suggesting that I'm getting people to give his FB page 1* reviews and to spam his email. He's threatened (implied) legal action directly against me.
Publicly let me say, for the record (Hopefully it doesn't get wiped), that I do not encourage any of the aforementioned behavior, nor do I condone it.
He's currently posting on reddit and generally acting like a massive douche over email to me, still. After all of this. So the above was quite hard for me to write, but remember there may well be a lot of people working at said company, that have families and lives beyond this.
So please refrain yourselves.
Appreciate all of the support and input, from everyone.
I think the worst part about this is that I wasn't even surprised throughout the entire story. Anyone who has been a freelancer has dealt with the random, uncalled for threats from clients to give you a bad review or try to suspend your account. It's the reason I gave up on working on platforms like Upwork and Freelancer almost immediately.
Building a personal network is way easier to find contract work and you'll make more money in the end while creating real relationships that will help you foster your career.
I'm sorry this happened to you, and I'm super glad you revealed this persons name publicly. Good form.
From the Upwork FAQ: "You'll need to download and use the Upwork Team App—this tool includes the Work Diary, which ensures you are guaranteed payment. By taking work-in-progress screenshots every 10 minutes, it provides proof to your clients that you are hard at work."
Screenshots every 10 minutes? You mean... screenshots of MY SCREEN every 10 minutes? That was what made me close their website and totally forget it until I've seen this submission on HN today.
I can understand why some would not like this, and maybe it's because i'm german, but i do not mind this at all. Here's why:
If i'm employed in an office and working at my work pc, not only is the machine often administrated by the company i am doing work for, and thus may have additional software in there, even if it's as simple as a VNC server. It is also on their premises and the screen plainly visible to cameras or other employees that may be around. In the case of open plan offices or offices separated with glass walls, usually straight across the entire office. When i'm in the office i'm supposed to be working, and the machine is supposed to be used for work purposes. Not for entertainment or other personal things.
Similarly, when i am billing hours in the upwork client, i am supposed to be working, not playing around. So the machine does not have private things running on it at the time i am working. The things on screen are work-related and ok to be seen by my clients.
In my view, using my past work experiences as a guide line, same as in the office, if there are things in the screen that i would not want the client to see (or my coworkers/bosses in the office to see) it means that i am doing something wrong and not separating work/private properly.
Mind, if it does happen, it is easy to delete the screenshot even before it is sent on the wire, though that forfeits 10 minutes of billing, which as explained above, is to me exactly as it should be, since i was doing private things on client time.
So i don't see it as an undue burden. It just ensures that i am actually doing what the agreement between the two of us says i should be doing.
And this has a vital advantage to me:
The client can simply look and quickly see that i was working actively on his work, and i don't need to field questions like "This is taking a long time, are you slacking off?", which i then have to answer with "this particular bit is hard and complicated, just trust me on this".
It's trying to protect people that want to hire bottom-dollar work, but not get bottom-dollar quality.
If you're not happy with the rate at which I'm getting things done, you don't need screenshots of my desktop, feel free to hire someone else and let me know how that goes.
If the freelancer has more than one client and they are "multi-tasking" by working on multiple projects and have apps like email, chat screens , web pages open etc and forget to shut them dowm before the automatic screenshot is taken, information will "leak" between one client and another.
Before starting to log time for an hourly contract, I close all browser tabs esp. HN and Facebook, close MS Outlook, set “DND” Skype status, close unneeded applications, etc.
That reduce distractions and helps me focus on the software I’m building.
As a long-time UpWork user, this has saved our butts a few times, especially with technical hires.
We've had times we had hires billing full work weeks but seemed not to be getting much done. But how do you know if it really ought to take 10 hours or 40 hours to complete a task? I've done enough research, writing, and coding myself to know sometimes the thing you think will take 10 minutes ends up taking 2 days instead.
In these cases, we can look at the screenshots, and usually rest easier seeing yes, he's working, every screenshot (just about) is on the assignment.
Sometimes we will check the screenshots and notice the guy just opens his computer up, opens a document up, and then leaves it there for an hour or more with no work. Maybe he scrolls midway down the page at the half hour mark. So then we confirm he's milking the clock and can boot him for someone who isn't going to suck us dry for nothing.
And in a few cases, we've checked screenshots, only to see that almost none of his time is spent on our project. In one case we discovered a freelancer was billing us for time he spent surfing a website called "Boob Forest" and googling instructions on how to hack the CD player in an old Honda.
Generally we will allow freelancers we've worked with for a while to use manual time. We know what their productivity is like and we established enough trust earlier that we don't need to monitor them as closely. But it's pretty important from the client's perspective to make sure you're not getting screwed with this new hire you know nothing about. And especially if it's a new task you don't have a good metric for what the productivity / turnaround time should be like.
It'd be nice if there was a reliable way to know up front who the bad apples are and who are the totally trustworthy folks, but no matter how good your hiring instincts are you'll still get it wrong some of the time. Screenshots, while perhaps an annoyance for the freelancer, are a significant downside reducer for the employer.
Absolutely disgusting behavior by Kevin. I'm kinda hoping that it's just incompetence at UpWork that caused this, and not that Kevin actually knows someone at UpWork, but in all cases that's why I stopped freelancing through UpWork and similar, and started building a solid client base which know that I'm always there to help, for the right price of course. Plus I write somewhat technical and topical blog posts about the technologies I work with (mainly video encoding, processing, P2P CDNs, etc.) and that seems to pull clients in easier than it would be using UpWork.
Absolutely disgusting behavior by Kevin. But thats par for the course - some people are pathetic.
More interesting, is the behaviour of Upwork. With such a clear trail of abusive behaviour from the said "Client", Upwork still decides to terminate the guy's account. If you use Upwork, you are a sharecropper. And the landlords are capricious and have no loyalty to the replaceable tenants.
Building a solid client based has to be the way forward. I was very hesitant to actually make this post, as I don't know how it'll reflect to future employers of any kind.
I think your way of doing things is far better and something I've actually been working.
Some new developments (in comments of the original post)
Rich Pearson
1 hr ago
Shadi, I work at Upwork and your post about your experience makes us feel terrible. We’ve reopened your case and are investigating it much more thoroughly. We hope to have a response to you quickly — if you have any questions or want to provide more details, please email me at rpearson(at)upwork.com. We care very much about our freelancer community and want to make this right.
Rich
1 response
Shadi Al'lababidi
16 mins ago
Rich, it shouldn’t take a post like this for you (Upwork) to give someone special treatment. I know there are thousands of others like me that rely on your platform (most, far more than myself, for much larger %’s of their income). In some cases this can very literally mean the difference between putting food on the table and not.
They may not be able to spread the message like I, or speak English in such a manner. They may not be able to drum up enough attention, so they go unnoticed. It’s no skin of Upwork’s back, until it turns into a PR mess. Hence why you’re commenting.
Let’s cut the shit, Rich. I’ve got 2 tickets open and have been messaging everyday for the last 11 days. Nothing, nada. Just, ‘We’ve banned you and you can’t know why’. (For those reading this, yes, they do say you cannot know why.So as to not to let on to why they ban you).
I’ve tweeted at you, nothing.
Now, I have roughly 75% of a months worth of Upwork money stuck on there. If I were someone else, or someone without other income streams, what would I do? What could I possibly tell my incumbent clients? Shit, what am I even going to tell my incumbent clients? you’ve just left me without a months worth of wages and a big ‘fuck you, there’s nothing you can do.’
So, I do not want any special treatment. I will not contact you via email. This is an integral problem with Upwork itself and I will highlight it as much as I possibly can, even if that means losing the money and my reputation on there that I’ve been building up over the last year.
And please Rich, I’m a bloody marketer for Christ’s sake. Don’t come at me with that standard company mumbo jumbo ‘it makes us feel terrible’. You’re just being patronising.
Looking at some of their responses to reviews on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/wiperecord/reviews/) it would appear the attitude is part of their company culture. Amazing, for a company that bills itself as trying to help people overcome their past, it appears they are simply in the business of taking advantage of a vulnerable group.
Long time user of Elance and then Upwork here. I can attest, what occurred in this story is common.
The problem that Upwork doesn't realize is that without an active and happy freelancing demographic, clients will go elsewhere. Historically, Upwork has made it a priority of catering to the client. This is evident given their JSS. For those of you who are not familiar with JSS, it is a score that companies / clients use to hire freelancers. Now, one would assume the score is based on past work with clients. This is not all the score accounts for. Timeliness is responding to invites, the number of long-term clients you maintain, the number of clients you hassle (yes, Upwork actively goes out and tells it's freelancers to hassle their clients to leave them feedback - the responsibility falls on the freelancer and only the freelancer), etc.
Thus, when clients don't leave feedback (for whatever reason), you are dinged. Upwork won't tell you by how much exactly so let me give you an example.
12 months ago, my score was 92% (Top Rated). A client hired me. We went over the terms of the contract (# of revisions, not working on the weekends, etc.). 2 weeks into the project, the client started to deviate from the terms of the contract. I let them know and they began to get pissy. This happens all the time as Upwork has created a platform where the clients hold all of the power, and they know this.
A week later the contract wrapped up, and I managed to make the client happy as they left me a 4.7/5 on my profile and a positive review. Clients are able to leave private feedback the freelancer can never see. When the JSS score updated (every two weeks I believe-mind you, I had not worked any other jobs since that job) my score went from 92% to 71%! A 21% drop.
Suffice to say, for the past 12 months, dozens and dozens of clients later (most with positive reviews); I am now only sitting in the low 80's for my JSS.
In conclusion, Upwork is the worst example of an online marketplace for freelancers who have a backbone and are not afraid to tell a client how it is. After all, we are hired for our expertise and when a client proceeds to tell us how to do our job, it poisons the freelancing community.
We had a similar incident with a freelancer recently. We left them a 5 star review, a nice written review, marked the job as successfully completed, and left no private feedback.
They wrote us immediately after we reviewed them to tell us their score had gone down from our review and we must have done something wrong.
I asked them to send back to us; nothing in there I could see to fix. I asked them to escalate to UpWork; UpWork support gave a non-answer. So I escalated it myself.
The reply I got from UpWork was essentially this: we're happy to see your concern for your freelancer. You gave your freelancer a 5-star review, you marked the job successful, it's a perfect review. The way UpWork gauges freelancer scores is on a rolling #-of-month period. Past a certain number of months, older reviews stop counting toward a freelancer's score and only reviews within that #-of-month period count. So a declining rating is most likely due to older good reviews aging out of the scoring.
So this could be another possibility, if you have better older reviews dropping off the chart and a few more recent reviews that weren't as good, and now are weighing more heavily without the better older ones to offset them.
"$100 an hour is more than our CEO makes so I'm not sure we can budget $1500 for this".
Don't bill hourly! I know this sounds like a very silly example (it's not even logically coherent) but reasoning like this gets deployed all the time, even with sophisticated clients. People have anchoring price points for hourly rates that they don't have for other billing structures. Fixing this to make more money is literally as simple as "switch to daily billing".
Just thinking out loud here (haven't tried this) but maybe a better approach would be to not mention time. Simply ask for project specs and break it down into priced components if need be.
$1500 at $100 an hour sounds expensive if you're comparing to the CEO's salary. But $1500 for a piece of sales lead infrastructure that has to be built but can't be off the shelf bought. That sounds reasonable.
I think that the freelance marketplace is not good for the freelance economy as a whole. A lot of the time, it creates a race to the bottom as far as pricing, and you have to compete with workers overseas undercutting you at every corner.
When I first got started freelancing, I used eLance (which is now UpWork). I had a similar experience with a client, they suspended my account for 2+ months, and I won the dispute at the end. If I didn't have my own clients outside of eLance, I would have been screwed and not even able to pay my rent. After that, I stopped using the service and haven't looked back 4 years later.
I have a friend who actually does know someone on the executive leadership team at UpWork, I just emailed him with your article - hopefully something positive can come of that. I really hate it when all around bad human beings go around and try to make people's lives harder.
At this time we are unable to close your account. Please call our concierge team at 1-866-676-3375, select option 3, and we will help you close your account.
Please note: For security purposes, you will not be able to change your username, or open a new account with the same email address.
If you need help, please contact Support Services."
Shameless plug: I run a new company, CodeGophers, that competes with Upwork. We get a lot of unhappy Upwork customers.
Unlike Upwork our service has a quality guarantee, so clients aren't forced to manage freelancers, and deal with low quality work. It's kind of like a product manager and freelancer combo, and overall it's much easier for the client.
If you're unhappy with Upwork, please give us a shot. You can see our site at https://codegophers.com, or start a task by writing in at:
I took a look. Main feedback is it's just an info page with email addresses... You need a webapp, a platform, signups, etc., if you want people to consider participating. Something that can be put up in a couple hours does not instill confidence that it's a serious thing. Just my opinion.
Does not having huge amounts of experience matter? I am a college student interested in doing side work like it appears you offer. I'm fairly skilled in the technologies I know but probably less so than a full-time freelancer or developer.
I mean, it's being handled by 3 different customer support staff, so I don't know what that actually entails.
My advice, get a blog. Write about your experience within industry. My best example would be a man called Simo Ahava, whom writes about GTM and GA. Join Slack groups and communities and just network.
I highly doubt he knows the CEO and even if he did, would said CEO actually act on such an inconsequential thing. I mean, imagine the PR meltdown from such an act.
Anyway, time for some tea and a chillout. Have a good Sunday :)
Never, ever give a price break without a scope change. Apart from the obvious $/hr benefits, it's great way to figure out if the person on the other end of the line is an abusive psychopath. A professional will understand that you're trying to help them achieve a realistic value for their budget. A psychopath will take it as a personal affront and become transparently manipulative and/or abusive. This is a great time to cut off contact before it escalates to the level shown here.
The real problem is: the conflict resolution process at Upwork is utterly Kafkaesque.
Even if you have a perfect five stars reputation for two years, all it takes is one upset jerk and you are done at Upwork. Eventually you will step on someones having a bad day if you stay there enough.
After you make a good reputation in those market places you can command a higher fee - perhaps they want you out at this point so they can get work for other skilled professionals that are undercharging in order to build reputation.
Another avenue for picking up some work and potentially new client or even full time {remote} jobs is signing up for email list at place like http://nextspace.us/ and other coworking shops. I don't know about others but nextspace.us has (or used to have) a members-only internal email group where people (founders and such) ask for some one off help with scripts and such for a fee. It seemed like a good way to get some small work, but most importantly, business contacts.
Because it's not a totally anonymous place, the groups seemed to have much less douchebags.
Actions of one (presumably) manager guy doesn't reflect company as a whole. Yelp/facebook/etc. isn't for rating how company deals with freelancers. Don't be childish.
Sorry to hear about this Shadi. Kevin is one hell of a asshole. I try to refrain from using profanity but this man utterly deserved it. Will do my best to let every other freelancer know of this and recommend them to stay away as they can from Upwork.
I also tried to refrain, but, as Medium seems to be the only effective medium for myself to vent my frustration, I had to let a couple pop.
Yes, it really is one of those things which you say to yourself 'Oh, it'll never happen to me', then actually it does. I'm the 3rd person I personally know of that's had this happen to them. So I think it's more prolific than it seems.
What I learned from this is not to ignore the warning signs of a psychopath client. Because you can easily get sucked in to a bad situation regardless of your good intentions, and you can't rely on the marketplace to resolve these disputes in your favor. This scenario can also play out on other freelancing sites, and it can also happen if you solicit clients directly and they turn out to be well-connected.
[+] [-] delegate|9 years ago|reply
However, the required changes referenced features and files which weren't in the project and made absolutely no sense.
Even worse, the project they sent me was the "Photomania" project from Stanford's CS193p class: http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/node/289
But the copyright information (Copyright by Stanford University) has been ripped off from all the files and replaced with "Copyright (c) 2015 Upwork". No reference to stanford CS or anything like that, just copy and paste.
Which is very wrong in my book.
I wrote them a message and after some fruitless exchanges with 4 or 5 different support people, I've decided to just let it go.
The incompetence of the interview assignment, coupled with robotic support answers quickly convinced me not to waste any more time with this bunch.
[+] [-] babaganoosh223|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asoskm|9 years ago|reply
It seems it is part of their business model to allow clients in developed countries to find people in developing countries (all with weak legal systems and corruption) to commit illegal acts (both violations of public and private law). Just look at how many jobs involve rewriting, scraping, penetration testing (really a guise for hacking others sites) modifying existing copyrighted content to circumvent laws.
Upwork as middleman profits -- and takes a blind eye to all this corruption - since cross border police investigations are so difficult to manage when dealing with corrupt countries.
In my case, I had my competitors procuring hackers off Upwork to take down my site. We found out because one person who was contacted on Upwork to bring my site down actually contacted me via my site and provided screenshots and other evidence. There was literally a job posted requesting contractors to take my site down.
We raised this with Upwork. They did nothing.
Guess what they said?
Their customer support asked if I had proof that my site had been hacked by the specific person who posted the job on Upwork and that if had suffered financial loss as a result of the hacking! It wasn't merely enough for their client to procure contractors on the platform to commit an illegal act. They wanted proof that I suffered financial loss!!
However, I can say that we are considering a civil suit against them. It would be interesting to see how this impacts their brand.
Note: Please forgive the messy and unstructured writing. I've been writing it while walking the streets of Central London shopping for X-mas gifts.
[+] [-] shadlovesgrowth|9 years ago|reply
It's like it's just now the norm for these things to happen.
If you'd like to, i'd be happy to post your story in an edit below mine. I know this isn't the first time it's happened.
If you want to contact me, it's shad @ the domain in my twitter bio.
Good luck!
[+] [-] jnbiche|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] triplesec|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iagooar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadlovesgrowth|9 years ago|reply
Apologies for the capitals, ladies and gentlemen. Please can I remind all of you to be Civil.
I've just received an email from the man himself, suggesting that I'm getting people to give his FB page 1* reviews and to spam his email. He's threatened (implied) legal action directly against me.
Publicly let me say, for the record (Hopefully it doesn't get wiped), that I do not encourage any of the aforementioned behavior, nor do I condone it.
He's currently posting on reddit and generally acting like a massive douche over email to me, still. After all of this. So the above was quite hard for me to write, but remember there may well be a lot of people working at said company, that have families and lives beyond this.
So please refrain yourselves.
Appreciate all of the support and input, from everyone.
[+] [-] traviswingo|9 years ago|reply
Building a personal network is way easier to find contract work and you'll make more money in the end while creating real relationships that will help you foster your career.
I'm sorry this happened to you, and I'm super glad you revealed this persons name publicly. Good form.
[+] [-] almata|9 years ago|reply
Screenshots every 10 minutes? You mean... screenshots of MY SCREEN every 10 minutes? That was what made me close their website and totally forget it until I've seen this submission on HN today.
[+] [-] Mithaldu|9 years ago|reply
If i'm employed in an office and working at my work pc, not only is the machine often administrated by the company i am doing work for, and thus may have additional software in there, even if it's as simple as a VNC server. It is also on their premises and the screen plainly visible to cameras or other employees that may be around. In the case of open plan offices or offices separated with glass walls, usually straight across the entire office. When i'm in the office i'm supposed to be working, and the machine is supposed to be used for work purposes. Not for entertainment or other personal things.
Similarly, when i am billing hours in the upwork client, i am supposed to be working, not playing around. So the machine does not have private things running on it at the time i am working. The things on screen are work-related and ok to be seen by my clients.
In my view, using my past work experiences as a guide line, same as in the office, if there are things in the screen that i would not want the client to see (or my coworkers/bosses in the office to see) it means that i am doing something wrong and not separating work/private properly.
Mind, if it does happen, it is easy to delete the screenshot even before it is sent on the wire, though that forfeits 10 minutes of billing, which as explained above, is to me exactly as it should be, since i was doing private things on client time.
So i don't see it as an undue burden. It just ensures that i am actually doing what the agreement between the two of us says i should be doing.
And this has a vital advantage to me:
The client can simply look and quickly see that i was working actively on his work, and i don't need to field questions like "This is taking a long time, are you slacking off?", which i then have to answer with "this particular bit is hard and complicated, just trust me on this".
[+] [-] cygned|9 years ago|reply
What a crazy idea.
[+] [-] StrangeWill|9 years ago|reply
If you're not happy with the rate at which I'm getting things done, you don't need screenshots of my desktop, feel free to hire someone else and let me know how that goes.
[+] [-] andmon2|9 years ago|reply
If the freelancer has more than one client and they are "multi-tasking" by working on multiple projects and have apps like email, chat screens , web pages open etc and forget to shut them dowm before the automatic screenshot is taken, information will "leak" between one client and another.
[+] [-] Const-me|9 years ago|reply
Before starting to log time for an hourly contract, I close all browser tabs esp. HN and Facebook, close MS Outlook, set “DND” Skype status, close unneeded applications, etc.
That reduce distractions and helps me focus on the software I’m building.
[+] [-] throwaway7312|9 years ago|reply
We've had times we had hires billing full work weeks but seemed not to be getting much done. But how do you know if it really ought to take 10 hours or 40 hours to complete a task? I've done enough research, writing, and coding myself to know sometimes the thing you think will take 10 minutes ends up taking 2 days instead.
In these cases, we can look at the screenshots, and usually rest easier seeing yes, he's working, every screenshot (just about) is on the assignment.
Sometimes we will check the screenshots and notice the guy just opens his computer up, opens a document up, and then leaves it there for an hour or more with no work. Maybe he scrolls midway down the page at the half hour mark. So then we confirm he's milking the clock and can boot him for someone who isn't going to suck us dry for nothing.
And in a few cases, we've checked screenshots, only to see that almost none of his time is spent on our project. In one case we discovered a freelancer was billing us for time he spent surfing a website called "Boob Forest" and googling instructions on how to hack the CD player in an old Honda.
Generally we will allow freelancers we've worked with for a while to use manual time. We know what their productivity is like and we established enough trust earlier that we don't need to monitor them as closely. But it's pretty important from the client's perspective to make sure you're not getting screwed with this new hire you know nothing about. And especially if it's a new task you don't have a good metric for what the productivity / turnaround time should be like.
It'd be nice if there was a reliable way to know up front who the bad apples are and who are the totally trustworthy folks, but no matter how good your hiring instincts are you'll still get it wrong some of the time. Screenshots, while perhaps an annoyance for the freelancer, are a significant downside reducer for the employer.
[+] [-] rikkipitt|9 years ago|reply
https://www.upwork.com/UserSettings/profile/close-account
[+] [-] milankragujevic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shabda|9 years ago|reply
More interesting, is the behaviour of Upwork. With such a clear trail of abusive behaviour from the said "Client", Upwork still decides to terminate the guy's account. If you use Upwork, you are a sharecropper. And the landlords are capricious and have no loyalty to the replaceable tenants.
[+] [-] shadlovesgrowth|9 years ago|reply
I think your way of doing things is far better and something I've actually been working.
Appreciate the comment buddy, have a good Sunday
[+] [-] phonon|9 years ago|reply
Rich Pearson
1 hr ago
Shadi, I work at Upwork and your post about your experience makes us feel terrible. We’ve reopened your case and are investigating it much more thoroughly. We hope to have a response to you quickly — if you have any questions or want to provide more details, please email me at rpearson(at)upwork.com. We care very much about our freelancer community and want to make this right. Rich
1 response
Shadi Al'lababidi
16 mins ago
Rich, it shouldn’t take a post like this for you (Upwork) to give someone special treatment. I know there are thousands of others like me that rely on your platform (most, far more than myself, for much larger %’s of their income). In some cases this can very literally mean the difference between putting food on the table and not. They may not be able to spread the message like I, or speak English in such a manner. They may not be able to drum up enough attention, so they go unnoticed. It’s no skin of Upwork’s back, until it turns into a PR mess. Hence why you’re commenting. Let’s cut the shit, Rich. I’ve got 2 tickets open and have been messaging everyday for the last 11 days. Nothing, nada. Just, ‘We’ve banned you and you can’t know why’. (For those reading this, yes, they do say you cannot know why.So as to not to let on to why they ban you). I’ve tweeted at you, nothing. Now, I have roughly 75% of a months worth of Upwork money stuck on there. If I were someone else, or someone without other income streams, what would I do? What could I possibly tell my incumbent clients? Shit, what am I even going to tell my incumbent clients? you’ve just left me without a months worth of wages and a big ‘fuck you, there’s nothing you can do.’ So, I do not want any special treatment. I will not contact you via email. This is an integral problem with Upwork itself and I will highlight it as much as I possibly can, even if that means losing the money and my reputation on there that I’ve been building up over the last year. And please Rich, I’m a bloody marketer for Christ’s sake. Don’t come at me with that standard company mumbo jumbo ‘it makes us feel terrible’. You’re just being patronising.
[+] [-] jeffmould|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ftrflyr|9 years ago|reply
The problem that Upwork doesn't realize is that without an active and happy freelancing demographic, clients will go elsewhere. Historically, Upwork has made it a priority of catering to the client. This is evident given their JSS. For those of you who are not familiar with JSS, it is a score that companies / clients use to hire freelancers. Now, one would assume the score is based on past work with clients. This is not all the score accounts for. Timeliness is responding to invites, the number of long-term clients you maintain, the number of clients you hassle (yes, Upwork actively goes out and tells it's freelancers to hassle their clients to leave them feedback - the responsibility falls on the freelancer and only the freelancer), etc.
Thus, when clients don't leave feedback (for whatever reason), you are dinged. Upwork won't tell you by how much exactly so let me give you an example.
12 months ago, my score was 92% (Top Rated). A client hired me. We went over the terms of the contract (# of revisions, not working on the weekends, etc.). 2 weeks into the project, the client started to deviate from the terms of the contract. I let them know and they began to get pissy. This happens all the time as Upwork has created a platform where the clients hold all of the power, and they know this.
A week later the contract wrapped up, and I managed to make the client happy as they left me a 4.7/5 on my profile and a positive review. Clients are able to leave private feedback the freelancer can never see. When the JSS score updated (every two weeks I believe-mind you, I had not worked any other jobs since that job) my score went from 92% to 71%! A 21% drop.
Suffice to say, for the past 12 months, dozens and dozens of clients later (most with positive reviews); I am now only sitting in the low 80's for my JSS.
In conclusion, Upwork is the worst example of an online marketplace for freelancers who have a backbone and are not afraid to tell a client how it is. After all, we are hired for our expertise and when a client proceeds to tell us how to do our job, it poisons the freelancing community.
edit: spelling errors.
[+] [-] shadlovesgrowth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alinoudev|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway7312|9 years ago|reply
They wrote us immediately after we reviewed them to tell us their score had gone down from our review and we must have done something wrong.
I asked them to send back to us; nothing in there I could see to fix. I asked them to escalate to UpWork; UpWork support gave a non-answer. So I escalated it myself.
The reply I got from UpWork was essentially this: we're happy to see your concern for your freelancer. You gave your freelancer a 5-star review, you marked the job successful, it's a perfect review. The way UpWork gauges freelancer scores is on a rolling #-of-month period. Past a certain number of months, older reviews stop counting toward a freelancer's score and only reviews within that #-of-month period count. So a declining rating is most likely due to older good reviews aging out of the scoring.
So this could be another possibility, if you have better older reviews dropping off the chart and a few more recent reviews that weren't as good, and now are weighing more heavily without the better older ones to offset them.
[+] [-] tptacek|9 years ago|reply
"$100 an hour is more than our CEO makes so I'm not sure we can budget $1500 for this".
Don't bill hourly! I know this sounds like a very silly example (it's not even logically coherent) but reasoning like this gets deployed all the time, even with sophisticated clients. People have anchoring price points for hourly rates that they don't have for other billing structures. Fixing this to make more money is literally as simple as "switch to daily billing".
[+] [-] afro88|9 years ago|reply
$1500 at $100 an hour sounds expensive if you're comparing to the CEO's salary. But $1500 for a piece of sales lead infrastructure that has to be built but can't be off the shelf bought. That sounds reasonable.
[+] [-] dozzie|9 years ago|reply
> Don't bill hourly!
Also, it's not $100 per hour, it's likely $100 per two hours or more. It's not like a freelancer has constant work inflow at 40 hours per week.
[+] [-] yawz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachruss92|9 years ago|reply
When I first got started freelancing, I used eLance (which is now UpWork). I had a similar experience with a client, they suspended my account for 2+ months, and I won the dispute at the end. If I didn't have my own clients outside of eLance, I would have been screwed and not even able to pay my rent. After that, I stopped using the service and haven't looked back 4 years later.
I have a friend who actually does know someone on the executive leadership team at UpWork, I just emailed him with your article - hopefully something positive can come of that. I really hate it when all around bad human beings go around and try to make people's lives harder.
[+] [-] Down_n_Out|9 years ago|reply
"Thank you for using Upwork.
At this time we are unable to close your account. Please call our concierge team at 1-866-676-3375, select option 3, and we will help you close your account.
Please note: For security purposes, you will not be able to change your username, or open a new account with the same email address.
If you need help, please contact Support Services."
[+] [-] smhg|9 years ago|reply
I was able to remove the other user (under Settings - Permissions) and, subsequently, close the whole account.
[+] [-] marcell|9 years ago|reply
Unlike Upwork our service has a quality guarantee, so clients aren't forced to manage freelancers, and deal with low quality work. It's kind of like a product manager and freelancer combo, and overall it's much easier for the client.
If you're unhappy with Upwork, please give us a shot. You can see our site at https://codegophers.com, or start a task by writing in at:
We're able to handle most small tasks in a matter of a few days.[+] [-] orthoganol|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivm|9 years ago|reply
> Anything from $100 to $1000 is fair game. If the project is too big, we won't accept it.
I know many people who use Upwork for long-term hourly billed projects that last months if not years.
[+] [-] TwiSparklePony|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rakic|9 years ago|reply
I really like the idea. Do you code simple iOS apps in Swift?
[+] [-] dvcrn|9 years ago|reply
I hope this gets some traction through HN to bring it to the attention of the right people.
I am currently looking for a Freelancing platform and also looked at upwork. Thanks for that, will avoid them!
[+] [-] shadlovesgrowth|9 years ago|reply
My advice, get a blog. Write about your experience within industry. My best example would be a man called Simo Ahava, whom writes about GTM and GA. Join Slack groups and communities and just network.
I highly doubt he knows the CEO and even if he did, would said CEO actually act on such an inconsequential thing. I mean, imagine the PR meltdown from such an act.
Anyway, time for some tea and a chillout. Have a good Sunday :)
[+] [-] didgeoridoo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scardine|9 years ago|reply
Even if you have a perfect five stars reputation for two years, all it takes is one upset jerk and you are done at Upwork. Eventually you will step on someones having a bad day if you stay there enough.
After you make a good reputation in those market places you can command a higher fee - perhaps they want you out at this point so they can get work for other skilled professionals that are undercharging in order to build reputation.
[+] [-] desaiguddu|9 years ago|reply
When I started my consulting company, I decided I will not rely on this Upwork - Freelancer.com shit!
I use various aggregator services -
1.) StackOverFlow Jobs
2.) No Mad Jobs
3.) PDX Startups
4.) Slack Groups
5.) Domino Slack
6.) Meet, demonstrate your services
Everyone can teach WipeRecord service a lesson - I will be giving them 1 Rating on Facebook, Yelp and all other places with a write-up.
[+] [-] dba7dba|9 years ago|reply
Because it's not a totally anonymous place, the groups seemed to have much less douchebags.
[+] [-] dkns|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prmph|9 years ago|reply
They keep inviting me to jobs that have no relationship to my declared skill-set.
They keep inviting me to apply to jobs for clients who have no intention of actually hiring.
They invite me to apply to work for them, and then fail to show up at the agreed upon interview time, several times
Whenever I reach out to support about an issue, they invariably, without fail, make the issue worse.
I'm seriously thinking of just deleting my account so I can focus my efforts on local freelancing
[+] [-] erklik|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadlovesgrowth|9 years ago|reply
Yes, it really is one of those things which you say to yourself 'Oh, it'll never happen to me', then actually it does. I'm the 3rd person I personally know of that's had this happen to them. So I think it's more prolific than it seems.
Hope you're having a good Sunday Erklik
[+] [-] infodroid|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novaleaf|9 years ago|reply