Comment by BjoernKW | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BjoernKW | Hacker News Reader

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Some people, freelancers as well as clients and those middlemen that are unfortunately very common in this market, seem to fundamentally misunderstand what a freelancer or contractor is.

Freelancing is not some alternative form of employment that allows you to conveniently dispense with social security costs.

A freelancer is a self-employed service provider. Like with any other kind of self-employment you’re responsible for your marketing, sales and for reasonably insuring yourself against calamities that might happen in life.

If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame. The same applies if you act irresponsibly in terms of finance, e.g. by spending all your income before costs and taxes are taken care of (if you have a problem with that Profit First is a great framework to help you).

That said it’s well-known that the software industry is overly dependent on mostly useless middlemen like Freelancer.com . So, perhaps it’s quite understandable if you turn to them when you start out.

You should always be aware however that they’re neither your insurance nor your employer. They don’t protect you. They just take a cut from your hard-earned money. They want you to commoditise yourself by solely defining yourself in terms of a bunch of TLAs because those ‘profiles’ are easier to sell.

The sooner you extricate yourself from that dependency the better. Putting all your eggs in one basket like the review suggests the author did is recklessly negligent.

Classic victim blaming. What you say is mostly true, but it completely glosses over the potential issues raised by this post. So what if the author made a mistake about using Freelancer.com? That doesn't change the fact that what Freelancer is _supposedly_ doing here is incredibly shady and they should be held accountable. The only real issue I have with the author's post is there are a lot of details missing. What did you do to step on the toes? Where are these chat logs? I can't assume that Freelancer is 100% in the wrong here without proper evidence and at least hearing their point of view. That being said, the author is using this as review a platform to raise attention to a potentially serious issue, and there should be no reason to immediately blame him with "sorry, it's your fault for using Freelancer to begin with... good luck."

The primary way HN audience can hold Freelancer accountable is not use their services. This is what a review is for -- so that other people can learn from OP's experience.

If OP wanted instead help with their particular situation, they would have to include the details you note are missing.

Does anybody have a theory as to why victim-blaming is such a popular response on HN? I don't see it nearly as much elsewhere.

I think that smarter people are more likely to victim-blame because it's harder to imagine themselves falling victim to whatever situation.

For most problems, they seem like they could have been easily prevented by either being more knowledgeable about the situation or thinking things through beforehand.

After reading a lot of the discussions here, and considering that most of us are here for the pursuit of knowledge, my guess is that the community here represents more of the right side of the bell curve.

I don't think inability to imagine bad luck or own mistake is proof of intelligence. It is proof of ego or arrogance or an attempt to mask I security.

Smart people made mistakes in the past, smart people can imagine situations where they become victims (whether by own fault or not). Some smart people do have inability to imagine themselves in other people's shoose - but dumb people are often similarly disabled

You're right, it's a one-sided kind of intelligence. Maybe what Casseres said would be better phrased "people who are proud of being smart".

The fact that it's one-sided smarts, the fact that one is probably not as smart as one thinks, and the ability to imagine another person's shoes, are all life lessons that may click into place at different times for different people.

This definitely seems like a major factor to me. If I'm proud of being smart, I'll be inclined to perform smartness. And one easy way to perform smartness is by making somebody else look dumb.

That's why I hate the word "smart" and probably shouldn't write comments first thing in the morning.

I believe "smart" and "intelligent" are two different things: one is having knowledge, and the other is being able to act wisely with that knowledge.

A person can memorize an encyclopedia, but if unable to do anything useful with that knowledge, can be smart but not intelligent.

No one is infallible; everyone makes mistakes. Being able to learn from them and not repeat them is what's harder for most people.

I disagree - I think it's about recognizing the realities of the situation and the best way to resolve it. The OP has learned that Freelancer.com is rather shady, and they essentially ripped him off of an amount of money that's rather modest by professional standards. The best way for OP to move forward is likely to learn how to do business as a freelancer without using these types of middlemen and write off the money lost to their mishaps. He could try suing for it, but my impression is that collecting an amount of money worth the time is unlikely. Better to spend the time establishing direct relationships with clients that need the work done and pay on time rather than trying to collect a pittance from Freelancer.com.

On the contrary, I find those who shout "Victim Blamer!" often ignore or discount the realities of the situation out of a quest for perceived justice. Getting such justice is often a long and expensive process that may actually leave the victim in an overall worse position, when it is possible at all. When there is a straightforward and practical plan that will put the victim back in a good situation without regard to causing any so-called "justice" to happen to the so-called "bad guy", well, sometimes it's best to just let it go. Karma will get them in the end.

That's not to say that there aren't situations where we do need some justice. I'm just saying pick your battles here. Not everything is worth fighting about, and things that are worth a fight are worth making sure you can win.

It's the Libertarian pro-market bend here, it's what you get when you replace the legal framework of the state with a market system. In a regular Western democracy if someone cheats you you can seek redress through the court system. You can't do that in the trust market, if you didn't do diligence on your opponent it's your own fault.

Kind of like in the Mafia, a war of all against all. Me against my brothers. Me and my brothers against my cousins. Me and my brothers and cousins against the world.

If the other party did something illegal or broke a contract you most certainly have legal recourse.

The problem with intermediaries like these is that there's an inherent power differential. So, while technically they might not be doing anything illegal they're able to squeeze you. The best way to deal with this - if possible - is to not get yourself into a situation like that in the first place.

Another way is to make new laws (or create common law precedents depending on the legal system) that address issues that arise with these models. After all, that's how labour laws came into being as there was a huge power differential between early industrial workers, specifically day labourers, and their employers.

It's probably simply to boost one's ego, every time one of these posts brings up how you should've been more 'responsible', it occurs to me that they're trying to shake their own failing of a similar nature from their past.

Maybe it's because, of course, not all those who pose as victims are actually victims.

It's very natural to side automatically with whover complains of an injustice; but people who strive to be rational are suspicious of this immediate emotional reaction, and want to be sure that they're not being tricked into showing an undeserved support.

Finally, the expression "victim blaming" subtly tries to shift the focus from the question "is this person really a victim" to the false question "should this victim be blamed".

Another possibility is simple contrarianism.

HN commenters tend to be cerebral know-it-all types who genuinely enjoy argumentation and like to pick things apart. They also tend to identify as independent thinkers and they like to demonstrate their intellect by taking unconventional positions.

If this is the case here, in what way is GP demonstrating their intellect with the position they're taking?

What's with this assumption that victims are always blameless? If I run around the street and get hit by a car, should I not share some blame?

It seems whenever someone points out risky behavior here, someone else calls "victim blaming".

Victim-blaming is rampant everywhere, first of all. And while those thoughts might not get typed in as much on Facebook where everything is happy-happy-happy and like-like-like, I bet they're being thought. Here on HN there's no such cultural slant toward positivity, but there is one toward intellectualism. And hey, whatever else victim-blaming is, it's sort of interesting as an intellectual idea.

Really? I find victim-blaming intellectually sterile. It can be done pretty much any time something bad happens, and it's not challenging to do. You just find the person who's most fucked and say it's all their fault.

I think it's much more interesting to understand the subtle dynamics that result in bad outcomes. As an example, Sidney Dekker's book, "The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error" [1] makes an excellent case that if you're going to do useful aviation accident investigation, you have to decline the simple-minded approach of blame, and instead look at the web of causes and experiences that lead to failure.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error...

In any set of events, the story is up to the interpreter. If you make your story that you were victimized, then you'll feel like there's little you can do yourself to change that. Claiming victimhood is not at all productive.

Instead, if you see those events as failings on your part, you are empowered to make the change required to have a better time in the future.

Victim mentality doesn't solve anything and goes further to make the interpreter of one's life a powerless pawn that will unavoidably be used in ways that person doesn't like.

Blame yourself and empower yourself.

Upwork is still awful. Avoid it.

Another one of those 'blame the victim' responses. I work in an SME with more than 100 employees and I outsource legal work, HR work, payroll, tax accounting, property maintenance, web design, recruitment, marketing and lots of IT. Outsourcing specialisms to third parties is as old a society. A fundamental feature of our western democracies is a secure legal framework that means that I can use an agent and I can hold them responsible. When people don't pay, you can take them to court and recover that money. For some reason there is this idea that it is OK for Valley tech companies to work around that and use their size to fleece customers. It isn't, and it's going to catch up with them.

Traditional contracting agencies do this for me at the moment. I call them up and I ask for x work to be done, they find people, reference their work (or know them already). I pay the agency, they pay the contractor. The contractor gets to concentrate on their day job rather than marketing and sales. Most of them seem to use a third-party to do their bookkeeping and tax too. This is how long term contracts work, why should it not be OK for short-term ones? Or projects?

If all a contractor focuses on is her day job how is that different from traditional employment? Being able to focus on your day job while leaving everything else to another party is what employment is for.

I'm all in favour of outsourcing the work that you're not good at or that's not part of your core business. However, in my opinion as a software development freelancer marketing and sales is a key part of your business. Nobody understands better what your services are or how exactly you can help your clients. It's ok to outsource some of that work like cold-calling (if that works for your business), newsletter management etc. but defining and communicating the core value you bring to the table should never be outsourced.

You specifically mentioned legal work and tax accounting. Those roles traditionally aren't marketed through middlemen simply because lawyers and tax accountants generally are considered to be independent professionals.

> However, in my opinion as a software development freelancer marketing and sales is a key part of your business.

That is 100% your opinion. It is far from a rule that you should expect others to adhere to, especially given that there are tons of services out there that promise to remove that need. It's almost as if different people design, build and execute their lives differently, using different values.

You're getting downvoted because you're asserting your opinion as a global truth. There is no universal law dictating how software freelancers should work.

In this one instance, your opinions are absolutely vindicated -- but what about the literal millions of successful freelancers where your opinions and advice mean bunk?

In what universe is marketing and sales not a key element of a business?

That's like saying Samsung doesn't have to put effort into marketing and sales just because it's important for Apple.

Sales and marketing IS a universal truth in business. Try telling shareholders/stakeholders that it's not.

That a business sells software is irrelevant. That a business is run by one person is irrelevant.

Outsourcing your marketing changes nothing. That should be one channel of many. There are no services which remove that need (though they may make that claim).

As others have mentioned, people seem to be getting freelancing and employment mixed up. The wording "freelancer" seems to be putting this through some sort of warp which changes the laws of physics.

Perhaps the issue is that this person is really an employee getting painted as a business as a target for getting screwed over. Perhaps this person wants to be an employee, but the harsh world is pushing this person to be a business. But if you are a business, you need to model your work as a business if you are going to survive.

You're right but just want to add, an employee is a business too, with sales/marketing duties. Not helping with the confusion perhaps.

(First, you should know I'm playing devil's advocate. I run a startup, and of course I agree with you about sales and marketing. See [1] for my thoughts on this)

> That a business is run by one person is irrelevant.

I disagree with you here. In your system, there is a binary designation for individuals: either you are an individual employee, you have given up a large part of your freedom in exchange for the security of being gainfully employed; or you are a freelancer, and therefore no different from a single-person software development business, and are 100% exposed, to the same degree corporations are held (or lesser, see 'bailouts'), to the conditions of free market economy.

But of course this isn't, shouldn't and can't be binary. There currently exists millions of people somewhere in the middle of this spectrum right now, millions of counterexamples to this story, of people who lived entire lives as freelancers working through an agency like upwork or freelancer. They're here, they exist, they're humans just like you and I.

Not wanting to be responsible for all aspects of business is exactly why they go to places like freelancer.com, upwork, Uber, taskrabbit, etc.

Victim blamers are basically telling that person that they didn't "do their life good enough" and they don't deserve a social safety net, and that somehow they "had it coming" and "deserved to get screwed" because they didn't share your definition of a what a freelancer should be. They behaved too much like an individual and not enough like a business, so they got what they deserved. Despite the millions of people who aren't economically efficient yet hoisted up by the social safety net, for instance any union member, anyone on social security or welfare, anyone on food stamps, in government housing, anyone who benefits from subsidies, etc.

But let's pick on this one particular guy who deserved to have his life ruined by a customer service rep with a grudge because he dared to think he could get away with being a simple person - an individual human, not a business - with the freedom to work 25 hours a week because he got sick a year prior. Fuck that guy.

I am taking this position to an absurd degree, but to illustrate my point, here's what's really at the core of the victim-blaming position: "You're a freelancer who didn't want to be responsible for sales and marketing, so that you could just lead a straightforward technical life without the rigid constraints of being a full time employeee? Fuck you, you deserved to get screwed over for not treating your life like a business, like the rest of us!"

I think this is one of those strange ways in which capitalism has affected our worldview. I do consider myself a capitalist, but I have to admit that the idea of expecting individuals to behave as businesses would doesn't sit right with me.

At the end of the day, a customer service representative with a grudge (allegedly) had the power to hold earnings back from the person who earned them. That would bankrupt a business too, if it happened at the wrong time or under the right circumstances. Your bank refusing to deposit your checks for 2 months would wreak havok on like 70% of Americans' lives! We are all dependent on others in so many ways that we can't pick on this guy for also being dependent.

Instead, let's call out the actual bad actor here. And since freelancer.com is the actual business in the story, shouldn't we expect them to be accountable to free market forces, ie a bunch of pissed off developers asking for more accountability?

[1] https://burakkanber.com/blog/startup-advice-dont-overinvest-...

ETA: I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my post. Thank you.

I think I had my lightbulb moment. People are comparing services like Upwork to a typical contracting arrangement in the U.S.

Amazon hires contract workers for their warehouses and perhaps they do this directly. Many other companies hire contracters through temp agencies.

Imagine walking through the door of Upwork as if it were some sort of temp agency. Imagine you meet with a rep who interviews you and goes over how the temp agency works, but it's actually the Upwork or Freelancer terms.

You would likely tell the rep that he/she is ing nuts and walk out the door. I can't imagine there are temp agencies which work like that. The closest I can think of is day labor, but I'm pretty sure those workers don't have to worry about getting paid at the end of their work day.

I guess I couldn't get this through my head because of how horrible of an idea it would be to me. On the other hand, I think playing slot machines is incredibly stupid, yet people love to do it.

People have a bit of a responsibility to understand the model of what they are dealing with. There are endless ways to make money, but not endless ways in which you will get protection. If you work for an employer, you get looked after and you're likely to get paid. If you try to make money trading, then you're likely to get chewed up and spit out. If you try to join an MLM scheme, then you better know how these things work or you won't get anywhere.

The model of running a business is that you better run your life properly. You better have your adult pants ready to go. Freelance software developers have it easy, most of the solo devs just lose their time when they get screwed. Back before the internet, an entrepeneur might lose everything (like my parents did).

I think there is a reality warp which people go through when they think of freelance software development. It's way too easy to shoot yourself in the foot by going this route and there is little to stop you. It's as easy as walking into a casino and walking out completely cleaned out. Perhaps the government should insist that Upwork places a warning label on its site, like a pack of cigarettes. It should put pictures of homeless people, just as an added scare tactic. Because it's a really bad idea to sign up with a service like this if you don't fully know what you are getting into.

You're right that a business can go bankrupt with one key missed payment or withheld check. But that's exactly why you need to be fully aware and ready for that to happen. You need to know what you are getting yourself into. If it happens, you brush yourself off and figure out what to do next. You don't expose yourself as the reviewer did. You keep it professional because it's going right into your history folder.

You're not going to get screwed like that working for a top 3 temp agency in the space.

NOTE: The above assumes U.S. or similar.

> You're getting downvoted because you're asserting your opinion as a global truth. There is no universal law dictating how software freelancers should work.

No, there isn't but my point is that in case

- you're not responsible for your own marketing and sales

- you don't differentiate yourself from other service providers

- you're marketed by a third party as an anonymous set of technical acronyms

how does that justify becoming a freelancer in the first place? Simply for the higher rate and so your employer can save social security costs? That's not how self-employment is intended by the law. In that case, you're more likely to be an employee. Some countries even try to recoup social security payments on that basis.

There are two things confused here. Lots of people go contracting in the UK because

1) You can earn more. A company will pay more as it can ditch the person at the end of the contract, when it is not a core competency of the firm.

2) There are tax benefits

3) When you contract is over you get a change of scenery

Many of those always contract through an agency

What you are describing is more like someone trying to start their own agency/practice. That is quite different and sales would be a big part of that.

> Those roles traditionally aren't marketed through middlemen simply because lawyers and tax accountants generally are considered to be independent professionals.

Your point that I was answering was that the contractor is outsourcing some services to the 'middlemen', not using a middleman to find those services

You are also not exactly right about accountants and lawyers. They join partnerships and associations exactly so they can get work from the practice and use their shared admin facilities. A barrister in the UK is a tenant of his chambers and the clerks get the work and the barrister has fees deducted for this service. This is exactly so they can concentrate on their day job.

'BjoernKW is describing freelancing. You're describing using it largely as a way to avoid employment laws.

This is exactly the set of issues around the gig economy. Corporations want to treat people as self-employed to save National Insurance, holiday pay, redundancy etc. Some people kind of enjoy moving around jobs a lot. The UK government has had a number of crack-downs on this resulting in

a) a reduction in ability to avoid employment laws and exploit workers or

b) a restriction on a contractors ability to work flexibly.

depending on your point of view. Probably some of each for different people. It is too big an issue for this comments thread.

> If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame.

This statement is objectively false. If you do you own marketing, sales, etc, then you have yourself to blame. If you outsource them, then you have the entity to blame. If a company claims to provide those things and fails, then harsh criticism is warranted. Maybe you meant that if you expect those responsibilities to be handled by a middleman than doesn't actually claim to offer them, then you have yourself to blame?

Some people, consumers as well as producers and those middlemen that are unfortunately very common in all markets, seem to fundamentally misunderstand what an individual's relationship to global society is.

Grocery shopping is not some alternative form of agriculture that allows you to conveniently dispense with food security costs.

Like with anything else, you're responsible for your own food sourcing, production, horticulture, security, and for reasonably insuring yourself against calamities that might happen in life.

If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame. The same applies if you act irresponsibly in terms of health, eg by getting sick right before harvest season.

That said, it's well-known that all humans are overly dependent on middlemen like big agriculture, farm subsidies, commodities traders, shipping and logistics providers, supermarket chains, etc. So perhaps it's understandable if you turn to them when you start out.

You should always be aware however that you're on your own. They don't protect you. They just take a cut from your hard earned money. The sooner you extricate yourself from that dependency the better. Putting all your eggs in one global society is recklessly negligent.

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My point is, we have a social contract here. Don't victim blame. Some unforeseen circumstance, like food supply shortage, could turn something you never expected to be a problem into something that kills you.

Freelancer.com is a market maker. “Buyer beware” doesn’t apply.

Maybe the OP was expecting something else than a string of blames and moral lessons in his situation. You are definitively an asshole.

Personal attacks like this are not allowed on HN and will get your account banned, regardless of whether another comment was self-righteous or had other negative qualities.

Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this again.

You might not believe it - me being an asshole after all - but I do feel sorry for the author.

The best he probably can (and from his writing likely does) expect from this on a personal level is to have learned a valuable lesson and to serve as cautionary tale for others to not fall in the same trap.

He likely has little in the way of legal recourse but he'd have to consult with a lawyer for that anyway.

I'm also an asshole because I was downvoted heavy for the same sort of stand.

As with any business, he needs to realize this isn't working and move on to something else. If he's staring at the possibility of being homeless after 5 years on this platform, then something isn't working and he will need major change so that the next 5 years doesn't end with the same results.

Running a business requires a certain management capability. At #1 on the list of financial bullets which can take you down is medical expenses. If you're writing a to-do list and there's a pack of wolves ransacking your house, then that problem should be at the top of your list. This guy got cleaned out by medical expenses. He didn't mention anything beyond the money, so I assume that the injury wasn't a major barrier to work. He had savings, but he probably didn't have medical insurance. That's a major fail.

If you're going into business dressed up like an employee, then prepare to be a victim. If you go into business fully expecting to run a business, then your #1 priority is business survival. There are no victims in business survival stories, only funerals.

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