How to not get scammed hiring remote freelancers on Upwork
jamesclift.ca
jamesclift.ca
Some are just trying to steal applicant’s money or identity, but I’ve also seen legitimate companies asking for long test tasks and disappear afterwards and employees from high profile organizations trying to outsource part of their work but paying $6/hour. Upwork is broken, but this also happens on angel.co and probably on other digital job markets.
Interestingly, most of the advice given in the article for not getting scammed is also true for job seekers.
No wonder when people get paid based on their location and not based on their output/value. This is what bothers me quite a lot about Gitlab as well.
> Every developer has a Github profile. If their profile is new, yet they say they’ve been coding for 10 years — you may want to gut check.
There might be developers that just does not want to commit to public projects. It is possible that the developer is bound by NDAs that they can't share customer work. I know I fall in this category.
> It’s 2019. If you’re hiring someone who works on the internet, you will be able to find them on the internet.
Again, incorrect. I intentionally make effort to remain as much of an online ghost as I can. If you search for me on Google then you WILL find a profile, but that is a profile I am forced to maintain and may or may not be the person that the profile describes.
> Often it means they didn’t do the work, and will disappear once the money is sent.
Possible, but it might also be that the people are running on razor thin margins and have bills to pay. The whole idea of selection of contractors on Upwork and similar websites is mainly finding the cheapest guy. If someone in India is beating others in price, it means that there is really not a lot of runway to let an invoice sit for weeks. The guy has to buy bread you see....
Potential employers use all the signals available to make decisions and this is an important one. Many of the other applicants will have solid material. It may not at all be your fault, and yet also be a serious disadvantage.
But yeah, you can't say or release nothin. But that's true with the Fortune 500 places I've worked, too.
> There might be developers that just does not want to commit to public projects.
Some of my best work has been for private businesses, with a lot of that code being wrapped up into private repo's on my Github account. I was told a few years ago to put together some POC's on my Github repo so people don't think I'm not doing anything. The general perception is if you don't have a ton of public work out on Github, you're not keeping up with the industry.
> I intentionally make effort to remain as much of an online ghost as I can.
I'm the same way. I've told interviewers when they ask about my social media accounts that I have a few, but you'll never find them. You're only going to find a very minimal amount of "real" data on me. I feel more comfortable when I can control the conversation since social media is such a huge mine field. Companies and recruiters want to dig up as much as possible on you as soon as they meet you. What are you trying to hide? What are we going to find out about your past? It's 2019, it's just the smart thing to do to be as anonymous as possible.
- I am Indian and I don't fake my identity. But one thing I noticed is, when people came to know about my nationality either they avoid me like plague or discriminate over rates and demand way underpaid contract. For me that is just another hard learned lesson of being in India.
- I just don't use webcam and never do video chat, That is almost an unspoken personal rule of mine. All My social profile look dormant. Last time I posted on facebook, it was 2013. I have Facebook, Twitter, Github[passively active I fork projects and star them if needed nothing else], linkedin and many other social profiles but I have not a single of my photo posted online. Does it make me fake person? In fact I can say, yc profile is my most active one ;)
Unfortunately, the software industry by and large still seems to insist on continuing this backward model rooted in scientific management because it creates a semblance of an industrialised process that can easily be scaled by throwing more resources with the same TLAs at the problem (see "The Mythical Man-Month").
If people are treated as a commodity it's no wonder they start acting like one.
There certainly are largely commoditised areas of software development. However, especially for those it shouldn't matter where the person doing the job is located or in fact which person it is that does the job.
All that matters is results. Only settle an invoice once the agreed upon results have been delivered.
Also: Mythical Man-Month -- great book. I recommend it to anyone, especially programmers and project managers. Not too technical. Fairly light read. Good content.
This guy seems pretty clueless. I’m not sure I’d be trying to absorb his wisdom.
Ultimately for everything we do, communication is the number one requirement. We have to be able to communicate fluently in a high level of detail and have what we say not just understood, but even anticipated and interpreted.
So no matter how good someone is in some other aspect, it's a non-starter if I can't have a chat with them - and I think vice-versa too ... how can they enjoy the work and do a reasonable job if I can't really explain to them what I want easily?
I don't know if I'll ever use Upwork for programmers again. Most of my experiences have been bad, even when I was quite willing to pay premium rates.*
* Big motivation for many using Upwork is bypassing conventional corporate finance and the way they pay (or fail to pay) freelancers.
Most of the software development I do is done based on open tickets that people can pick up and comment on if things are unclear. The same goes for when we hire a freelancer, we have open tickets that can be picked up and completed, once completed they submit a merge request and we go on from that.
That is not to say you can't have a (video)chat, but it shouldn't really be needed for the actual development part of the job. We only have a call/meetup if we expect to be working with them for a longer period of time, or when we haven't worked with them before.
If you were looking to do a videochat with me when you have only a few hours of work for me I don't think I would be open to that either.
As for tickets...well I don't know how someone can just drop into a complex system and resolve bugs or add features, without understanding how the wider system works. We don't have work of that nature really.
We're a small team, but even we often have tasks that are trivial for our senior engineers, those are perfect for freelancers/juniors to find out how capable they are without taking too much risk (financially in case of them being freelancers).
You have to pay $100-$200 an hour for good contractors. These, are simply not on Upwork.
I have had very poor results using people who have a full-time job and are trying out freelancing as a side gig. They rarely seem to be able complete the work on time, and of the quality you desire.
It's never due to a lack of technical skill. It's in part because they seem to lack time and energy to do the work after grinding it out all day at full time job. But more importantly, they seem to lack the time-management, and communication skills to manage the work.
An experienced freelancer can juggle multiple projects, but someone coming from a single-focus, full-time job often cannot.
I think this is why a lot of people dabble in freelancing, fail and go back to full-time work.
Edit: This is more a general note, and not about Upwork specifically, but the same definitely applies.
Beyond being scammed, your chance of finding a great developer by looking for the cheapest developer is very low.
I have personal projects and experimental setups that I need freelance help with. They are non-profit and it is unknown how I will even use the eventual work-product ...
... so it's not ridiculous that I might look for a temporary worker (as opposed to hiring a full time dev, as has been suggested elsewhere in this comment thread) nor is it ridiculous that I might be very price sensitive.
It is, however, ridiculous that one cannot embark on such an endeavor without a reasonable expectation of being scammed. I couldn't care less what country someone comes from nor what their native language is, etc. - I am happy to work with anyone that can deliver. However, this article - along with my own experience - suggests one needs to be cautious of outright fraud perpetrated by despicable actors.
In a perfect world no one would scam you, but then again in a perfect world you wouldn't be looking for people who live in developing countries to do cheap work for you.
People always pretend life is oh-so cheap in for example Latin America while a lot of things including basics like soap and dried pasta can be more expensive in the supermarkets. And don't even get me started on electronics.
Of course you'll get people that pretend to be from a more expensive time zone for remote work. It's the same work after all.
In past I have used Upwork[when it was odesk]. Not much positive experience. For them client aka job poster is everything. They could kick you out mid project/task without any reason, they can deny your milestone work, appeal will most probably get their side, if you got to have more than two-three bad subsequent clients and got kicked out mid project. you can got yourself banned
In short its pro job-poster site.
The reason you can't make a deal outside Upwork is that all of your information that would cause someone to trust you is on Upwork, and only clients using that platform will see it.