This is unfortunately also pushing me toward daily standups, which I have also avoided my entire career so far.
It is unethical, certainly. But it also hurts the honest people who don't do it.
Might be your problem. You're not going to find anyone serious there -- you get what you pay for. A site that charges the consultant instead of the client isn't exactly gonna attract even average level talent.
Some people on Upwork are dishonest or unskilled, but some are also excellent. Hiring is hard, regardless of the talent pool.
If you have better ideas of where to find contractors, please let me know. I'm always open to finding a better or fairer marker than Upwork.
Small cities in NZ have great people. For example www.triotech.co.nz or nodero.com
What does this mean? I equate “good exchange rate” with “low exchange commission/fee” and “low volatility”.
You're right about volatility too, the NZD doesn't swing too wildly.
Because in some countries, you can live like a king on $66k and you'll always have contracts. And anyway, no one gets paid based on the "value of their work". That's how services businesses are profitable at all -- the employees generate more value than they're paid.
My standard of living is pretty good too.
There is not too much competition for talent. The crap is easy to weed out; most people who are bad have 100 ‘expert skills’ on their profile. So skipping those (which, unfortunately, means that you mostly end up without anyone from Asia) already cleans up nicely. Secondly, remove all the ones that have open jobs at that moment. Then remove low ratings. Now you have a few left to have chat and figure out if they are lying or not. And then you just pick the best one (technically but also if you click with them) that’s left.
Have you considered hiring actual employees locally rather than remote, unseen contractors?
The contractors are remote, but I do see them on video. I'm also remote and unseen, as I've worked remotely my entire career.
So all contractors that are not on that platform are 10x developers?/s
Sweeping generalizations are always easy to make, but if talent assessment would be easy nobody would have problem hiring, in general, and that's not what I'm seeing.
Is it just a time sheet/app where developers track their time or is it spyware like Upwork's screen capture tracker?
Be wary of any developer who agrees to install spyware. These are either entry level developers or really crappy devs.
I have both worked as freelancer and hired freelancers. I find these spywares extremely insulting. We are not high school kids working in fast food joint. We are professionals & business owners.
As a freelancer, if a company asked if I would install spyware on my machine, it indicated that it was probably badly run company. If it was optional I would ask how many other devs had the spyware on their machines. If there were more than 1 or 2 devs, it just meant I would be working with bad devs and just declined contracts. Same if it was required. Pretty much all those companies had issues with their devs and had to scrap projects or start over.
And when I hired freelancers, if a freelancer indicated they had no problem with spyware, it set off all kinds of red flags. And every single time if I hired such developer, they were horrible and needed a lot of hand holding.
Unfortunately my last 5-10 freelancer experiences have been bad. I lost $10k recently by trusting a dev that he was doing the work I paid him to do.
I have no other way to verify that someone is dedicated to my work.
If anyone refuses the spyware, that's absolutely their right. I don't blame them.
Either way, it might be best to just fire anyone who bills you 50 hours and works 0. As a contractor, I'd do the opposite - work 40 hours and bill 30, not including some periods of zoning out. My clients would insist that I round it up, not down.
I think you'll find plenty of contractors who suit your more trusting style.
I do see the problem that some people pretend to be more experienced than they are, or worst case are scamming clients.
On the one hand, you could ask a contractor to do a certain (well-specified) piece of work for a fixed price. But it's often hard to define the specifications precisely, especially in software projects.
The alternative is charging by the hour. I see this as a journey that the client and contractor take together. You have a certain goal in mind, and the contractor helps you work towards it. You need regular meetings to discuss the progress, obstacles, and together decide on the best way forward. Daily standups could help too, but depending on the complexity of the work, I'd recommend a weekly or biweekly in-depth meeting.
Could it be that the experience with scammy contractors is because they are given a task towards an ill-defined goal with too little opportunity to discuss progress?
Not saying it's easy, but worth thinking about before you start the surveillence.
I see their side of it. The risk is all theirs with fixed fee.