@Isabelle Anne A wrote:
@Tiffany S wrote:
I have absolutely no idea why Upwork has chosen to do that, but any and all time tracker issues can be avoided if a freelancer simply chooses to take responsibility for his own contracts and not rely on the Upwork safety net.
Not sure which time tracker issues you're talking about here. I believe the main issue of this thread is that the time tracker usually overbills clients who don't monitor work diaries closely and whose freelancers don't have integrity and who can't be bothered with the hassle of deleting low-activity screenshots or starting their tracker at the right time to match the 10-minute mark.
Wow ladies, what the heck. 
This shouldn't have anything to do with responsibility, integrity, or even hassles. The actual point of this whole thread is that a 10-minute block should be a 10-minute block. Period.
On one hand, we have Upwork's tracker as is now - a 10-minute block is only the one that starts and ends on a round number.
On the other hand, we could have a tracker where a 10-minute block is just 10 minutes, whenever it started. Even if it started on a round number (as is now), even if it started on a random number.
I don't even see a point in looking for any more reasons to do this - for those who like it the way it is, NOTHING would change. For those of us who work differently, on different types of contracts and different dynamics, the change would be a big improvement.
That's really all there is to it!?
@Tiffany S wrote:Ines, my only point was that the only reason for all the big brother screenshot monitoring and all that (which you rightly distinguished from the "real world") is necessary is that Upwork is putting its own money on the line to step in and rescue freelancers when contracts go bad.
In the real world scenario, we don't have the monitoring OR the protection.
Gotcha.
I wasn't really trying to talk bad about screenshots and activity monitor, just wanted to make it clear that the two situations are completely different.
I don't mind the screenshots that much anymore, and fully understand the need for them. Not just because of Upwork's money on the line, but people's money as well. You've seen a lot more complaints about hourly scams on the forums than I did, and I've seen a fair share.
So - yay screenshots! Nay 00-10-20! 
@John K wrote:Ines, I'm going to attempt a rationalization for the tracker being restricted to even multiples of 10 minutes after the hour. It would take a lot of development effort to modify it, and Upwork's development resources are already stretched fixing new features that don't work reliably without altering a key feature that is at least reliable. And given Upwork's record of making changes that don't work properly, do you trust it to alter the time tracker and get it right the first time? I don't, so I'd rather live with it, warts & all, then have a non-functional version and lose money because of it.
I don't want to be overly negative, but Upwork also has a past history of taking freelancer requests and implementing something else that nobody wants. For instance, it used to be, you could hover over the number of applicants in the job feed, and see a list of all freelancers who'd applied, with names, rating, etc (can't recall the exact data shown, but it was very useful). But some freelancers in the community were unhappy that when you clicked on the job, and looked at the applicants from there, the number of applicants was different that what was listed in the job feed. So Upwork replaced the running total of applicants with a range, like 20-50, AND INCIDENTALLY eliminated the capability of viewing the actual applicants, even though no one asked for that. And when that happened, scores of freelancers, me included probably, pleaded to have this feature restored, but our pleas fell on deaf ears.
Sigh... I'm still trying to be optimistic though - as long as the idea isn't discarded ("we won't/can't implement this"), there's hope.
I don't know much about programming, but I have to think that the modification of the tracker is not more complicated and challenging than everything else that was built on the platform. There are so many features here that look a lot more challenging to develop than a tracker that triggers a random screenshot within X+10 minutes.
(Especially considering it's already developed - just needs a modification)
In any case... no, I don't honestly trust Upwork's devs to get anything right the first time. But since they're constantly adding new features, it's clear that whoever is in charge still wants to improve the platform and make it better.
And as long as that's the case, I think we should all give our input as to what could be useful and helpful, rather than staying quiet and letting Upwork think of new features on their own (which then end up being something no one asked for - but a lot of people don't ask for anything, anyhow, or they just let ideas die because "this might be too complicated for Upwork so let's just never talk about this again").
I don't know. If it's too complicated, they'll say "sorry, we won't/can't implement this". But it's for them to decide, not me. I don't want to "not" give ideas just because *I* think it may be too complicated. I think it's up to us to suggest, and up to them to review.
