Changes on how JSS is calculated

[westearth]

Hello everyone! 

Very recently I had a conversation with the support team and they told me that if you have several contracts where you did not earn much money and those are 5 stars, those contracts do not have as much weight in the JSS score as bigger contracts with higher pay.  Therefore, let's say you had a contract of $1,000 and the client gave you a score of 4 in everything, and after that several other few contracts of 5 stars each but let's say each contract was between the $50 - 150 USD each.  Then even though most of your clients have rated you with 5 stars, you might still get a lower score because of the client that rated you with a 4 and paid $1,000. 

I think this is a very big flaw of this system. There might be freelancers out there with a score of 80%, but in reality, if every contract counted equally they might have a 95%. And then new potential clients would think that that freelancer is not really very good because he's got an 80% while in reality, he might just have that 80% for one or two highly paid contracts that didn't give him 5 stars. 

Who thinks that every contract should be counted equally towards the JSS despite the amount of money that you made on the contract?

[wlyonsatl]

Magdalena G.,

In 2020 Upwork changed the JSS calculation such that the client rating on higher value projects were more heavily weighted then ratings on lower value projects. This is the announcement for that change and the rationale:

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Product-Updates/Job-size-will-now-be-factored-into-your-JSS/ba-p/697...

"

UPDATE: The JSS Metric has been updated to reflect the changes that were announced below. As of today, March 1st, all Job Success Scores are now displaying the updated value.

We will soon update JSS metrics to reflect job value in the calculation. Today, a one-week $20 job typically carries the same weight as a one-week $1,000 job in JSS. Soon, JSS will be weighted by job earnings. For example, a one-week $1,000 job will be weighted more than a one-week $20 job. JSS will also exclude contracts with $0 earned and positive feedback. All other JSS policies will remain unchanged.

What does this mean?

We are making this change so a freelancer’s Job Success Score will display a more comprehensive representation of their freelancer work. We understand not all jobs are equal. We know higher budget contracts require more work and freelancers who complete these more complex contracts successfully should get credit for them. Just as longer-term contracts hold more weight in JSS calculations than shorter ones, we believe contract value should also hold significance in the calculation. By giving these jobs more weight, these jobs will have a greater influence on a JSS.

Many freelancers will see an increase in their scores if they’ve successfully completed higher budget contracts in the past. At the same time, a small percentage of freelancers may lose their JSS, see a drop in their scores, or lose their Top Rated badge. Today, we are emailing freelancers whose JSS will see a decline of 5% or more, to let them know they will be affected. Freelancers that see a drop in their score can improve their JSS by completing more jobs with positive feedback, as it works today. Larger budget contracts with positive feedback will result in a higher increase in JSS, however, all great feedback contributes to JSS and whether you work on large or small contracts you can still reach 100% JSS.

This change will take effect in March, at which time all Job Success Scores will be updated retroactively. We know many of you will have questions about this update. We won’t be able to discuss your individual score or outcomes of specific contracts. We have listed some anticipated questions below, let us know if you have any additional questions."

This link also includes some FAQs.

[westearth]

As I said Will I think this is a big flaw of this system. Maybe Upwork is introducing that to give a boost to the freelancers that bring more money to Upwork; because a higher pay contract leaves a higher fee on the platform. But contracts should be counted equally (they are not anymore because the support team has told me that this is not the case). Is not true that this is a more comprehensive representation of the work, because you can have a client that decided to pay $50 USD per hour and you work for him 10 hours resulting in $500 USD, and another client that paid you $5 USD per hour, you worked 20 hours and just got $100 USD.  You did a lot more work in the contract of 20 hours.

Upwork cannot say that complex jobs are higher paid because I have seen a lot of complex jobs offered on Upwork with very low pay, the pay depends on the budget of the client and how much he knows about the prices of what he's looking for.   I am a 3D artist and I have seen clients offering  80 USD on a fixed-price contract for a job that takes 40 hrs of work or more! Usually those are clients that know nothing about 3D art and want something done at a cheap price, and still, there are freelancers that accept those contracts just to get some money. 

So this new way of calculating the JSS does not really measure the complexity of the job. If Upwork as a platform were to set prices depending on the type of job that the client is looking for, and of course after thorough research of the costs in the job market, then ok; but that is not the case.

Clients are the ones that set the budget and I can tell you that 80% of clients on this platform are looking for cheap but high-quality work. 

[wlyonsatl]

Magdalena,

I don't think there's any way for Upwork to set up a mathematical/alrgorithm-based system that measures "complexity" of all projects, but I'd rather have clients who pay me less also have less effect on the calculation of my Job Success Score. 

Clients who work a longer time with me know more about me and the work I do, so I'm happy for them to have more input into my JSS calculations.

And, not that it's very often important, with clients whom I identify as difficult to work with or otherwise clueless after we agree to a contract I can wrap up (or shut down) their projects as soon as possible and minimize their feedback's affect on my JSS. SInce I have been Top Rated for many years and rarely invoke the resulting ability to occasionally delete client feedback, I only remember twice shutting down such clients and their projects before they were what I felt could be called complete.

[martina_plaschka]

And it could also be the other way around. A good high volume contract outweighs a number of bad ones. Your premise is based on the idea that larger contracts have worse outcomes than small ones, while the opposite can also be true and show a better result than it would be if all contracts counted the same. 

There is nothing inherently unfair in this, IMO.