"Is there a gentler way to say that?"
Yes, I can play semantics. However, why should I? I am being totally honest. I don't care if I offend the unskilled, lazy people.
There are a range of freelancers.
- Scammers, here to cheat just like the scammer clients. These are the ones setting up fake jobs, gaming collects and purposely trying to steal. They steal profiles, portfolios, and spend all their time on stealing. They will do anything they can to rip off clients, other freelancers, Upwork and anyone or entity with a shred of money. There is no end to the extent they will go. These people could find work, but why bother when it's so easy to steal? And no need to set up a profile. There are cheats online about how to fake interviews and everything else on Upwork, and probably every other platform.
Upwork has changed. Since the decision to allow anything that could use a keyboard to be a freelancer, the number of scammers increased exponentially.
- The unskilled lazy, who could have skills, but really aren't interested. They put up a picture of some favorite fantasy, object, sometimes unidentifiable object. Or weird effects. Or a photo of their cat, iguana, tattoo, or body parts that say a TOS violation kind of seller. Their profiles are terribly written in their native language, there is nothing there, and they go on about their lives and how they like to do stuff. Then they whine they are unable to get a job. They don't like to hear they need to start at the beginning and get their act together before they throw up a profile and declare they are an expert. The people who do this will fail.
- The desperate are the ones I feel for and wish I could help. I try, but I can't change the essential socio-economic structure of the entire world. For many people, they have no marketable skills. I understand desperation and why these people come here. They are the ones that I hope we can reach to let them know this is not the heaven they have been led to believe. It takes time, money, and connects to make it here. For someone who may only have a dollar for many needs, spending money on boosts and proposals will only leave them much poorer. I think it is cruel to tell people in this situation to send in more proposals, make videos, boost, boost, boost, when they will never ever get a job and only be scammed. The people need to know there is no quick, easy, money here and for the x millions in dire poverty with no way to earn without spending an enormous amount of money to their detriment. It is horrible when someone contacts me or posts and says they are out of food or need medicine, but Upwork is not a way out of poverty if you have no skills and/or no money.
- The lazy skilled are the ones who do have some skills, but feel that they should be given everything, from jobs to connects, to extra help because they are new or special. They are like children who don't want to go to school or work until someone drags them out of bed. This category warrants no sympathy or assistance either.
- The rest are legitimate and may be new or experienced freelancers. There are plenty of successful freelancers from extremely poor parts of the world. Many in this group are struggling for a variety of reasons, including the open floodgates for anything calling itself a freelancer.
"But you have to be dead to be unskilled. If you can talk on the phone to some employers that qualifies as skilled. I think we can raise the rhetoric to a more generous or maybe just a more polite level than lazy and unskilled."
No, there are plenty of people who have zero marketable skills. They need an employer or the determination to establish real skills and return. I do not play word games to sugar coat the truth. Whether you want to believe it or not, there are plenty of lazy people, who don't want to work, or expect the clients to accept their garbage.
Yes, they need an employer, a job where they are told what to do and made to do it. If you have access to a library or the Internet, you have the ability to learn. And talking on the phone is not a marketable skill. That is exactly the problem. Some person decides because they can talk on the phone, they are a personal assistant.
"In addition, I'm not convinced the less skilled workers upset the Upwork marketplace in any shape or form. The less skilled workers have always been there; now, because of Upwork, they are more visible. That doesn't mean they didn't exist before."
Where do you think all those garbage proposals are coming from? The clients are not upset over receiving 50+ quality freelance proposals to choose from. No, the flood of unskilled, scammers, and every other kind of creature that can use a keyboard minimally is now a freelancer. Upwork removed every single test and qualifier for freelancers, so everyone would join and sped connects. Now there are 18 million or more cheats who are driving clients away. It is not visibility, there are millions and millions more freelancers than before COVID and the drive for connects.
"It's up to the marketplace to sort out the highly skilled, the marginally skilled, the hard workers or whatever else. It's not Upwork's place to tamper with that anymore than necessary."
Upwork sets all kinds of rules that are not allowed in the marketplace. It directly controls the activity on the site. Upwork had good policies with test for Upwork information, skills tests, and specific requirements for the skills claimed. Additionally, there were hard rules about everything from photos to profiles. If you didn't do what you were supposed to do, you didn't use the platform. In addition, there were limits to how many freelancers were allowed in the categories. The platform functioned professionally and as fairly as possible for every freelancer. Now, it's a race to sign up anything, much to the detriment of clients, genuine freelancers, and Upwork.
