Feb 17, 2021 03:13:25 AM Edited Feb 17, 2021 03:15:52 AM by Alexander N
In real programming practice, vast majority of projects fail, and that's OK. Those few that succeed usually bring millions, and make clients happy.
However, if we worked like this on Upwork, our JSS would be nil. Understanding this, every developer on Upwork seeks mainly projects with lowest chances to fail, and that inevitably means less interesting, cheaper, projects resulting in lower learning rate, so our human capital suffers.
In many cases, a client understands and accepts the risk - "after all, we are doing what was never done before, it may fail" but even that is not enough: when the project fails, his company will be bankrupt and reputation ruined and nothing will stop him from bad feedback, or even claiming that he was scammed.
What about adding a default-unchecked checkbox "i understand that this project is risky and trust the contractor in doing it" which makes setting any feedback impossible? Or some similar arrangement to protect contractor's reputation doing risky project.
For customers, it adds a benefit of removing the negative selection of contractors for projects like this: currently only ones who would accept it are either those desperate for any work, or those who are simply not qualified enough to understand the risks. Both means higher chances of failure, and ability to set bad feedback won't get client's money or reputation back anyway.
I have recently rejected aproject that may have worked, but there was too much risk... And that made me thinking.
Alexander
Feb 17, 2021 04:33:13 AM Edited Feb 17, 2021 04:33:54 AM by Christine A
I think that you should calm down. If the vast majority of projects fail, then presumably there's a level playing field in terms of risk for all freelancers in your line of work, with everyone taking occasional hits to their JSS. Your JSS doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better than your competition, so if desperate freelancers are taking on projects that bankrupt and ruin their clients, then they won't be your competition for long.
I don't see how it would be fair for Upwork to give you a special exemption from feedback - we all need to manage our clients' expectations, and we are all exposed to the risk of bad feedback whenever we take on a new project.
Feb 17, 2021 07:02:45 AM Edited Feb 17, 2021 07:03:19 AM by Will L
Alexander,
Much of Upwork's client- and freelancer-facing operations are run by algorithms.
Without the Job Success Score, which is almost entirely dependent on client feedback on completed projects, many of these algorithms would be useless, meaning clients would likely have to wade through a large number (of largely irrelevant) freelancer proposals for each of their projects, freelancers would have no (somewhat flawed) idea whether they were performing in line with client expectations, etc., etc.
Upwork just isn't the right place to find certain types of clients and their projects.
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