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603d7b56
Community Member

Why companies are not hiring IT freelancers directly on freelance websites.

There is a trend which is on the rise day by day and freelance your are not monitoring it. Some people with no experience in IT are starting companies like XY Solutions, YZ Tech and sometimes using generic office words. For this read I use “Company A” for my next paragraphs.


Company A post a job that they are looking for expert developers by mentioning all technologies, skills and domains and make a list of available candidates. The selected candidates are experts, have good profile and get hired on the rate of choice for example lets say an “Expert D“ is hired with 40$ per hour by “Company A”


“Company A” apply in all remote jobs and tell they have expert remote developers.
“HealthTechABC” a leading company which is looking to hire a full time (40 hours a week) remote developer in React receives an email that “Company A” provides a remote developer with 100$ per hour. “HealthTechABC” requests for interview with “Expert D” and after interview decides to hire “Expert D”


“Company A” gets 100$ per hour from HealthTechABC and pays 40$ per hour to “Expert D”
Until this point its fine and it looks reasonable right. ? Yes but No, lets see the dark side
“Expert D” appears in all the meeting, stand ups and planning and “HealthTechABC” folks thinks ”Expert D” is coding and doing all the development and updating Jira and Confluence. No this not the case.


“Company A” post another job and put a limit on hours to 25 hour a week and hires a developer with budget 3$ to 20$ an hour from third world country. Lets name it “Actual D”


“Company A” is online 24 hours and ask status from “Actual D” who is working on low rate.” Company A” ask for time-sheets and look each screenshot from the time tracking apps. They use slack channels and Skype and fake email accounts sometimes. The interesting thing is that sometimes “Company A” even says to “Actual D” that log hours are tool high, if 3 or 4 screens have no activity, “Company A” ask for explanation which is unfair because “HealthTechABC” is already paying for 40$ a week so “Company A” have to be greedy. “Actual D” is thinking also and time logging can be idle – just like working in office. “Actual D” is told to use “Expert D” user name and user emai in committing the code.


In the end message to companies like “HealthTechABC “ Talent has no country, It is available all over the world. “Actual D” should get the money that “HealthTechABC” is paying to “Company A”. Why Man in the middle (“Company A”) is taking money without actually doing anything and “Expert D” are also part of the process in (“Company A”) so there is some dark business going on that companies like “HealthTechABC” are not aware about.


“Expert D” are also taking 40$ from other clients with “Company A” and appearing in other companies stand ups, meetings and plannings as well. Its a lot of money…
Why its is too hard for companies like “HealthTechABC” to actually hire people from freelance website and not thru recruiting agencies."

 

What should be done in this case?

30 REPLIES 30
martina_plaschka
Community Member

Large companies have their own IT departments and will never hire freelancers. Small companies need to monitor freelancers very closely. 

We found out that some of the big IT companies are also hiring with NDA's but there is no middle man. Everything is thru upwork. . 

Small companies need to monitor but Upwork as a tool for freelancers should also provide some thing to freelancer to overcome this solution. 

There will always be someone who would or can work with the name of "Expert D" which is wrong as its misusing identity but if Upwork tries to get rid of compabies like "Company A" and helping "Actual D" in educating them it will be beneficial. 

It does not matter to send a monthly newsletter to all freelancers and telling the about things like identifty theft, identiy fraud, follow the ToS of upwork, dont let the companies exploit you

 

Since remote work is becoming popular there is a need for education to tell the companies that there might be some companies and experts who are pretending to work and are not actuall working and the companies should allow all the remote staff to be present and may be using camera for meetings to avoid situations like "Actual D"

 


Martina P wrote:

Large companies have their own IT departments and will never hire freelancers. Small companies need to monitor freelancers very closely. 


This is very much not true! May of the biggest Enterprise clients are Fortune 100 companies and hire  freelancers extensively, including IT ones.

Hello im new here and i want to earn money for my family what i can do in this website job?rn7643130@gmail.com 

jr-translation
Community Member

This entire set-up would not work on Upwork.

1. “Expert D” needs to to be able to log his time without using manual time or be paid in a weekly retainer in order to recieve the agreed payment for 40 hours. He wold not be allowed to work on anything else during these 40 hours.

2.  If “Company A” decides to use “Actual D” to do the job, both freelancers need to be paid. But why should “Company A” both?

3. A freelancer on Upwork violates the ToS if he claims to do a job which then is done by someone else.

4. A freelancer on Upwork violates the ToS if he logs time on a contract he is not working on.

 


Dennis P wrote:


“Expert D” are also taking 40$ from other clients with “Company A” and appearing in other companies stand ups, meetings and plannings as well. Its a lot of money…


As a freelancer on Upwork “Expert D” can only track time on one contract in each segment. Why should he agree to work on a job he was not hired for?

 


Dennis P wrote:


Why its is too hard for companies like “HealthTechABC” to actually hire people from freelance website and not thru recruiting agencies."

 

What should be done in this case?

 They want an expert without soending too much time searching for one. They are not looking for a freelancer but a consultant. These are two very different things. They pay 100$ per hour because they believe “Expert D” is an employee of “Company A”.

 

“Expert D” could be open about the fact that he is a freelancer and not an employed consultant. He could also be open and inform “HealthTechABC” about which tasks are performed by him,  just to make sure they are only invoiced for these hours.

I should have written Upwork explicitly but I decided to keep "There is a trend which is on the rise day by day and freelance your are not monitoring it."

 

I should have said "There is a trend which is on the rise day by day and upwork your are not monitoring it."

 

This is indeed happening on Upwork and we have observed this with multiple times while applying to various job post.

Hint: These companies are getting the "Upwork plus client" really fast. 

 

Please also note that:

 

  1. "Expert D" do not have to log time, its fixed that they get no matter what as long as "Actual D" is committing the code in the "HealthTechABC" repositories and updating the Jira tickets by using the names, creditentials and secrets of "Expert D" - The sad part is that "HealthTechABC" does not know about the "Actual D" real identity.
  2. "Company A" is telling "Actual D" to use different time tracking apps other than Upwork
  3. The sad part is that 99% of the time these so called Managers in "Company A" do not know anything about the task, so if a task is genuine and it takes 8 hours to complete "Actual D" has to justify it why "Actual D" took 8 hours

 


Jennifer R wrote:

“Expert D” could be open about the fact that he is a freelancer and not an employed consultant. He could also be open and inform “HealthTechABC” about which tasks are performed by him,  just to make sure they are only invoiced for these hours.


"Expert D" is happy and most of the case become "Friends" or is a "trusted resource" of "Company A" it does not bother "Expert D" to be appearing in interviews and after getting selected by clients of "Company A" just present them in standup or planning meetings. One of the manager of "Company A" said that is now very common practice and most of the time the common slack accounts between "Actual D' and "Company A" are used by multiple people/manager of "Company A" 

The important thing is that "HealthTechABC" is not even aware of that that "Company A" hired by using services of upwork. For "HealthTechABC" "Expert D" is employee of "Company A" 

 

We also found out once the trust is establish with "Company A" and "Expert D", "Expert D" is not using upwork for time logging / money 

 

"Actual D" are always getting hired on Upwork and are told silently in the "Company A" slack channels or Skype messages that please use:

 

  1. Name of "Expert D" while talking to client
  2. Credientials of "Expert D" while working in Jira/confluence or Git
  3. Do not use real name of "Actual D"

Since "Actual D" want to get some money and companies like "Company A" knows that people can work between 3$ to 20$ an hour in third world countries or even Rising Talent, the take advantage of this. 

 

Its an ethical crime as well because "HealthTechABC" pays 100$ to "Expert D" and expect "Expert D" to work

 

I just want that more companies like "HealthTechABC" should be aware of it so that they can come to upwork and hire the actual "Actual D" directly thru Upwork

 

 


Dennis P wrote:

Hint: These companies are getting the "Upwork plus client" really fast. 

 


If you have the skills to get Upwork plus clients yourself, then who is forcing you to work through a middleman?

No one is forcing. We found out with studies and applying on those jobs. Recorded most the discussions that are happening.

We see Upwork as a tool that is helping freelancers. We are just telling you the exploit that is happening in the name of freelancing. 

We have allready started telling the companies like "HealthTechABC" about this model. We were just curious to know if Upwork has any tool to identify such deep 3-4 levels of dark middleman model

Can upwork turn on the radar to see such issues etc ?


Dennis P wrote:

We were just curious to know if Upwork has any tool to identify such deep 3-4 levels of dark middleman model

Can upwork turn on the radar to see such issues etc ?


Upwork is undoubtedly aware that many freelancers are working through middlemen; they're the ones who set the minimum rate at $3/hour and made this a lucrative place to find cheap labour. Outsourcing is allowed on Upwork. People also start agencies where they pay their workers less than they charge the client; this is also allowed. 

 

Look, I understand what you're saying and like I said, I certainly think that it's wrong for people to behave like parasites and exploit others. But some freelancers rely on these middlemen to get work, because they don't have the sales skills and/or sufficiently good English to convince clients to work with them directly. If you're expecting Upwork to intervene and tell the end clients to hire you, or kick the middlemen off of their site, that's simply not going to happen. All you can do is send proposals to the end clients yourself, and refuse to work with the middlemen. 


Christine A wrote:

Dennis P wrote:

 


Upwork is undoubtedly aware that many freelancers are working through middlemen; they're the ones who set the minimum rate at $3/hour and made this a lucrative place to find cheap labour. Outsourcing is allowed on Upwork. People also start agencies where they pay their workers less than they charge the client; this is also allowed. 

 

 


So Upwork knows that there is a middlemen involved. Why Upwork is not educating and helping freelancers to get rid of this - Is there any harm to Upwork if Upwork start educating the freelancer to stop working as shadow freelancers ?

Why is it so hard for upwork to increase the rate from 3$ to 10$ minimum givien the fact that there is a rise inflation, prices and all the things in between ?

3$ minimum is set since long back a lot has changed in the world since Upwork existence. Why Upwork suggest to start with 3$ at all ?

 

Your justification feels like:

 

Upwork does not care who is bringing the money in the Upwork to pay the freelancer in what so ever the way of work or model is (alias companies or middlemen mode), using identity fraud and committing code for those who are in the middle and whcih also happen to have no public websites about agencies and companies. 

 


Christine A wrote:

Look, I understand what you're saying and like I said, I certainly think that it's wrong for people to behave like parasites and exploit others. But some freelancers rely on these middlemen to get work, because they don't have the sales skills and/or sufficiently good English to convince clients to work with them directly. If you're expecting Upwork to intervene and tell the end clients to hire you, or kick the middlemen off of their site, that's simply not going to happen. All you can do is send proposals to the end clients yourself, and refuse to work with the middlemen. 


 

Why are you providing an oppurtunity to such freelancers who are comfortable in working in the name of others, if they do not have the sale skills they should learn it - why working in shadows

 

You know that by saying this you are trying to say 

 

  • Even though these parasites are exploiting. Upwork should let these freelancers work in the same way wiith middelmen model
  • If freelancer do not have sale skills they can work by middlemen by doing identity stealing / fraud / using someone else identity to submit the work using manual hours logging.

 

 

 

 

petra_r
Community Member


Dennis P wrote:

We found out with studies and applying on those jobs. R


Who is "we"? You don't have a freelancer profile.

I guess you mean: Its an ethical crime as well because "HealthTechABC" pays 100$ for "Expert D" and expect "Expert D" to work.

If you have actual proof, stop using "Company A". I am trying to understand from whose perspective you are comming.

The only ones really winning is "Company A".

"Expert D" could make more money and have way less stress if "HealthTechABC" would know the truth.

"Actual D" could make more way more money if "HealthTechABC" would know the truth.

"HealthTechABC" could save money by cutting out the middleman and all other expenses.

 

Again it also comes down to the difference between freelancer and consultent. If "HealthTechABC" pays for the services of an employee of "Company A", the money paid no only covers the work but also the responsibilities an employer has towards his employee. This depends on the location but includes paid vacation, sick days etc. Something a freelancer does not have.

 

Usually "HealthTechABC" would have an agreement with "Company A" which clearly defines what is allowed and there are specific agreements (NDA) who has access to "HealthTechABC" net work. If "HealthTechABC" suspects that another person than "Expert D" has access "Company A" has to provide more information and I am sure the right IT expert will be able to prove any scam. The interesting question would be whether "Company A" would throw a real employee or "Expert D" under a bus.

 


Jennifer R wrote:

I guess you mean: Its an ethical crime as well because "HealthTechABC" pays 100$ for "Expert D" and expect "Expert D" to work.

If you have actual proof, stop using "Company A". I am trying to understand from whose perspective you are comming.


 

whose perspective: "Actual D" and offcourse informing Upwork about it so that Upwork can turn on the radars to blacklist companies like "Company A" 

 

 


Jennifer R wrote:

Usually "HealthTechABC" would have an agreement with "Company A" which clearly defines what is allowed and there are specific agreements (NDA) who has access to "HealthTechABC" net work. If "HealthTechABC" suspects that another person than "Expert D" has access "Company A" has to provide more information and I am sure the right IT expert will be able to prove any scam. The interesting question would be whether "Company A" would throw a real employee or "Expert D" under a bus.

 


The data we received states clearly that according to "Company A" and "HealthTechABC" agreement "Expert D" will be working full time for "HealthTechABC"  using the username/password that is created by the Administrators of the "HealthTechABC" for "Expert D" to work in  Jira / Git / Confluence / Figma / AWS / of "HealthTechABC"

 

There is no agreement of "Actual D" and there are no agreement of distributed hiring etc.

 

"Expert D" purpose is to win the interview and let "Actual D" do the work in the name of "Expert D" using "Expert D" identity while using a VPN to pretent that "Actual D" is present on the location of "Expert D"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello im new here and i want to earn money for my family what i can do in this website job?

feed_my_eyes
Community Member

Why doesn't "HealthTechABC" simply come onto Upwork and hire freelancers directly? I would instead ask why Actual D doesn't approach companies like this themselves. Company A must have had the marketing skills, reputation, and project management ability to win HealthTechABC's business, whereas Actual D does not (or didn't try).

 

I definitely think it's wrong for businesses to exploit others, but if people don't have the skills or the ability (or the time or the inclination) to approach and acquire clients themselves, then their only choice is to work for people who do. (And this happens in all industries, not just IT.)

Someone has to inform companies like "HealthTechABC" that this kind of trend is happening in the freelance market. 

 

Upwork needs to silently observe this and tell the real clients that do not waste your money and hire the true freelancers directly on upwork 

 

"Actual D" needs money and I agree with you that they can also go to the client directly but what if they are fearful of losing their livilihood.

 

"Upwork can track this easily" I guess you can just start from all the upwork clients which which are telling "Actual D" to log hours manually. 

 

It does not matter to Upwork to siliently message the freelancer as well how they feel about the client or if you are doing identity fraud etc. 

 

"Actual D" is looking for money and intentitty fraud is intiated by "Company A" and if Upwork figures that all out, trust me Upwork can give enough resources to all the client of companies like "Company A"

 

Its a win-win for "Actual D" and Upwork and all this middle man thing is gone away.

 

 


Christine A wrote:

I definitely think it's wrong for businesses to exploit others, but if people don't have the skills or the ability (or the time or the inclination) to approach and acquire clients themselves, then their only choice is to work for people who do. (And this happens in all industries, not just IT.)


People have skiills and ability to work, in our opinion the problem is about awareness, since there is no education happening on monthly or weekly basis and may be the monitoring of user/client activity is not to strict on upwork - this trend is on the rise. 

 

This has started in last 2 years especially when a lot of companies decided to go remote. We have been monitoring this for quite some time now and just want to share with Upwork first

 

We have 100% confidence if it starts as awareness, companies which are exploiting the innocence of "Actual D" will disappear and thru Upwork "Actual D" can actually work with real client. We have 100% confidence that real clients will love to work with "Actual D" once they know whats really happening. 

 

Its not just one client of Company A, its not just Company A, there are so many companies like "Company A" and for each company there is Slack channel and Slack is free so all the right tools are in favor of companies like "Company A"

 

When you are making a movie and decide to ask Hans Zimmer to write the score to this movie, what do you think happens? It goes like this - Hans sits down with his "freelancers", whistles the melody, and goes out for a lunch with Ridley Scott. Once he is back, he can listen to all the arrangements done and recorded by his employees. Then he presses the "send" button and enjoys his cheque. As a producer who hired HZ do you care if it was him personally playing the piano? Nope, you don't. Did you pay a premium for HZ name on the opening titles? Yes, hell yeah, a huge one. Why? For various reasons. Could you have tried some no-name composer instead, happy to get 1/100 of HZ remuneration? Yes, you could have but you haven't. Why? For various reasons. The good thing in life is that you can make this choice - so let's continue to live in a free world, or at least refrain from limiting this freedom and telling people what to do with their money.  

HZ is known in the world, has a wiki page, website and big collection of work. These alias companies We are talking about on Upwork do not have any website - They just create names like "Software Dev" or "Freelance Office" on upwork as company name and start telling the "Actual D" to push code in the name of "Expert D"

 

And please when you make a comparison especially with a name like HZ, atleast  compare apples to apples and please do not compare orange to apples - HZ is a symbol / class / famous for work publically but "Company A" is not a symbol like HZ. Alias compannies do not even have a website and they are using freebies of slack and skype to run alias companies like "Company A" is doing and hiring budgeted developers and asking them to push the code in the name of "Expert D" - it is a exploit, ID impersonation and ethically not correct 

 

"Actual D"  are looking for money and these alias companies have found out that in some countries these "Actual D" can be bought on low hourly rate to get the work done in the name of "Expert D" without informing the real clients

 

Upwork gets 10% in any case if hour is logged manually or thru upwork desktop app, What we saying if you want to deliever work like HZ then be HZ first. 

 

If you are compairng HZ here, so your opinion can be taken as HZ is making music on low budgeted musicians and all those musicians who work with HZ are fine with it. comon... be realistic 😀

 

Did HZ started doing this as soon as HZ started the company especially at the time when no one knew HZ ?   guess someone has to ask HZ that freelance is happening like this what is HZ opinion on it 🙃

 

Dennis, I don't think that people, in general, are plain stupid and happily overpay for the services they need or want. If I understand you correctly, you want to cut out the middleman. Why do you think companies do not know that they can hire a cheap freelancer instead of a more expensive company? Why do they choose to hire "a company" instead of the individual freelancer? The fraud starts when you officially claim that you were pressing the keys while it is not true. Does it matter who pressed the keys? As long as Company A delivers what is expected, nobody cares who was riding the keyboard to achieve that. You buy Apple products and they were produced in China. Does it matter? 

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but the world turns around due to buying cheap and selling for it for a higher price. Would Apple be able to produce the laptops in US and still make a margin? Probably yes, but the margin would be much lower. So they moved where the labor is cheaper. Kind of obvious. HZ example is real - he relies on a group of musicians/composers and gets busy only with the main structure of the score and main themes - the rest is done by unknown composers who gain salaries nowhere near the HZ level. Anything wrong with it? Nope, at least to me, as long as the quality of the final product meets expectations. Coming back to freelancers and Company A - if someone's come up with a concept that he can sell the services for a high price and get someone to do it for a much lower price and the quality of the service is good, then...lucky him! He's got his family to take care of just as the freelancer who works for him. And the freelancer is - just as the term says - FREE to choose if he wants to work for peanuts or asks higher rate. 

 

At the end of the day, the client wants a job done at a minimal cost. Why he/she doesn't use directly a freelancer but choose to hire Company A? As I said before - for various reasons, be it lack of trust and (false?) feeling of a higher level of security when hiring a company instead of an individual freelancer from some remote country they don't know much about. There are jobs I'd choose a freelancer for and there are other tasks I'd rather have a company to be responsible for fulfilling. It's my responsibility as a client to choose wisely. If someone doesn't care if the company even has a website, then it's his decision solely to go for it. If these companies "A" keep on getting jobs here and get decent ratings from clients, it means to me that they do something right and clients are happy. Do they exploit freelancers while doing this? Or maybe they support the freelancers and their families who otherwise would not get any other chance to earn some money? When the fair trade starts and ends? These are not simple questions to answer if you want to look beyond cheap rhetoric and include a big picture perspective. It's a global economy - some benefit from it, some don't know how to achieve that. If you ask me to write an article and I'd send it to you, would you know if I wrote it or some guy sitting somewhere in the other part of the world? Would you care how much did I pay him? I doubt it. You'd pay my rate and move on, providing the article was of a decent quality. 

 

You wrote that "We have 100% confidence that real clients will love to work with "Actual D" once they know whats really happening". Maybe. Maybe not. And even if so, why would they "love" to work with Actual Ds? Let me think....maybe because they could get their work for $5/hr? 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Piotr O wrote:

Dennis, I don't think that people, in general, are plain stupid and happily overpay for the services they need or want. If I understand you correctly, you want to cut out the middleman. Why do you think companies do not know that they can hire a cheap freelancer instead of a more expensive company? Why do they choose to hire "a company" instead of the individual freelancer? The fraud starts when you officially claim that you were pressing the keys while it is not true. Does it matter who pressed the keys? As long as Company A delivers what is expected, nobody cares who was riding the keyboard to achieve that. You buy Apple products and they were produced in China. Does it matter? 

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but the world turns around due to buying cheap and selling for it for a higher price. Would Apple be able to produce the laptops in US and still make a margin? Probably yes, but the margin would be much lower. So they moved where the labor is cheaper. Kind of obvious. HZ example is real - he relies on a group of musicians/composers and gets busy only with the main structure of the score and main themes - the rest is done by unknown composers who gain salaries nowhere near the HZ level. Anything wrong with it? Nope, at least to me, as long as the quality of the final product meets expectations. Coming back to freelancers and Company A - if someone's come up with a concept that he can sell the services for a high price and get someone to do it for a much lower price and the quality of the service is good, then...lucky him! He's got his family to take care of just as the freelancer who works for him. And the freelancer is - just as the term says - FREE to choose if he wants to work for peanuts or asks higher rate. 

 

At the end of the day, the client wants a job done at a minimal cost. Why he/she doesn't use directly a freelancer but choose to hire Company A? As I said before - for various reasons, be it lack of trust and (false?) feeling of a higher level of security when hiring a company instead of an individual freelancer from some remote country they don't know much about. There are jobs I'd choose a freelancer for and there are other tasks I'd rather have a company to be responsible for fulfilling. It's my responsibility as a client to choose wisely. If someone doesn't care if the company even has a website, then it's his decision solely to go for it. If these companies "A" keep on getting jobs here and get decent ratings from clients, it means to me that they do something right and clients are happy. Do they exploit freelancers while doing this? Or maybe they support the freelancers and their families who otherwise would not get any other chance to earn some money? When the fair trade starts and ends? These are not simple questions to answer if you want to look beyond cheap rhetoric and include a big picture perspective. It's a global economy - some benefit from it, some don't know how to achieve that. If you ask me to write an article and I'd send it to you, would you know if I wrote it or some guy sitting somewhere in the other part of the world? Would you care how much did I pay him? I doubt it. You'd pay my rate and move on, providing the article was of a decent quality. 

 

You wrote that "We have 100% confidence that real clients will love to work with "Actual D" once they know whats really happening". Maybe. Maybe not. And even if so, why would they "love" to work with Actual Ds? Let me think....maybe because they could get their work for $5/hr? 

 

 

 

 

 

 


First of all you were comparing Hans Zimmer with freelancing model of man in the middle ("Company A)  ("Expert D") and (Actual D)

Your answer suggests HZ is Company with Expert freelancers and those Expert freelancers are getting work from other freelancers ("Actual D") without telling the public about their contributions to HZ work - Wow 😀

 

You should first clear that air and explain why HZ is best suited with your answer in this IT modle of Company, Expert, Actual D and by the way, On youtube you can find many freelancer/experts muscians who have worked with HZ so please .. world knows it 😂

 

You are bringing Apple now and all the big names - They claim and they do it publically. If they are importing, they do it publically - and if Big companies choose to take the labor from the countries where it is cheaper - Atleast those cheap labors can tell proudly they are working with a big company like Apple - WITHOUT MIDDLEMAN 

 

See, We see Upwork as a tool where freelancers are working on the chosen rate of choice but Upwork should not allow to let those freelancers to deliever the code to alias companies with different names other than their own. 

 

Imagine bunch of developers working like this for 1-2 years - They can not show anyone they were actually working for a big Company because "Company A" explictly told them to not mention it anywhere.

 

 

Your comments are suggensting that you are trying to say that

 

  1. Upwork allows in the TOS that Freelancers can use other people identities to commit the code,  pretend to be in meetings as a different person other than themeselves and keep working with such companies that support this model.
  2. Upwork allows in the TOS that Agencies and Companies can create alias companies and let freelancer commit code in the name of another person 

 

 

Are you actually suggesting that big companies somehow haven't heard of freelancing websites, and that getting them to hire freelancers directly is simply a matter of informing them that they can do so? Have they been hiding under a rock? I can pretty much guarantee you that Upwork is aware of how things work, and I believe that a large part of their marketing efforts are aimed at encouraging large companies to hire freelancers directly through this website; how else did they get companies like Microsoft, Disney and Airbnb to sign up (companies that would have previously hired staff, or used agencies?).

 

But even when big companies do hire directly through Upwork, there's no guarantee that they're going to pay Actual D more than $3/hour. It's more likely that they'll pocket the savings. That's how capitalsm works in the global market place.

 

You certainly shouldn't be forced to enter manual hours, work for free or put up with fraudulent clients, but you'll need to stand up for yourself and report these situations, instead of expecting Upwork to act as your boss and make your clients behave.


Christine A wrote:

Are you actually suggesting that big companies somehow haven't heard of freelancing websites, and that getting them to hire freelancers directly is simply a matter of informing them that they can do so? Have they been hiding under a rock? I can pretty much guarantee you that Upwork is aware of how things work, and I believe that a large part of their marketing efforts are aimed at encouraging large companies to hire freelancers directly through this website; how else did they get companies like Microsoft, Disney and Airbnb to sign up (companies that would have previously hired staff, or used agencies?).

 

But even when big companies do hire directly through Upwork, there's no guarantee that they're going to pay Actual D more than $3/hour. It's more likely that they'll pocket the savings. That's how capitalsm works in the global market place.

 

You certainly shouldn't be forced to enter manual hours, work for free or put up with fraudulent clients, but you'll need to stand up for yourself and report these situations, instead of expecting Upwork to act as your boss and make your clients behave.


 We are talking big here, its not about 3$ or 20$ or 100$ .. It appears from the cummunity discussion that

 

  1. Upwork allows in the TOS that Freelancers can use other people identities to commit the code,  pretend to be in meetings as a different person other than themeselves and keep working with such companies that support this model.
  2. Upwork allows in the TOS that Agencies and Companies can create alias companies and let freelancer commit code in the name of another person 

 

Because all we are hearing from you is the excuse of captilism, big companies doing same thing in cheap labour, freelancer have no sale skills and all these are provided as an excuse which to support parasite models which are exploiting and letting freelancer work with different usernames/identities

 

Big companies and Hans Zimmer or Apple, all the people working with them have public recognition no matter what there hourly or fixed rate is. They are not working in shadows and can be identified. 

 

Where as man in the middel model on upwork is using a fake identity, may be someone else credit card, allowing the "Actual D" to use other names to submit the work on a tool like Upwork which has a readniness test as well but Upwork does not bother to turn the radar on at the support level and try to stop this exploit. 

 

We wonder what will happen if this goes to wide and too public and everyone starts talking about it

603d7b56
Community Member

Another sad part is if "HealthTechABC" is looking to hire a resource in Ukraine, "Company A" will ask "Expert D" to use VPN to show "Expert D" is in Ukraine 

 

if "Actual D" is in "Russia"  "Company A" tells "Actual D" to use VPN location Ukraine

 

If  another client of "Company A" is looking to hire a resource in US, "Company A" will ask "Expert D" to use VPN to show "Expert D" is in US and change the zoom meeting back ground and be available in US timezone. 

 

if "Actual D" is in "South Asia"  "Company A" tells "Actual D" to use VPN location US and be available in US timezone.


Dennis P wrote:

If  another client of "Company A" is looking to hire a resource in US, "Company A" will ask "Expert D" to use VPN to show "Expert D" is in US and change the zoom meeting back ground and be available in US timezone. 


Well, you need to stop faking your location if these jobs are through Upwork. Not all clients are so easily fooled, and if they report you then you'll lose your account.

Maybe one reason that some clients prefer to hire freelancers from Ukraine is that freelancers from Ukraine don't lie about where they live.


Preston H wrote:

Maybe one reason that some clients prefer to hire freelancers from Ukraine is that freelancers from Ukraine don't lie about where they live.


And how do you justify the "Actual D" sitting in Russia or South Asia and using the VPN to fake the location to Ukraine and working in the name of "Expert D" for "HealthTechABC" and using the Identity and profile of "Expert D"

 

Are you suggesting that things like that really do not matter for Upwork ?


Dennis P wrote:

Are you suggesting that things like that really do not matter for Upwork ?

Of course they matter - that's why I said that you will probably get your account banned. "The middleman made me do it" won't be a valid defense.

re: "And how do you justify the 'Actual D' sitting in Russia or South Asia and using the VPN to fake the location to Ukraine and working in the name of 'Expert D' for 'HealthTechABC' and using the Identity and profile of 'Expert D' Are you suggesting that things like that really do not matter for Upwork?"

 

Um... No.

I'm not suggesting anything like that and I'm not making excuses for anybody.

 

But this is logical:
If tons of freelancers living in Fauxania are always faking things on their profile pages, including their location, and claiming that they live some place else... Or if tons of freelancers living in Fauxania are always claiming that they can do all kind of things that they really don't know how to do... Then clients will get suspicious of freelancers living in Fauxania and won't want to hire them.

 

Is that fair to the 80% of freelancers living in Fauxania who are honest about who they are and about what their skills are?

 

No. That is not fair.

But that is what is going to happen. There is nothing that I can do about it, and there is nothing that Upwork can do about it. The only people can put a stop to this are the people of Fauxania.


Preston H wrote:

re: "And how do you justify the 'Actual D' sitting in Russia or South Asia and using the VPN to fake the location to Ukraine and working in the name of 'Expert D' for 'HealthTechABC' and using the Identity and profile of 'Expert D' Are you suggesting that things like that really do not matter for Upwork?"

 

Um... No.

I'm not suggesting anything like that and I'm not making excuses for anybody.

 

But this is logical:
If tons of freelancers living in Fauxania are always faking things on their profile pages, including their location, and claiming that they live some place else... Or if tons of freelancers living in Fauxania are always claiming that they can do all kind of things that they really don't know how to do... Then clients will get suspicious of freelancers living in Fauxania and won't want to hire them.

 

Is that fair to the 80% of freelancers living in Fauxania who are honest about who they are and about what their skills are?

 

No. That is not fair.

But that is what is going to happen. There is nothing that I can do about it, and there is nothing that Upwork can do about it. The only people can put a stop to this are the people of Fauxania.


So reading your comment we see that you are putting everything on the freelancers and trying to escape from this exploit. 

It also reflects that:

 

  • None of the developers, IT Specialist working in Upwork can write a Program or Code that can detect that anomaly

 

Ask the IT Specialist in Upwork they will know how to find this anomaly, We see Upwork also hires on Upwork so it should not be hard to find this aynomaly given the fact Upwork has access to its own production database 😀

053132e1
Community Member

Hello im new here and i want to earn money for my family what i can do in this website job?

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