Comment by unnouinceput | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unnouinceput | Hacker News Reader

To quote Ray, this is through US colored glasses advice. How would a developer from, let's say, Middle East find good clients? If they only walk and take down notes of business in their area, they will only get jobs that pays according to local wages, none of them would be even $25/h let alone the dream of $150/h like US freelancers.

Yeah, Upwork will "mandate that you keep an app running that randomly takes screenshots of your desktop" but for me, an East European freelancer, was the only way to find clients from US/Canada with which I developed long term relationship.

Perhaps instead of fully vilifying platforms with "Beware of Freelance Platforms, They Are Evil", the author might want to walk a mile in our, less fortunate ones from shitty countries, shoes. My 2 cents.

I second that. "Don't go to freelancing platforms, reach out to your network and local companies" is only good advice if you happen to be in the social/geographical/economical environment that has plenty of opportunities. Local market in any of East European countries is far smaller than it is on Upwork, Fiverr et. al. and is highly unlikely to pay first world rates. One may say that freelancing platform encourage race to the bottom kind of dynamics. That is true to some degree, but for the most part that is a problem only if you are doing commodity work and primarily compete on price. There is a relatively obscure sub-economy in the world of freelancing platform with people doing professional services for professional rates even by the standards of the first world.

Eastern European dev here too, chiming in to confirm the validity of this argument in my experience.

> Upwork will "mandate that you keep an app running that randomly takes screenshots of your desktop"

Of course, this feels really intrusive and back in the day i negotiated fixed price contracts on Upwork with clients, though finding good projects on the platform (and not just ones that ask you to fix neglected WordPress installs) also took a lot of effort.

Nonetheless, when studying in University and before having a proper long term job (in this case in a local company due to the stability of it and academic requirements to work in a credentialed company), it was a nice way to help me get some income!

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