[jp8585]

Long term upwork Data Scientist here. It seems he had a bad experience, that could have happened on any other place / platform. There are always horror stories about how platforms deal with conflicts (think PayPal, Stripe, Uber...)

Out of >30 contracts I had, only 1 resulted in a dispute, and it was decided in my favor. I do agree the whole monitoring thing is absurd and I generally don't take jobs from clients that demand hours to be logged through the monitoring app. If you want to see how the jungle looks like, please have a go at freelancer.com.

[kradroy]

The monitoring app is a hoop I guess. I would hate it too because it's a form of control over the work.

I once had a client who, at the negotiation of the contract, wanted me to work from an "office" (an in-laws quarters) for a specific set of hours each week. His desire for that was because he wanted to make sure he was getting his money's worth; that if I said I was charging him for 10 hours, I was spending 10 hours on the task.

I told him that, along with other stipulations, would qualify me as an employee. He and his fiance/business partner insisted it didn't. That was troubling because his fiance was a lawyer.

I declined to take the project.

[usaphp]

> I generally don't take jobs from clients that demand hours to be logged through the monitoring app

Isn’t like 9/10 jobs there require you to use the monitoring?

[jp8585]

Not at all. Maybe for low paying jobs.

[asdfman123]

I'm working on a matchmaker service for a certain niche industry that will be completely free. Hopefully it will catch on. Down with Upwork.