Continuing the discussion from Bad experience from developer:
Can freelancer.com or equivalent be a ‘middleman’ for such jobs? As far as i know they have a system that ‘holds’ your money and only release if the job %100 completed (there are also milestone payments etc.). So i think it’s somewhat secure to make a deposit (and get a refund if things go wrong).
Does anyone have similar freelance experience and used such website? Or how do you manage the workflow for such jobs?
Sounds good but who is to decide whether the job is done 100% or ?% ?
The person starting to complain in mentioned thread could have been complaining FAIK about someone who died weeks ago. Untill many posts later we learn that he/she is still alive. But what were his/here personel problems causing the delay. Who is going to weigh the “excuses” to see if they are valid? and who will pay them
I read the initial thread about scaffolds and think it’s 100% OP’s and developer’s responsibility in this case to get things back to normal, if not yet beyond repair.
Your right but I get the feeling that all on here are against such a thing …I could be wrong tho
Of course they can, if the 2 parties agree to use this site. The site is going to take a “cut” of the money.
I mentioned this kind of site in my recent post in the other thread.
(Moving to the Developer category.)
Sure, some go through those types of sites to find developers. I find them overrun with developers who are willing to work for minimum wage because they’re still in school or live somewhere much cheaper than where I live. It can be difficult to be competitive against someone who has half the cost of living expenses as someone in the US.
Please let’s not spread the argument to this topic (that’s why i created a new one based on the other). I’m just asking the community to share possible workflows and user experiences on such freelance jobs as i’m curious.
Well, according to their site, ‘employer’ decides it and only after paying (for milestones) he/she gets the ‘work folders’. That sounds reasonable. But the reason i’m not using that website is because receiving payment (withdraw) is problematic (as we don’t have Paypal in Turkey, because of the stupid current government. And other methods take too much commision or not working properly).
This is not necessarily a developer issue as i’m an interior architect/designer who might seek for freelance jobs.
sorry for not wiping my feet before coming in to this thread 
Back on topic, here’s how I see freelance sites. They are businesses that specialize in contract and temp work. Since a business only works if it makes money, it has to be making a profit somewhere. It has to be enough of a profit to run and grow the business, so they have to take a considerable chunk out of the money being exchanged. Money, which could have transferred without their help at all. So what is the value that is provided for that cost? What are we getting?
The developer gets the assurance that they will be paid for milestones as they are completed, so they get a greater sense of stability. Then again, because of the fierce competition on those sites, the developer will likely need to charge less money than they would like to. That cancels out stability if you ask me. As far as other perks go, all I can think of is that the developer can concentrate on one website, rather than applying to jobs on several sites. This can be useful for something like web development, or application development, but not plugin/extension development. If an application is big enough and popular enough to have an active enough development community to justify usage of a freelance site, it probably already has a community/marketplace where you can find work. So that’s another perk that gets cancelled out. I can’t think of any other benefit for the developer.
The client gets assurance that work will be received before payment is made, so that’s a perk. The fierce competition and concentrated developer subscription base makes finding a developer easier and cheaper. I don’t really see any downsides for the client at all.
When I tally up who benefits more from going through a middleman site, it’s the client by a landslide. So that means that cut the site takes is paying for a service that will supposedly attract clients, because it offers things for the client with few drawbacks. Is that worth the cut the site takes out of the job? Not for plugin/extension development, not in my opinion.
Okay, granted. Since it does not belong in the Corner Bar (non-SketchUp miscellaneous,) I’ll move it to the work category.
Perhaps a rhetorical question (and thus off topic) but can something be off topic to an off topic category? 
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