> Upwork

Might be your problem. You're not going to find anyone serious there -- you get what you pay for. A site that charges the consultant instead of the client isn't exactly gonna attract even average level talent.

We pay well above market rate (e.g. $60/hr for a frontend dev in Ukraine), so whatever you're talking about doesn't apply to us.

Some people on Upwork are dishonest or unskilled, but some are also excellent. Hiring is hard, regardless of the talent pool.

If you have better ideas of where to find contractors, please let me know. I'm always open to finding a better or fairer marker than Upwork.

Toptal has had excellent and professional contractors in my experience, and it might fit your budget.

>If you have better ideas of where to find contractors, please let me know.

Have you considered hiring actual employees locally rather than remote, unseen contractors?

We have employees. We use contractors for work that we know is finite.

The contractors are remote, but I do see them on video. I'm also remote and unseen, as I've worked remotely my entire career.

How is it from a hiring perspective weeding through all the options? I'm coming at this as a worker, I used to be on there years back but there is so much competition.

I find it easier than traditional means to weed out real talent. Most our best people we found there. But I am aware of how horrible people here are at interviewing (from reading the time wasting ways they interview and give people tasks to find talent); I never really got that but whatever, it is to our advantage. I think most of the issues weeding out talent is connected to the point that people don’t know how to in general, outside or inside upwork.

There is not too much competition for talent. The crap is easy to weed out; most people who are bad have 100 ‘expert skills’ on their profile. So skipping those (which, unfortunately, means that you mostly end up without anyone from Asia) already cleans up nicely. Secondly, remove all the ones that have open jobs at that moment. Then remove low ratings. Now you have a few left to have chat and figure out if they are lying or not. And then you just pick the best one (technically but also if you click with them) that’s left.

I can see that filter working. Other one is if the intro is generic/no context regarding the job.

Yes, but I am more tolerant of that personally, because I used to work via elance (upwork has roots there) and you have to respond to many jobs to get attention. So I understand many go wide and wait with details until they get invited to a chat.

Have you tried agencies in countries that have good exchange rates?

Small cities in NZ have great people. For example www.triotech.co.nz or nodero.com

> countries that have good exchange rates

What does this mean? I equate “good exchange rate” with “low exchange commission/fee” and “low volatility”.

I mean weak dollar. For instance $1USD will get you around $1.5NZD. With the average developer earning a little over $100,000NZD you are looking at around $66,000USD. Much cheaper than many other options. However they're still native English speakers with a very western culture.

You're right about volatility too, the NZD doesn't swing too wildly.

Why would you accept a job that pays only US$66k if the value of your work is US$100k? Here (central Europe) it's common practice to count your money in EUR or USD even though we're paid in the local currency - especially if the local currency is not pegged to EUR.

> Why would you accept a job that pays only US$66k if the value of your work is US$100k?

Because in some countries, you can live like a king on $66k and you'll always have contracts. And anyway, no one gets paid based on the "value of their work". That's how services businesses are profitable at all -- the employees generate more value than they're paid.

Yeah but then I want to move to the US or Switzerland or Germany and the US$66k is suddenly a lot less? I have no idea why a skilled senior SWE contractor would go into that kind of deal, the market is much hotter than that, $66k is entry level rate for a contractor even if you work at local companies here.

Our country will only do better if some high skilled workers remain. With the cost of software development NZ can export development and this will improve our economy. That should help everyone here live better lives.

My standard of living is pretty good too.

Your country's solution to keeping people at home is to pay them so bad they can't afford to leave? Sorry but that really doesn't sound good.

As I do contract work on Upwork, I feel personally attacked.

So all contractors that are not on that platform are 10x developers?/s

Sweeping generalizations are always easy to make, but if talent assessment would be easy nobody would have problem hiring, in general, and that's not what I'm seeing.

> start forcing time tracking for the first time

Is it just a time sheet/app where developers track their time or is it spyware like Upwork's screen capture tracker?

Be wary of any developer who agrees to install spyware. These are either entry level developers or really crappy devs.

I have both worked as freelancer and hired freelancers. I find these spywares extremely insulting. We are not high school kids working in fast food joint. We are professionals & business owners.

As a freelancer, if a company asked if I would install spyware on my machine, it indicated that it was probably badly run company. If it was optional I would ask how many other devs had the spyware on their machines. If there were more than 1 or 2 devs, it just meant I would be working with bad devs and just declined contracts. Same if it was required. Pretty much all those companies had issues with their devs and had to scrap projects or start over.

And when I hired freelancers, if a freelancer indicated they had no problem with spyware, it set off all kinds of red flags. And every single time if I hired such developer, they were horrible and needed a lot of hand holding.

I have worked with many offshore developers as well as private contactors in India, China and Eastern Europe. There are absolutely many cases of people working on multiple things at once (especially in support) when they are supposed to be exclusively working on one thing. It's been very common to see only half of the team actually "working", many times experts have been learning as they go along with less experience than I have in a particular area (I've very much a jack of all trades). However, I've built up many good relationships with excellent and committed staff over the years. If it was my own money, I'd absolutely be wanting to verify that the staff were working the agreed hours and getting stuff done. However in the most part it's not been in my best interest to get involved in those kind of discussions.

> We are not high school kids working in fast food joint. We are professionals & business owners.

Unfortunately my last 5-10 freelancer experiences have been bad. I lost $10k recently by trusting a dev that he was doing the work I paid him to do.

I have no other way to verify that someone is dedicated to my work.

If anyone refuses the spyware, that's absolutely their right. I don't blame them.

I don't think time tracking will help. Best case is you find they were lying about the hours and just get more hours in. Worst case is they were truthful and incompetent.

Either way, it might be best to just fire anyone who bills you 50 hours and works 0. As a contractor, I'd do the opposite - work 40 hours and bill 30, not including some periods of zoning out. My clients would insist that I round it up, not down.

I think you'll find plenty of contractors who suit your more trusting style.

As a contractor I would never install spyware on my machine for a client. That's not a healthy professional relationship.

I do see the problem that some people pretend to be more experienced than they are, or worst case are scamming clients.

On the one hand, you could ask a contractor to do a certain (well-specified) piece of work for a fixed price. But it's often hard to define the specifications precisely, especially in software projects.

The alternative is charging by the hour. I see this as a journey that the client and contractor take together. You have a certain goal in mind, and the contractor helps you work towards it. You need regular meetings to discuss the progress, obstacles, and together decide on the best way forward. Daily standups could help too, but depending on the complexity of the work, I'd recommend a weekly or biweekly in-depth meeting.

Could it be that the experience with scammy contractors is because they are given a task towards an ill-defined goal with too little opportunity to discuss progress?

Did they get the job done to your satisfaction and budget? If so you might want to just pay them in a way that rewards them for their skill and not their time.

Not saying it's easy, but worth thinking about before you start the surveillence.

I used to offer everyone a fixed fee, but no one accepts it anymore for whatever reason. I think other employers abuse it.

Have you considered contracting for fixed-price projects rather than time? If you've considered but aren't doing that, why not?

I would prefer to do fixed fee for everything, but contractors don't like it.

I see their side of it. The risk is all theirs with fixed fee.

What time of work are you looking for as in stack, I would be eager to provide value if it is possible ( familiar domain etc)