Ps: I'm the one getting paid less.
Upwork has its ups and downs. So far I am top rated on there and for the most part enjoy the platform. I got my first nightmare client recently. The company (1 or 2 grouchy people) want to emulate Codecademy so they hired for a JavaScript curriculum developer and author to write chapters (500 words max) and coding exercises.
I wrote a sample chapter upon which they hired me. In fact they hired me two times and paid me, before all this nonsense started.
So far I have been dealing with making editorial changes so that chapters fit into their platform seamlessly, this means giving .md, .pdf and .html files. Which is all ok! but they haven't given me access to their platform!
I have never seen their platform. Since the work is getting outsourced on Upwork (the person I am dealing with on Upwork isn't the main client), all the important documentation has been stripped off so as to conceal the identity of the main client. All I get are copy pasted comments in a very poorly formatted document.
Moreover, now they want a chapter summary to be added and a whole bunch of other changes never mentioned previously.
All this has been extremely stressful for me as I am dealing more with the formatting to fit their platform (without ever having seen it) rather than creating content itself.
Their feedback is rude and pretty nasty as well, considering they have asked me to format and make changes about 7-8 times now.
Their most recent feedback, after a month of changes (19+ changes) is about how the output of the console.log statements has double quotes around the strings... WTF
Their exact feedback is"r people who can create a JavaScript course for beginners and need to know JavaScript. Your cover letter states that you know JavaScript well. But from the chapters and assignments written, we can conclude that you know JavaScript at a fairly low level. If we take the last chapters she submitted as an example and looked at chapter 2.1, "JavaScript Syntax." In this chapter, we will look at the tasks you have completed and the “result” expected after your code runs. You will get just text without quotes after using console.log, but all your "output" has been quoted."
I'm unsure why they expect the output of the console.log of a string data type to be without quotes? Btw I checked on codepen since I don't have access to their platform:
It's not possible to work with people who want the behavior of JavaScript to change according to their platform!
I'm unsure of how to deal with this because I don't want my Upwork score affected.
Top comments (4)
You should immediately break this cooperation cause it's gonna be worse with such sort of clients. And Upwork policy indirectly bolsters such clients actions with hypocritical slogan of protecting clients rights. Unfortunately there are many jerks middlemen on Upwork and they do well so far.
Duh ! Increase your prices, you don't want to be getting paid less just to be on the top rated club. Charge for your time and work accordingly otherwise you will have to face the nightmares more often. Since I am a freelancer too, it's best to give a cost estimate earlier for the changes required too.
Get out. Respect is the top priority to developers.
I know the feeling. take it easy dear, It happens