{"id":1630,"date":"2015-11-27T18:43:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T13:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/?p=1630"},"modified":"2025-07-08T17:31:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T12:01:20","slug":"why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you should not work with freelancers from freelancing sites such as Elance, Upwork, Freelancer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/freelancing-sucks.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1631\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/freelancing-sucks-394x330.png\" alt=\"freelancing sucks\" width=\"394\" height=\"330\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/freelancing-sucks-394x330.png 394w, https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/freelancing-sucks-300x250.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/freelancing-sucks.png 439w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 394px) 100vw, 394px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_80 ez-toc-wrap-left counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title ez-toc-toggle\" style=\"cursor:pointer\">What you\u2019ll learn in this article:<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-3' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer\/#%e2%80%9cshould-we-hire-a-freelancer-for-the-development-of-our-product%e2%80%9d\" >&#8220;Should we hire a freelancer for the development of our product?&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer\/#your-project-is-a-team-work-and-not-an-individual-task\" >Your project is a team work and not an individual task<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer\/#finding-your-%e2%80%98a-team-on-freelancing-sites-could-be-a-nightmare\" >Finding your &#8216;A Team&#8217; on freelancing\u00a0sites could be a nightmare!<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer\/#those-bids-dont-address-your-specific-requirements\" >Those\u00a0bids don&#8217;t address your specific requirements<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer\/#2-per-hour-%e2%80%93-seriously\" >$2 per hour &#8211; seriously?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer\/#so-when-is-working-with-a-freelancer-advisable-then\" >So, when is working with a freelancer\u00a0advisable then?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-7\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/why-you-should-not-work-with-freelancers-from-freelancing-sites-such-as-elance-upwork-freelancer\/#how-ncrypted-delivers-business-value\" >How NCrypted delivers business value?<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%e2%80%9cshould-we-hire-a-freelancer-for-the-development-of-our-product%e2%80%9d\"><\/span>&#8220;Should we hire a freelancer for the development of our product?&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>This is a good question entrepreneurs, startups and businesses ask often. The answer in most cases would simply be a big &#8216;NO&#8217;. Let us discuss why.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"your-project-is-a-team-work-and-not-an-individual-task\"><\/span>Your project is a team work and not an individual task<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Outsourcing your entire project to a freelancer is not advisable for several reasons. Such scale of projects generally require an entire team to work on comprising of business analysts, designers (there are 3 types of designers only &#8211;\u00a0web\/HTML\/graphics), developers, DBA (database architect), project manager, QA\/Testing engineers among others. When you hire a freelancer, you will generally hire a developer only and at max, a designer &#8211; and that\u00a0is not enough to build you a market-ready product.<\/p>\n<p>This is like hiring simply a mason to build you an entire apartment! While mason is a very important team member, but he cannot be the entire team all by himself! And most of the time you will overlook the importance of hiring a good mason which is critical. You will also likely bypass the need of hiring an architect (business analysts) who can plan your entire project first before even the design work can start.<\/p>\n<p>A software application development project (website or mobile app) is a serious job and involves a team, not just an individual even if that individual is highly talented, unless you simply have a very basic static website work. So you should not risk your money and time if you don&#8217;t understand software development life cycle (SDLC) very well.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"finding-your-%e2%80%98a-team-on-freelancing-sites-could-be-a-nightmare\"><\/span>Finding your &#8216;A Team&#8217; on freelancing\u00a0sites could be a nightmare!<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Apparently, as you might already have experienced, finding a freelancer on popular freelancing sites such as Elance\/Upwork, Freelancer.com is a cumbersome process. You get more than a dozen bids (more than a few dozens in some cases) within a few hours after you post your project and invite bids.<\/p>\n<p>In late 2012, Reddit CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/How-does-a-business-person-hire-a-good-developer-programmer-engineer-on-eLance-or-oDesk\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Yishan Wong posted on Quora<\/a>\u00a0that hiring freelancers from the likes of oDesk or Elance is a bad idea, because &#8220;end products&#8221; never turn out more than &#8220;merely okay&#8221; or usually &#8220;failure&#8221; \u2013 directly insulting the dozens of remote workers that the company employed at the time. Here is Wong&#8217;s reply to the question &#8220;How does a business person hire a good developer\/programmer\/engineer on Elance or oDesk?&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"gray-box\">&#8220;You shouldn&#8217;t do this; it will probably result in failure. I have a friend who is a designer (so, closer to technology and implementation than a business person; about as close as you can be without being outright technical yourself), and he was hiring developers via Elance. Even with consultation from friends of his (e.g. me) who were real engineers, it was extremely difficult to find decent engineers who could do the things he needed, deliver reliably, and iterate according to ongoing testing\/customer feedback. The end product was merely &#8220;okay&#8221; \u2013 kind of slow, with little glitches here and there. If you have total technical ignorance and no local (friend) resources to help you, hiring from eLance or oDesk is almost impossible to do correctly. I would recommend trying another route.&#8221; \u2014 Reddit CEO Yishan Wong<\/div>\n<p>BTW, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/nlance\">Nlance <\/a>which is an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/elance-clone\">Elance clone<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/freelance-script\">freelance script<\/a>) in case you are planning to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/freelance-clone\">start your own freelance marketplace<\/a> that can address these issues that we are pointing out! (Aha, not a bad idea for a wannabe startup!)<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"those-bids-dont-address-your-specific-requirements\"><\/span>Those\u00a0bids don&#8217;t address your specific requirements<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Most of the proposals are pure copy and paste jobs. It&#8217;s quite possible that the freelancer has not read your requirement and hence cannot\/does not address it specifically. With this, you are left with no other option but to hook up with the first few bidders you caught online. So this becomes a game of luck rather than merit.<\/p>\n<div class=\"gray-box\">&#8220;Despite the fact that freelancers need to go through hell and high water to gain the highest verification level on UpWork, the persistent unskilled newbies from the Third World countries came flooding in on this site. Hopefully it will sort out the problem with the unskilled workforce overpopulation and UpWork will remain a harbor of safe labor and respect for skill, not cheapness. \u2026 The demographics of UpWork&#8217;s population are rather tilted towards the different sides of the planet \u2013 the most classic scheme one would find on UpWork is some USA or UK employer hiring a European or Eastern European freelancer.&#8221; &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.websiteplanet.com\/review\/upwork\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Idan Cohen reviewing Upwork<\/a><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"2-per-hour-%e2%80%93-seriously\"><\/span>$2 per hour &#8211; seriously?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1632\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/freelancing-sucks-jim-carrey.png\" alt=\"why freelancing sucks\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/freelancing-sucks-jim-carrey.png 579w, https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/freelancing-sucks-jim-carrey-300x168.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Since these sites have freelancers joining all around the world, a US, German, British,\u00a0or French\u00a0freelancer is directly in competition with an Indonesian or Bangladeshi rookie who can survive for less than $2\/hour. Standard of living and hence cost of living is higher in countries such as the US and Western Europe etc. and hence it would be difficult for those guys to compete with somebody in Indonesia, for example. Not to mention quality, but you are kind of &#8216;forced&#8217; to take your decision based on the cheapest quote that you got. One of the cheapest, if not &#8216;the cheapest&#8217;, but how does it matter anyway?<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"so-when-is-working-with-a-freelancer-advisable-then\"><\/span>So, when is working with a freelancer\u00a0advisable then?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>You should prefer working with a freelancer under one of the following situations\/conditions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you are a good project manager (both technically and functionally)<\/li>\n<li>Have really low budget (and you don&#8217;t care much about quality for that matter!)<\/li>\n<li>Want to test the shores with a pre-beta version first with some private test users (remember for &#8216;beta&#8217; product or real test users also, this won&#8217;t work)<\/li>\n<li>Have a very basic static website work<\/li>\n<li>Want to outsource only a part of your project and you know what you are doing!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1633\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/rookie-freelancer.png\" alt=\"rookie freelancer\" width=\"300\" height=\"233\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/rookie-freelancer.png 475w, https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/rookie-freelancer-300x233.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/rookie-freelancer-424x330.png 424w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Otherwise, just stay away if you have a serious project on hand. Read our blog on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/hiring-freelancers-vs-agency-developers\/\">Freelancers Vs Agency Developers<\/a> for more insights on this topic.<\/p>\n<div class=\"round_box_blue\">\n<div class=\"round_box_heading\">\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"how-ncrypted-delivers-business-value\"><\/span>How NCrypted delivers business value?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"box_one\">\n<div class=\"box_one_image\">\n<div class=\"popbox\"><a class=\"open-rfp\" href=\"#\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/ncrypted_contactustoday.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"box_one_text\">Our primary focus would be on understanding your requirements and providing you with technology solutions while keeping your target audience and market in mind. We understand that a serious project is an on-going engagement that requires technical, functional, financial and emotional commitment. We want to believe in your idea as much as you do. Get in touch to find out how NCrypted can help bring your idea to life so that you can go to market with confidence.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Should we hire a freelancer for the development of our product?&#8221; This is a good question entrepreneurs, startups and businesses ask often. The answer in most cases would simply be a big &#8216;NO&#8217;. Let us discuss why. Your project is a team work and not an individual task Outsourcing your entire project to a freelancer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319,22],"tags":[224,344,346,345],"class_list":{"0":"post-1630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-career-jobs-freelancing","8":"category-industry-watch","9":"tag-freelance-script","10":"tag-freelancing","11":"tag-outsource","12":"tag-outsourcing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncrypted.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}