Background: I am the COO of Toptal

While these technical problems with Upwork’s platform certainly do seem very problematic, I’m not sure that “now is the time to roll out a new freelance platform” is the right conclusion, at least not without some revision.

- For starters, there are plenty of open freelance marketplaces out there that operate pretty much exactly in the same way as Upwork (Freelancer.com, for example). Some are more specialized (like 99designs), but in general the list is pretty endless. Adding another identical platform to the mix is unlikely to accomplish much.

- The real issue is that the operating model for freelance platforms has been broken. This has been the case for a long time, and is unrelated to Upwork’s technical issues.

The open marketplace model falls short in several ways, many of which relate to the “race to the bottom” phenomenon that other responses here mention:

For companies:

a. There’s no quality assurance and profiles/test scores can be fabricated.

b. You have to deal with a large volume of bids, and sifting through them defeats one of the top reasons people hire freelancers: to move fast.

c. There’s very little in the way of protection on any engagement. The risk of your project getting botched by someone incompetent or your freelancer disappearing is significant.

For freelancers:

a. Talented professionals have to deal with absurdly low bids from unqualified people. Many freelancers are forced to lower their rate to below what they’re worth just to get any work.

b. The large volume of bids for most projects means that it can be much tougher to stand out. The most talented freelancers are often the worst self-promoters.

c. There’s no protection from clients with unrealistic expectations.

Long-term, these are the problems that successful freelance models will need to be able to solve at scale. Is this doable? I certainly think so - it’s what we’ve been working on at Toptal. Here’s what we believe the solution looks like, and therefore how we’ve built Toptal to behave:

- All engagements need to solve these problems both for freelancers and for clients. Clients are looking for great freelancers and freelancers are looking for great clients. Therefore the solution is to thoroughly vet both freelancers AND clients.

- Vetting must be rigorous and done in a non-automated, non-riggable, extremely thorough way.
Freelancers must be able to set their own rates and not have to worry about low-bid contests. Only clients with serious projects who are ready to pay freelancers what they’re worth need apply. No race to the bottom.

- There must be a high level of support during ALL engagements, even at scale. Clients should only meet freelancers who were handpicked for their project, and vice versa. This also solves the problem of high bid volumes.

- Support should continue throughout the engagement to resolve conflicts and ensure success.

This is exactly how Toptal has operated for several years now for freelance software developers, and it has worked quite well--even though we made some mistakes along the way. While this has been primarily in the software development space thus far, the principles apply to other types of freelance work as well.

Bottom line: Upwork’s technical issues are certainly problematic, but there are larger issues that freelance platform models will need to solve in the long run.