Upwork and freeCodeCamp

So many of us will want to use the experience we gain here to get web development jobs in the future. One freelancing platform that would be nice to join is Upwork, however at the moment Upwork does not recognize freeCodeCamp as an educational experience nor is it possible to add to your profile, the bad thing is unless you have some sort of college degree to add to your profile, it’s impossible to submit your profile. What recommendations and thoughts does the community here have? Could the freeCodeCamp core team get involved and make this possible?

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How is it a problem? I have a working upwork profile and my education section is not filled at all. And as far as I remember you can put anything you want in this section anyway.

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Let me know how upwork works for you. I’ve never had luck landing a single job on there and I’ve been in the industry for a couple of years now.

It wouldn’t let me submit my profile for review without an education section, I’m not going to lie about a degree either.

I’ll try to remember, I’d really prefer to be in the freelance developer field rather than an ‘office job’ since I get to work with lots of new people everyday (I.e. my work never gets dull). I’m hoping to be successful at it.

It seems their rules have changed.
Well if it is a consolation to you upwork really sucks now so not a big loss.

Have you tried to use your highschool degree? I’m pretty sure college education isn’t a requirement.

How hard is it to get a job on the platform? For example once I get freeCodeCamp’s front-end certification, I would like a part-time job for extra money while I continue my studies.

Not yet, is a high school degree the same thing as a high school diploma? I don’t want to make any false claims.

Depends on your luck but I feel like it’s not easy for young developers. Also upwork now permanently bans users who apply to too much jobs without being hired so you need to look out for that.

Whatever education you have finished, that’s pretty much enough. Don’t worry too much about it.

Wow that’s discouraging especially for young developers, it seems like getting your first developer job is going to be hard on any platform.

Ive been on there for about a month now and nada… it doesnt help though that many of the jobs that look interesting, which Im very sure I can do…are limited only to people who have completed x amount of jobs or have some specific rating ie not someone new.

Kind of like the old must work to get experience, cant get work without experience catch-22 …except worse, at least in person you can apply anyway and hope someone will give you a chance…on upwork, if you dont have any completed upwork projects, thats the end of that.

That’s one of the biggest challenges I’ve seen on the marketplaces I’ve attempted to work with. Everyone wants to work with the sellers with ratings, very few people will work with new sellers without ratings, this effectively gives you zero chance even if you are experienced. I plan on doing freeCodeCamp full-time although I’d really like some part-time developer work, it’d help with both gaining experience and a small paycheck, it’s difficult to do if you have no chance on the marketplace. I’m not sure which marketplaces are newcomer friendly.

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What makes you assume a normal 9-5 job gets dull? I work on new technologies every couple of months, and jump from projects to projects after we finish on internal systems. It really depends on where you work.

Working with the same people every day, also I can’t work a 9 to 5 job and be a full-time student. So it’s one of those frustrating catch-22 scenarios. I just wish there was a better solution to my problem so I can have part-time dev work and be able to be full-time student. Also been trying to do Fiverr but have made little to no progress so I feel discouraged on Fiverr.

You really have to have a thick skin for rejection on UpWork. Iv’e been on the site for 3 months and have landed 3 jobs each paying only $30. My last gig I got I worked 2 days for $60 job and then the client refused to pay for the work done and I only recieved $30.

Lots of tight arse pricks on the site to be honest. You’ll only find work if you offer to work for $5 per hour :frowning:

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Don’t work for mere pennies unless of course you dig that thing.

I used UpWork for about half a year. Beginning to mid 2016. It was hard to get started, but eventually it was starting to get not so bad with getting jobs. But right then they decided to raise their fees from 10% to 20%. For me that was unacceptable and stopped using them. I could still go in there and be able to get some jobs probably, but I refuse to give that greedy company 20% of what I work for. The fee increase was only one of many issues with the company. A lot of other freelancers left at that time as well. It may be for the best, for you and the freelancing community in general, that you can’t even make an account on there.

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There are many alternatives to UpWork, but I myself haven’t found one that is actually good. At least for new freelancers and those of us with not so much experience. UpWork is just the most popular of them all.

A year ago when UpWork doubled their fees and everybody was angry, many people started talking about creating a new freelancing platform from scratch. I guess some of the new ones emerged from that, but like I mentioned, I haven’t seen one yet that really works.

Maybe we need to create our own :wink:
A freelancing platform for freeCodeCamp graduates!

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Wow, I was about to inquiry about this myself, not the education question, but ways to find freelance work.
I have had some luck with craiglist out of all things, but I was doing wordpress only back then and mega basic HTML

I found some work in upwork, mainly $50 gigs, on things that took me 30-45 min (not counting time looking for and applying for gigs) It was mainly helping setup constant contact or setting up other sort of autoresponder, thnigs like that…

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Instead of relying on someone to give us a chance to develop their product, why not thinking to create ours and sell them, like plugins, themes, making mobile apps (by using for example react native) etc…

I’m also asking if someone has ever used toptal.com, I heared that is a respectable platform, the price is bot low compared to upwork and freelancer, but the problem is they don’t accept beginners.