You're correct in that the "top 3%" represents the top 3% of the developers who actually applied to Toptal (about 11,000 from all over the world in the last couple months).
However, it's also important to know that the 3% was not arbitrary. We didn’t start by saying, “wow, we should set the acceptance rate at 3%, because that sounds nice” or we somehow knew that the bottom 97% were bad. 3% (and every value you see on our screening process) is simply the result of a numerator and a denominator (successful_applicants over all_applicants). We designed the process to be the bare minimum criteria for us to be extremely confident that we are admitting someone into the network who will thrive here.
Unfortunately, I think this is pretty misleading and incomplete. We do not set anyone's hourly rate, but if you come in expecting $250/hr and there isn't much on your profile to justify that, we will push back to figure out why you think clients will hire you at that rate. Ultimately, your rate is up to you, but it doesn't do anyone any good if you're sitting in Toptal un-hirable. Clients won't hire you if your rate doesn't match your abilities or if there are other people similarly capable but with very different rates from you.
Being spied on? I don't know what that is referring to.
The circumvention clause is real, though we've never even come close to needing to enforce it.
Re refunding all fees: We've never even come close to needing to enforce this, but if someone really botched an engagement, this is a possibility. However, part of the benefit of joining Toptal is that you have the entire network and core team going to bat for you. Good people wouldn't stay long if we were taking all their compensation from them.
Unfortunately, I think this comment is misleading and incomplete. Only one part of the screening process (detailed here: http://www.toptal.com/top-3-percent) is scored automatically, and we still go over ever submission manually to look for cheating and misleading scores (e.g., were you on the right track but just missed something small?).
Our job is to minimize false positives and false negatives. Almost all of us are engineers here. We all know you can't give an automated, standardized test to fully judge anything. The automated test is simply one of several steps, and it does provide helpful information.
Feel free to email me directly at [email protected] if you'd like more information.
You don't post "projects" on Toptal. Everything we do is time & materials, so the concept of misrepresenting financials based on posted projects simply isn't possible. ARR is calculated by actual sales right now multiplied out for a year of time.
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.
I want to know if there's a huge difference between charging your laptop and running off of battery sometimes vs leaving it plugged in all the time - I sometimes move to my couch or something to do some work, and maybe leaving the charger behind is actually an additional cost