<story><title>The Remote Freelancer: A list of remote work alternatives to Upwork</title><url>https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stavros</author><text>I had a pretty negative experience with TopTal, where the first interview&amp;#x2F;screening thing involved me solving programming puzzles on some sort of code editor. After spending an hour on a puzzle whose solution turned out to pretty much be &amp;quot;return len(A) - A.count(X)&amp;quot;, I gave up in frustration.&lt;p&gt;One of the site&amp;#x27;s founders emailed me later to tell me that he knew that those questions didn&amp;#x27;t actually really test programming skills, and that they were trying to improve, but the damage was already done.</text></item><item><author>rossriley</author><text>Thanks for the list, there&amp;#x27;s a couple I hadn&amp;#x27;t come across before.&lt;p&gt;Domino and TopTal look like they may be more suitable for more experienced developers.&lt;p&gt;What is everyone else&amp;#x27;s experience for finding work at the higher end of the market ($600 - $900 &amp;#x2F; day)? From my experience I know the demand is out there but currently all of my work comes via traditional recruitment agencies which seems a shame for the companies doing the hiring, since agencies charge fairly big fees.&lt;p&gt;I have in the past tried eLance, Upwork, People Per Hour, and they all seem to end up overrun with low-end work and low-end clients and whilst there may be some gems in there it ends up not being worth your time to sift through &amp;#x2F; send propsals because 95% of clients will choke if you mention your hourly rate.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eloff</author><text>I passed their tests, spent 50 unpaid hours on a coding assignment, for which I learned react native (not a requirement) and got passed over because their requirements were poorly worded and I didn&amp;#x27;t ask for clarification (it&amp;#x27;s a coding assignment, why shouldn&amp;#x27;t I assume they can at least spell out their own requirements well.)&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ll give me another shot at it, but honestly it&amp;#x27;s not worth the effort. I discovered from the engineer that the average asking rate for the other 70+ developers in Canada is $45&amp;#x2F;hour. I&amp;#x27;m not going to work for that - as a &amp;quot;top 3%&amp;quot; developer it&amp;#x27;s so much easier to make $65+&amp;#x2F;hour full-time, remotely. Why would I settle for sporadic work and lots of risk for less money? Do yourself a favor and steer clear of those guys if you know what&amp;#x27;s good for you.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Remote Freelancer: A list of remote work alternatives to Upwork</title><url>https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stavros</author><text>I had a pretty negative experience with TopTal, where the first interview&amp;#x2F;screening thing involved me solving programming puzzles on some sort of code editor. After spending an hour on a puzzle whose solution turned out to pretty much be &amp;quot;return len(A) - A.count(X)&amp;quot;, I gave up in frustration.&lt;p&gt;One of the site&amp;#x27;s founders emailed me later to tell me that he knew that those questions didn&amp;#x27;t actually really test programming skills, and that they were trying to improve, but the damage was already done.</text></item><item><author>rossriley</author><text>Thanks for the list, there&amp;#x27;s a couple I hadn&amp;#x27;t come across before.&lt;p&gt;Domino and TopTal look like they may be more suitable for more experienced developers.&lt;p&gt;What is everyone else&amp;#x27;s experience for finding work at the higher end of the market ($600 - $900 &amp;#x2F; day)? From my experience I know the demand is out there but currently all of my work comes via traditional recruitment agencies which seems a shame for the companies doing the hiring, since agencies charge fairly big fees.&lt;p&gt;I have in the past tried eLance, Upwork, People Per Hour, and they all seem to end up overrun with low-end work and low-end clients and whilst there may be some gems in there it ends up not being worth your time to sift through &amp;#x2F; send propsals because 95% of clients will choke if you mention your hourly rate.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hyperknot</author><text>Exactly the same reason why I&amp;#x27;m not applying for TopTal. I started their tests and realised what it is about is the opposite of what I consider to be good programming and problem solving skills.</text></comment>