Forest for the Trees (The Great Race - Pt2)

The main culprit in what I call The Great Race (to the bottom) is commerce. I don’t just mean supply chains strangling manufacturers and service providers, nailed to the wall by partners who enforce lower prices so shareholders enjoy bigger profits. Well, maybe I do mean that, but let’s begin with a story about shoes…

Once upon a time (not so long ago), a man went to buy a pair of shoes. He had no preferred style in mind, just something that would be comfortable on both his feet and wallet. Being a shrewd sort, the man set himself a budget of £60.

The discount store offered low quality, mass produced shoes at £30, whilst a pair from a shoemaker would cost £80. The salesman at the discount store suggested that whilst his shoes were of lower quality, the man could buy two pairs, in theory lasting twice as long! The shoemaker explained that his higher quality shoes not only lasted longer than both pairs of discount shoes, once broken in, they would provide a level of comfort that made walking a delight. Drawn by price alone, the man decided to buy two pairs of discount shoes, suffering the pains of breaking them in, twice. Within the uncomfortable year that the two pairs of discount shoes lasted, the shoemaker went out of business. This led to a future of only discount shoes being available and several podiatrists rubbing their hands (along with a lot of aching feet).

In the end, did the man want a decent pair of shoes on his feet, or more shoes in his life? The answer remains unclear, he’d originally just set out for some shoes.

Early indications of the Great Race to the bottom are found in the music industry. From Opportunity Knocks to X Factor, a range of entertainment tsars and showbiz moguls promising fame and fortune to hopeful starlets, whilst monetizing emotive reality TV selection processes, then taking huge chunks (if not all) of the artist's earnings and slowly but surely, squeezing the life from whatever talent or passion existed. All in all a somewhat cynical play on the Stock, Aitken and Waterman music production factory of the 80s. The trickle down effect on an unsuspecting live music scene was highly invasive, karaoke and jam nights taking precedence over hiring more seasoned (paid) professionals. It’s hard to fault the struggling bar owner for just trying to make ends meet, but in the end, it’s all just become ‘have a go hero’ background noise, and more nails in the bar/pub coffin.

In recent times job platforms and apps are popping up. All promising significant shortcuts to becoming a ‘professional’ and in doing so, they devalue the very thing they seek to promote. From freelance and remote working, through to being a guitar ninja or piano virtuoso - Bert Weedon (play in a day) you have a lot to answer for… 

Or maybe you’re an ethical clothes designer who just can't seem to get a break? Hell! I can be a qualified counsellor or NLP Master Practitioner in just three days, and all for the princely sum of £25! Rest assured, the only winners here are the platform developers and their backers. Cynical to say, it’s very much like how a legal system exist to reward its legal practitioners rather than the people they are supposed to protect.

The platforms exist in a passive state, on a neutral plain. You (the user) create all the content, bring in an audience (clients / colleagues), deliver the outputs, and then pay the platform a nifty percentage for the pleasure. Of course, if I were a fresh-faced novice just starting out, I might not have much of an issue with the arrangement. But I’m not, and the value in (of) my work simply does not match the expectations these platforms cultivate. To illustrate my point, and in some way try to justify why I can’t advocate nor participate in this mockery, here are a few war stories…

Torre appears to be one of the best sites for exploiting the remote and freelance worker market, and possibly its investors too. Its strap-line line ‘Matching Talent with Opportunity’ should really read ‘Matching Talent with Opportunism’, here’s why. From a remote.co job ad I applied for ‘entrepreneurs wanted for a new and ethical driven freelancer / remote working platform’. That pressed all my interest and engagement buttons and when a sign up request came along it really wasn’t too big a deal. In for a penny, in for pound!

Next came an automated follow up mail from the CEO asking for my feedback and ways to improve the user experience. It was highlighted that whilst automated, the mail was still very “personal” and all responses were read (I’ll come back to this shortly). Once in the sign up process you discover that you need other people to come and verify your general background and project experiences. On the face of it this seemed a great way to build credibility. Then something dawned on me. For one job listing you need a min of three project experiences, meaning at least three people have to come and verify you.

Although the message they send (via the platform) states there is no need to download the app and they will not be spammed, that is not exactly the case. All of my 'verifiers' had to create profiles and because they did not actively use the platform started to get emails reminding them to update their profile, get verified themselves etc. Trust Buster #1…
 
It’s also interesting to consider (esp. if you are an investor / potential buyer) that for every profile like mine there could be (at least) three non-engaged, dead (aka fake?) profiles. Those of the hapless verifiers, roped in to support a job seeker in building credibility. This makes a stunning 75% of the site potentially inactive / passive. Trust Buster #2…

Trust Buster #3? The user experience feedback. In response to the CEO’s automated (but personal) request, I put my years of process design and still warm signing up experience to work and shared a few niggles and quirks. OK, it was partly my sense of stewardship and partly pragmatism (I’m still a hopeful candidate in the entrepreneur job race after all). Several emails to various team members followed, including to the CEO, who seemed to have constant trouble tracking down my messages (although direct to his inbox) or finding them in his own Torre platform messenger service.

In the end I simply gave up.

The 4th and final trust buster was a feature called Torre Bot. Only when you apply for a job on the site do you realise the selection process is automated by the all knowing, mighty Torre Bot. And what turns the Torre Bot on? Something called 'profile weighting'. Which is gained by? Yep, you guessed it, more verification activity. To get your application viewed you need to go and recruit more people to the platform. Surely selection should be based on the matching up of skill and experience parameters, or even a snazzy covering letter?

If it wasn’t so obvious, it might just be brilliant.

Having now closed my account (which was painfully not obvious and required several more support interactions) my overall experience was one of wasted time, confusing my kind-hearted connections who came good on my verification requests, an invite to chat about some ‘research’ (?) and a random recruiter who actually guided me off the site for an application.

The team, whilst polite, seemed somewhat as staged and automated as the CEO UX feedback request. Interactions were timed to arrive at just the right moment, keeping up a sense of momentum without actually unveiling anything worthwhile. The drive to populate the site and get free UX insight seem much more important than the advertised ‘meaningful shift in working realities’ and I’m left not knowing what hurt most, the wasted time or the disappointment at being take for a ride by such noble copy.  

Next up is Fiverr, a platform where many buyers actually believe that everything is for a fiver, be it a day or a week of work. It's the freelancer equivalent of a UK store called PoundLand (but for a fiver, obviously). The most common enquiry I got from the platform was to ghost write CIPD diploma assignments. As if the HR industry hasn’t got enough of a competency problem already? One kind soul was trying to nail me to the wall on price, due to the volume of work he had on offer (to do all nine of his assignments for consistency). I replied that my having MORE poorly paid work to do was not a positive, then subsequently closed my account.

How about Outsourcely? Yet another waste of time and effort! I'd signed up in January and went through the verification process, which included a chat with my dedicated support guy (actual old school talking, impressive!), after which he wished me luck and told me I was ‘good to go’. In August I got an email saying my profile picture violated their policy (I was wearing a hat). When I went in to change the picture I noticed a typo in my user name that I'd asked for them to correct. They said they would do it in 24 hours, back in January. Being a dutiful (and desperate) professional I changed my picture as requested and I reported the typo again, to be told it would be changed in 24 hours.

I went back a couple of days later to find the same picture and typo waiting for me. So, due to a photo violation (on a picture they approved) my profile had sat there idle, non active for 20 weeks! With the sheen now firmly wiped off, I had a more cynical view the site. The jobs on offer paid peanuts and from my support experience, the platform itself clearly employed more than a few monkeys. All in all, just another profile harvesting affair to keep investors sweet.

My last example, who remain nameless for sensitivity reasons is a new freelancer project management platform promising secure payments and structured project tools. Two obvious flaws exists in the business model.

The first is that any freelancer worth their salt should know how to secure a deposit, manage client payments and map out and communicate their project outcomes. If you can’t manage your own finances and workload, there is a fairly logical argument to say you should not be let loose with other people’s. This is one of the things that separates the wheat from the chaff in the world of freelancing.

The second, more practical thing is that the platform is ‘fed’ by users bringing their clients into the fold. Now colour me dim if it seems like a bad idea to take hard won clients into a space where cheaper, inexperienced, perhaps unskilled freelancers can get at them. An outcome the platform owner readily admitted to me as being a value add for the platform (not the user).  

To summarise:

Right now, we are in this ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ situation; a market inundated with low cost, poor quality options (discount shoes) and that disregards those with real craft (the shoemaker). Freelance and creative industries generate billions globally, yet the people getting the greatest returns are developers with pointless and hollow platforms created to be sold on to investor interest. Hiring managers and project leads have to suffer, educate and reeducate sub-standard resources thanks (in part) to their bosses going online and believing that anything can be done by a remote grunt, for peanuts.

You get what you pay for, whether it be shoes, a website or a company training initiative. Hopefully (ever the optimist) what goes around comes around. My worry is that whilst platforms (and investors) get rich off the backs of freelancers, the quality of work produced is being driven down by ridiculously low budgets and outrageously high expectations. Market implications and future prospects for the freelancer and creative appear largely negative, perception is, after all, reality. To perform at a sustainable 'best', creative talent needs nurturing, and rewarding, not farmed and exploited.