It has pluses and minuses.

I moved from Freelancer to Upwork and my initial thoughts were that the freelancers (and thus clients) on Upwork were better because of the tracking software that basically guaranteed your worker was doing what was necessary.

But in hindsight the clients are basically just as bad and the tracking software just makes remote workers feel spied on and untrusted.

I've moved on now and have repeat clients as well as Toptal where there's mutual trust involved. (Toptal: https://www.toptal.com/#employ-only-on-the-ball-software-fre...)

It's just that I know how I work and it would not fit my model. If I have a problem to be solved I sometimes just go for a walk with my dog thinking about solutions. The client knows about that and is fine with it.

> TopTal

I had my bad experience with their application process as a developer.

I also have the other perspective as I have hired some devs from their and they do great work!