If they are anything but completely stupid (admittedly, not unheard-of for startup jockeys), they have competent legal counsel, who can explicitly draw the boundaries for them and write the appropriate notices.
Relying on some kind of quasi-plausible timing/delay issue, as does the parent comment, it's even less of an excuse.
The more I see, the more clear it is that Upwork are
If they were going to give proper notice of what they were doing, they should have done so simultaneously with shutting off service. If not, they're also wrong.
It really has narrowed down to two choices:
1) Upwork are completely incompetent to even perform their primary functions
2) Upwork are playing a very unethical game.
Either way, they are not qualified to operate their business, and shouldn't be hired from either side.
The contractor/employee "boundaries" are somewhat fuzzy, and subject to later (re-)interpretation. You might think you're safe, but then lose a regulatory/court case later! They might have to look at things case-by-case once a certain risk threshold is met.
As far as we can tell, he learned the details from Upwork within 12-48 hours of when the issue was discovered. That's not so bad!
He wasn't prevented from appearing to other buyers during that period – just the single buyer with whom repeated jobs jeopardized his independent contractor status.
Tempest in a teapot. Wallace's anger at the communication is legitimate, but he's likely misinterpreting the root causes, and the downstream demonization of Upwork is out-of-proportion with the particulars.
Legal issues are always somewhat 'fuzzy' and subject to judgement -- it's why we have judges. And this is not that fuzzy, the IRS has published clear standards for decades and it's well litigated. Nothing about that prevents a company from defining the boundaries of it's behavior and communicating clearly & behaving ethically.
Timing is utterly irrelevant here. The ONLY reason he found out is that he had the good luck to have a well-placed friend who could see the issue AND had a communication side-channel. Absent that luck, he'd be permanently screwed.
We've got no data on what other customers were able to buy or not, and it is also irrelevant -- particularly for a contractor primarily occupied with a single buyer, who would not have tuned his marketing to the broader market, and due to Upwork's unethical behavior would have no notice that he needed to.
"...in a teapot"? BS! A scaled business like this is a large system, and this is an example of how the system works, and limits the range of possible root causes.
In Upwork's case, it is either one of two things.
1) A sloppy mess of incompetence and make-it-up-as-you-go-along supported by ill-invested venture funds. Or,
2) A management that has specifically decided to implement a system of unethical behaviors in hopes of extracting higher profits regardless of the cost to it's users.
Either way, they are either unqualified to be in biz, or unqualified for anyone to do biz with.
I'm left wondering why you are such an eager and persistent apologist for this behavior, grasping any straw to excuse it . . .
Relying on some kind of quasi-plausible timing/delay issue, as does the parent comment, it's even less of an excuse.
The more I see, the more clear it is that Upwork are
If they were going to give proper notice of what they were doing, they should have done so simultaneously with shutting off service. If not, they're also wrong.
It really has narrowed down to two choices:
1) Upwork are completely incompetent to even perform their primary functions
2) Upwork are playing a very unethical game.
Either way, they are not qualified to operate their business, and shouldn't be hired from either side.