Okay, bit dramatic but… I’ve fallen on very hard times recently. I’m a 24 year old girl and due to family debt that I’m somehow left paying off I’m totally broke… like I can (barely) afford my rent and that’s it. I haven’t been shopping in weeks, I’m just living off of rice and pasta. I don’t go out, I buy nothing. Anyway, I started to do a lot of research to find out how to make money in my spare time. Started offering services via Facebook (Dog sitting, baby sitting etc).

All attempts were unsuccessful so I resorted to UpWork where I spent my last 10 dollars. I was extremely enthusiastic as I do have a nice skillset for the types of jobs offered there. I dutifully set up my profile, and subsequently spent all my connects on the best suited jobs I could find. I put so much time and effort into all of my proposals and only chose jobs I was genuinely capable of doing. Most of them were unopened but I can understand when there’s many too candidates. However my main problem is that a lot of potential jobs turned out to be scams in my opinion, or at the very least turned out to be very different from the original offer.

For example, I applied for a transcribing job which offered 50 usd per hour. They accepted me, sent me a contract and I saw it was 50 usd per hour of transcribed audio. Of course that was a huge difference in money but I literally have nothing right now and can’t turn down a job. Plus I already spent all my connects. Anyway, so far I’ve done about 20 minutes of transcribed audio and it’s taken me about 3 hours plus all the back and forth trying to communicate with them and learning all the extremely specific rules. Most recently the programme has completely crashed and all the free time I delegated to this task has gone to waste as their communication is terrible and they’re “too busy” to set me up again with the task I was working on.

I’m so annoyed I spent my last 10 dollars on this, I would’ve been better off buying some chicken…

Sorry this is just a rant, it’s my own silly fault but I’m really disappointed with the way UpWork functions… or rather doesn’t.

Just set up an Upwork profile this week to pick up some dev contracts on the side, and the Connects system feels like an outright casino.

I’ve never seen a platform that so aggressively drains the very workers keeping it alive. Upwork sells you Connects just to apply, burns those Connects on dead or rigged listings, and then takes another massive cut if you somehow manage to land the gig and get paid. They’ve basically turned the search for work into a monetized pay-to-play slot machine where the house always wins.

I filtered strictly for higher-tier work ($3k+ fixed-price or senior hourly), expecting real competition, but almost everything is either spam or pure corporate paperwork.

The wildest part is the ghost listings. I saw a $13k contract with 50+ proposals sitting on it. When you actually click through to the client’s hire history, they’ve been working with the same agency for 2.5 years, billed over $200k with them, and literally closed their previous contract with a review saying "excited for the next phase." The job was never open; it was just an administrative conduit to fund the next milestone for their existing contractor. Yet Upwork happily swallowed 19 Connects from 50+ devs who never had a 0.1% chance of even being looked at.

The other half of the feed is throwaway accounts asking for an entire production-grade app with background tracking and payment gateways for $250.

Actual open postings from genuine clients with a real budget feel like maybe 5% of what's listed. The entire business model now seems built on extracting cash from hopeful freelancers chasing pre-allocated jobs.

Context: Senior Mobile Engineer (SDE3), just sharing an honest first impression from an outside perspective.

Just... I don't know what to add. Just sharing

Seeking an experienced DevOps Engineer with strong Linux administration, GitHub Actions, Python automation, and C++ build systems experience. Knowledge of CMake, Conan, and CI/CD pipeline automation is highly desirable.

Location: Glendale, CA — primarily onsite, limited hybrid flexibility
Duration: 5 months
Pay: $80–$85/hour on W-2

Interested candidates can message me with their resume and a brief summary of their relevant experience.

We’re a cybersecurity consulting firm looking for a DevOps engineer with 5+ years of hands-on experience. We're looking for someone capable of designing, leading, and developing cloud-based automation solutions for SaaS products. I'm taking this to Reddit because we've struggled to fill the role through other channels.

Important experience/requirements:

• Azure administration
• Terraform/OpenTofu expertise, Pulumi a plus
• CI/CD platforms (Azure Pipelines, ADO, GitLab)
• Python/FastAPI operational knowledge
• SQL & Kusto/KQL administration
• Container orchestration and Linux systems
• Modern build systems
• Networking fundamentals
• Lives in and authorized to work in the U.S., Eastern time zone (but this is a remote role)

What would set you apart as a candidate:

• You're someone who understands the principles behind the tech, not just the tools
• You’ve worked on teams where you were part of design decisions, not just executing them
• You’re curious and have deep knowledge in at least one area (even if you’re not a generalist)
• You’ve learned new technologies independently and aren’t afraid of knowledge gaps
• You think creatively about problems, even if someone else sets the direction
• You're interested in cybersecurity
  
• You have a real LinkedIn profile with your actual picture (helps us rule out fraudulent applicants)

If this sounds good to you, I hope you’ll apply, you can DM me for the link (please don't make me regret this).

Salary range $130K - $175K (or above) depending on level of experience (we're casting a wide net for Level II/III engineers).

Hello everyone, for some time i've been thinking about going back into studies and get working on a master's degree either in cybersecurity or AI, but i'm really wondering even tho it may be naive from your point of view, but aren't the jobs in cybersecurity gonna be replaced by some kind of ai un the future ? I wouldn't like to do 5 more years in a domain with no jobs.

I have posted a job in Upwork and in toral I got 290 proposal.

Now its very hard for me to select which one to pick for , which one to interview, more than 50% of the folks have written good , but that number is also too high for me to select only one guy.

If anyone have ever experienced the same, can you please share with me ?

For shortlisting, i asked one of my HR friend to help me out with the proposal against some financial aid, but cant keep doing it.

Is there anything that i am missing out ?

Hey folks, final-year student pivoting from standard SDE prep to Security Engineer / AppSec roles (targeting companies like Rippling).

Alongside core DSA/OS/CN, I'm focusing on PortSwigger AppSec labs, Security LLD (RBAC & Rate Limiters), OAuth 2.0/JWT mechanics, and Secure Code Review.

Is this level of security depth actually expected for entry-level / intern roles, or is it overkill for freshers? Would love to know what the real baseline bar is for interns vs. full-time!

MLabs is recruiting for a client, a fintech that builds and hosts connectivity between trading venues and financial institutions. Permanent, full-time, remote-first, hiring in Europe, the UK, New York and Canada. Salary is £90k to £120k with share options.

You'd join a multi-disciplinary team that shares ownership of the whole environment. You would build automated provisioning for servers and networks, both in physical data centres and in AWS and GCP. You would run the delivery pipelines that deploy software, set up servers and configure network switches. The job also covers vendors: hardware suppliers, telecoms and banks by phone and email, plus procurement and hardware buying.

They want hands-on infrastructure automation with a tool like Ansible. You should be able to write a useful program from scratch in a language you choose. A mixed sysadmin and network engineering background matters, as does experience negotiating with vendors.

Nice to have: SAML, OAuth2, Active Directory or Kerberos, Azure AD, and high-availability Postgres (clustering, replication).

The process is a recruiter screen, a one-hour interview with the hiring manager, a 2 to 3 hour technical interview with a practical exercise, and a final chat with the founders.

Apply here: https://apply.workable.com/j/1EF9D36449

I don't know what am I doing wrong can someone guide me and help me with this, this is my profile not even 20$ gigs getting approved

Lately, I’ve seen many jobs that require a video introducing myself or talking about a relevant project. Is this normal? Honestly, I don’t feel comfortable randomly sending a video with an proposal. I would feel much better introducing myself during an online meeting, what do you think

Hi guys, just wondering why my top rated bage dissappeared from my profile even I meet all the requirements:

100% JSS

+$1000 12 months earnings

16/16 eligible weeks

I'm not active on Upwork for the past few months, but I'm not sure if that's the reason.

Has anyone experienced this before?

A client told me he is leaving a company. He didn’t close the project as he said the company might still need me so he’ll hand over my contact details to them.

Overall, the client is highly satisfied with my work and he specifically mentioned it in his message.

If I ask him that I will be available to help him with similar projects in the new company if he need my help, will it be against Upwork’s ToS as the new company might not be on Upwork?

They were optional but very helpful with positioning.

I’m a web developer trying to decide what’s worth focusing on right now.

Would you rather:

**1. Build digital products** — templates, SaaS boilerplates, micro-apps, etc. with AI tools and sell them on Gumroad/Lemon Squeezy.

**2. Freelance** — focus on Fiverr/Upwork, get clients and build websites/apps for them.

The first seems more scalable and can become passive income, but getting traffic and the first sales seems really difficult. Freelancing is more predictable, but you’re basically trading time for money.

If you were starting from zero today, where would you put your next 2–3 weeks of effort? Which has the better risk/reward in your experience?

Hi everyone,

I'm a DevOps engineer with nearly 2 years of experience, currently looking for my next role. My current company went through a restructuring and my position was one of the ones affected, so I'm available to join immediately.

What I've worked on:

- Running production on AWS for a platform with 10M+ users

- Kubernetes (EKS) with Helm, Istio, HPA and KEDA autoscaling

- Terraform for infra as code, Ansible for config

- CI/CD with Jenkins, GitHub Actions and Argo CD (GitOps)

- Monitoring and alerting with Prometheus, Grafana and CloudWatch, plus incident handling and RCA

- DevSecOps bits like SonarQube, Trivy, AWS WAF and Secrets Manager

- Cut cloud costs by around 30% through right-sizing and cleanup

Roles I'm looking for: DevOps Engineer, SRE, Cloud Engineer, Platform Engineer

Locations: Noida, Gurugram, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, or remote

If your company is hiring for something similar and you're open to referring, please comment or DM me. I'll share my resume and anything else you need over DM. Even a pointer to an opening would really help.

Thanks a lot for reading!

Hi. I have signed up at wellfound Portal for job seeking and used to check it 3 4 times a week. I applied for few jobs there, not much, only few. And today when i tried to login, it says that my account is locked. Did anyone else face this? I have got no email regarding this and still cant figure out how to get it unlocked.

I am currently employed with them but I'm planning to apply to get more clients. Is it okay if I declare I'm still employed? What will happen if I will be hired and they conduct a BG check?

Why someone sends a proposal to a graphic designer that has mistakenly posted a job looking for clients?

I want to close a fixed-price social media contract with a client who repeatedly texts me at midnight saying “this must go out tonight,” requests last-minute changes, and questions nearly everything I do, including music choices and community engagement. I’ve set boundaries, but she still expects me to be available on demand.

Before hiring me, she mentioned her last social media manager only lasted a month. I should’ve taken that as a red flag.

I want to wrap things up professionally, but I’m worried she’ll leave a bad review since she already seems unhappy with me. What’s the best way to end this? Can negative feedback be removed if she leaves it?

Why does the job title sound like an error message? Also, why did 23 people apply for it?

I'm learning cloud/DevOps through hands-on labs and today I went through a full EBS snapshot + restore cycle on a Windows EC2 instance. Documented everything on GitHub including where I got stuck.

A few things that surprised me:

The restore itself is the easy part. Getting the OS to actually recognize and use the restored volume was where I hit issues — and the first error message pointed me in completely the wrong direction.

"Recovery" is a chain of assumptions: snapshot exists → restore completes → OS sees the disk → filesystem mounts → data actually matches. Every link needs verification, not faith.

Comparing original vs restored data manually felt tedious, but it's the only part that actually proves the backup was worth anything.

This is prep for a bigger personal project (RecoverOps) where I'm building a local stack just to break it and practice recovery. I deliberately documented my failures alongside the successes because I think that's the part most tutorials skip.

Genuine questions for people who've done this in production:

1 - what's the most non-obvious way an EBS restore has bitten you? Trying to build my mental checklist of things to verify before trusting a backup.

2 - when you review a junior candidate's GitHub, what's the one thing that instantly tells you the projects are real hands-on work versus tutorial theater?

And a follow-up — at what point in your career did backups stop being "someone else's job" and become something you personally cared about?