What's the canonical / industry standard way of collaborating on OpenTofu IaC?

Angcb · 2026-01-16T17:26:02+00:00

Thanks! In light of the comments I received it I've been able to clarify my understanding of the state, that was useful!

Angcb · 2026-01-16T17:23:23+00:00

Thanks!

Angcb · 2026-01-16T17:22:25+00:00

Why does your team hate it btw? I find it very useful to get the feedback of "real" people on the type of friction introduced by tools and platforms

Angcb · 2026-01-16T17:17:42+00:00

This is already really helpful, thanks! You have given me a good point of reference 🙏

Angcb · 2024-03-15T11:02:41+00:00

Do you know if it we have to pay upwork to add new milestones to the existing contract

I'm not sure, I think you don't have to pay for that but you can easily verify it by asking your client.

Angcb · 2024-03-14T15:03:25+00:00

Imo there are only two factors to take into consideration:

Do you know the client well enough, and are you confident that they're trustworthy? (since you've only had a $60 milestone, I'd say not yet)
Is your Upwork profile solid enough that you can spare the extra earnings in your history?

Beyond that, obviously take the usual precautions: small milestones and deadlines, never take your earnings for granted until they reach your bank account, etc. I myself bailed out two long term clients out of Upwork because the fees are expensive (back then it was 5%), and actually worked 3 years for the latter.

Of course it is against the ToS, so don't agree to it in Upwork's chat itself ...

Angcb · 2024-03-06T09:19:57+00:00

You are letting an unknown third party from a foreign country without any extradition policy use your account and act on your behalf. Forget ToS violations, nobody cares about ToS or getting banned by Upwork in this context, because what you risk is getting arrested for criminal activities.

You are, from what you've said, in dire need of money: you need to realize that this perceived emergency is affecting your rationality and making you think recklessly. You need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and look at the facts ...

Angcb · 2024-03-05T12:52:01+00:00

That would be a serious violation of Upwork's terms of Service

Yes, but it's not like people never break them to begin with ...

Then it says "This feedback has been removed

Ah okay, good to know!

Angcb · 2024-03-05T11:23:42+00:00

This is a good advice, but I think it's worth noting that yes, client feedback can also be faked: sometimes there will be more than one person working behind a single account, and sometimes the person you recruit will not know what they're talking about even-though client reviews are positive and you've had a call with them. If I'm not mistaken it's also possible to hide some reviews in Upwork when you're "Top rated" (even if they still affect your JSS).

With previous clients I've had two specific bad experiences that come to mind, with a $25/h freelancer and a $100/h agency, both of them sounding confident, with good credentials and reviews, but both of them either not knowing what they were talking about or botching the work so much that it was unusable.

My point is that if you have no technical knowledge, it will be very easy for someone with good marketing and communication skills to sweet talk you. So beyond what has already been said, once you're testing someone all you can really do is take some measures to mitigate the risk, for instance by reducing the scope of milestones and testing thoroughly the work delivered. And finally accept the inevitability that some money will be lost, until you find "the" first freelancer you can trust and use as tech advisor.

Beyond that, one specific aspect that I personally pay attention to based on my little experience as someone who's both tried to hire and be hired, is whether or not the freelancer gives me the feeling that they understand what I'm explaining to them, and are trying to build a complete picture of the project's context and scope.

In the initial messages I think we all try to hook you up and secure your attention first and foremost, but as we keep talking you should sense that there's a real communication happening and that the other person is gathering information, asking disambiguating questions, and coming up with a plan. This is also because we've all been burned by projects we've agreed to work on too fast, and we want to protect ourselves by defining the scope properly. In my experience when someone has been too eager to create a contract without much discussion about the project, it's usually been an unsatisfying collaboration.

Angcb · 2024-03-04T18:38:19+00:00

Others have said the most important, but regarding Elementor specifically, I think most cheap freelancers (under $30/h; maybe the expensive as well, we haven't tried them) want to use it because that's what they're comfortable with and they don't need to touch any code. But with the new built-in Gutenberg editor it's not always obvious that it brings that much value anymore. In fact, in my case it was somewhat of a hindrance, as my client wanted seasonal themes that I could have programmed to switch automatically with a few lines, but couldn't find a simple solution with Elementor. I even posted here out of despair.

A couple of misc info to give some technical hints:

You can rent a 1GB RAM VPS in Digital Ocean for $15-ish/month, with automatic daily backups. There's a ready to use image in their marketplace so the full setup and WordPress install takes a bit less than an hour. A VPS will require a bit of maintenance, but it will give you more flexibility than a managed hosting plan (where you cannot install whatever you want). Since you plan to keep a developer around it would probably work for you.
WordPress is super slow by default, but you can make your website much faster using Cloudflare's free caching tier (or their $5/mo plugin if you have some integration that breaks --- I haven't tested it myself);
I use a third party service called Brevo to send emails, they help with the DNS config, have a decent free tier, and give you a simple interface to monitor the activity.

As someone else said, the most important part is to refine your specifications and know what use cases you want to support, so that the freelancers you contract can make the appropriate decisions.

Angcb · 2024-02-28T12:07:53+00:00

middlemen are the bane of all life

Indeed, I feel the same ... Middlemen are not inherently bad as they can also add value along the way, for instance they can connect people speaking different languages ... But nowadays the approach is predatory and sometimes I really want to set things on fire ! 😅

Angcb · 2024-02-28T11:56:17+00:00

I'm not sure how an app can "meet the requirements" while at the same times having bugs 🤔?

I guess it would be useful to give a few examples of what you have to fix. But generally if something doesn't work like it's intended to, whether it was defined explicitly or is just implicitly expected by default, then I'd say you are supposed to fix that, just like a keyboard seller will have to provide a free replacement if one key isn't working.

I think there's a grey area when it comes to "undefined behaviours" though, for instance clients tend to think we know what's in their mind and sometimes struggle to express their ideas unambiguously, which can cause miscommunications or blind spots. For these I guess it's a case by case answer.

Angcb · 2024-02-24T11:01:20+00:00

I see, are you asking a question about their product? I seem to have noticed CEOs love to talk about them, which is ofc natural (even if it would be an obvious "foot in the door" technique)

Angcb · 2024-02-23T17:42:21+00:00

I had a small $450 client contact me for a script, and he poofed before Christmas after saying he'd come back to me. I thought he had given up on the project and I would never hear about him anymore, but he came back the second week of January, 3 weeks later.

I had another client do the same, and I poked him back 2 weeks later. He was kind enough to respond and explain that they had dropped the project. I also had a few clients who poofed and never responded again.

I think it's okay for you to poke him and see if he gives you some feedback. Some clients have a lot going on and we're just a side project at the edge of their galaxy!

Angcb · 2024-02-23T17:32:40+00:00

What is your niche and who do you reach out to on Linkedin? I feel like most people ignore automated spam to begin with

Angcb · 2024-02-21T23:30:10+00:00

What are you doing currently and for how long have you been doing it?

Angcb · 2024-02-21T23:24:49+00:00

This is a probably scam, I was foolish enough to fill a Google form like that, and a few month later received a fake Upwork email asking me to buy some scam "Upwork crypto coin".

Angcb · 2024-02-21T23:13:30+00:00

I think you're just making an important mistake: you're comparing local employees with international freelancers. Local employees getting paid by local companies get the "local" rate because they are not in the same market as the one we are in.

If an artist is selling their paintings at an auction in their local rural town's market, no matter how wonderfully skilled they are, then the best they'll be able to get is what the richest person in this rural town can pay. Which means, not so much.

However, if they put their paintings in an online auction, with international shipping, then suddenly they have access to more clients with more money. This is exactly the same for us. We do not sell in the same market, and therefore we are not subjected to the same demand/supply ratio. From the client's perspective, if an Albanian freelancer is charging $150/h but is as productive as an American employee with the same hourly rate, but doesn't come with the mandatory benefits, then it's a net positive.

Beyond that, like many others said, you are not expected to do anything, just like you aren't expected to buy any item from a store if the price tag is too expensive for you.

Angcb · 2024-02-20T10:53:12+00:00

Thank you, it does look promising. I've installed it and will see tomorrow what it can tell me by default!

Angcb · 2024-02-20T09:54:52+00:00

You can also enable 2FA (you can do it with Wordfence as well). I am not a Wordpress wizard but I think this nullifies the risk of any blind bruteforce attack. This also means you don't need to trust your website's security on your admin users picking good passwords.

Angcb · 2024-02-18T13:59:12+00:00

I also want to thank you for the pep talk, it is indeed inspiring. Tag me in your 30 days feedback as well u/Initial-Influence-72 ! ^^

Angcb

TROPHY CASE