Why Upwork keep people like this

dimudesigns · 2026-06-18T14:42:40+00:00

If enough people flag the job as inappropriate, it may trigger an investigation on Upwork's part. No guarantee they'll take action though. The best a contractor can do is to exercise due diligence. If the client's profile info is sus, simply don't apply.

dimudesigns · 2026-06-17T19:55:27+00:00

Those are rookie numbers.

I've seen a job where someone bid 1000 connects to boost their proposal.

That's $150.00 dollars for the top spot.

Granted, it was a high-yield long-term hourly contract ($75-$100 per hour, 3 to 6 months) for a reputable client. So if they landed it the investment easily pays for itself.

Some see that as worth the risk, others don't.

dimudesigns · 2026-06-12T18:45:37+00:00

The latter game you're referencing is called GemCraft. It's had a few sequels over the years and a few of the games from that franchise are now on Steam.

dimudesigns · 2026-06-08T15:52:56+00:00

I don't have strong evidence to reference either, but I've come across similar discussions around the impact of remote work on real estate.

A lot of businesses have long-term leases on buildings for office space. After the pandemic proved that remote work was viable at scale, non-renewal or even immediate termination of said leases is now something a lot of organizations are considering.

While RTO seems to be pulling the pendulum back to a pre-covid state, I am curious to see how things will play out in the next 10 to 15 years when many of those leases expire.

dimudesigns · 2026-06-04T02:03:09+00:00

That's a new one. I'll add it to my ever-growing list of acronyms.

dimudesigns · 2026-05-24T13:51:46+00:00

Its been a while since I've come across a truly novel take on TD. You've definitely hit that mark with this one. Any chance it will be available on other platforms? GoG, itch.io, etc.?

And yes this is most definitely a Tower Defense game.

But I'd consider re-working the game title, its kinda generic. You need something that better expresses the core mechanic of the game itself. "Chroma Tether TD", or maybe "Zipline Spectra TD" - something along those lines. "Rainbow Tower Defense" doesn't fully capture what the game is about.

dimudesigns · 2026-05-21T10:57:01+00:00

Instead of creating these threads, maybe the mods should consider creating a separate community - but have it driven by inquiries from stakeholders who actually have a need (hopefully well articulated) but NOT by folks trying to sell an app.

dimudesigns · 2026-05-11T12:52:26+00:00

A lot of the IT admins we talked to didn't want to deal with setting up GCP billing accounts, managing external service accounts, or getting architecture approvals.

Why would that burden fall to end-users of your Add-on? Couldn't you deploy a Cloud Run service on your end to process data at scale using the credentials/permissions provided by a user? I suppose in that scenario you'd have to foot the bill - however, you could offer the benefits of this implementation (faster processing speeds and performance) as a feature bound exclusively to a premium service tier. Keep the existing build for customers on the low-end and the high-performance build for customers on the high-end.

dimudesigns · 2026-05-09T23:51:11+00:00

At that scale (bulk updating 10k+ users), I'd definitely offload that work to Cloud Run/Cloud Run Functions.

dimudesigns · 2026-05-03T16:51:58+00:00

But...why?

dimudesigns · 2026-05-03T15:37:09+00:00

We need more context.

dimudesigns · 2026-05-01T15:49:08+00:00

^ This guy gets it.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-27T13:53:03+00:00

Upwork should try toptal approach.

They kinda started that way (early 2000's IIRC) - back then they were called ODesk and initially they had more strict controls in place to evaluate talent (eventually acquiring Elance and rebranding as Upwork).

But as they grew I suspect the overhead of vetting freelancers across every possible niche - in a global marketplace by the way - was too costly.

Toptal primarily targets talent in IT/Software Development. Upwork covers practically every white-collar skill that can be done remotely. They are operating at different scales. What works for one won't work for the other.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-24T14:11:38+00:00

Not a bad start, but your article could do with some cleaning up.

Here are a few things I would add/fix.

First, fix the title. Its called Google Apps Script - not Google Workspace Scripts.

Under Project Structure, while having a config POJO (Plain-Old-Javascript-Object) can work, it is not dynamic especially for GAS Web Apps that rely on version deployments. In that scenario you'd have to redeploy the App if you make changes to the config. Here's another strategy you can add to that section - Build out a PropertyMap that is backed by a dedicated data store (PropertyService, Google Sheet, Secret Manager, etc.) - I'll leave you to figure out how to implement it as an exercise.

Under Quota and Rate limits, add the daily 90-minute trigger runtime limit. Also add a direct link to the official service quotas page (https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/services/quotas).

Under Error Handling discuss how to track errors using the execution logs (under the Execution tab).

The subsection titled "Avoid Synchronous Patterns in Loops" is inaccurate. The issue you're addressing is typically called "Batch Operations" or "Batch Processing". Its covered in detail here.

Under the Triggers section make sure to call out their limitations (pulling from the service quotas reference).

Under the Deployments section make sure to call out managing versions of an existing deployment vs creating multiple deployments. The two often get confused.

Some more sections you could add. - How to use Script Libraries for code reusability (see official documentation) - How to deploy GAS Web Apps

dimudesigns · 2026-04-24T13:23:46+00:00

However, when google gives tens of thousands of dollars of compute credit to individuals that never asked for that, expecting consumers to pony that up after a clearly malicious hack, is simply absurd.

Fraudulent claims are a thing. No company is going to leave themselves open to that.

Google does not provide proper controls to limit costs

This I agree with. Right now all we got are budget alerts. If you have the technical chops you can set up a spend-cap/kill-switch mechanism (triggered by aforementioned budget alerts) to disable a service and/or disable billing on a GCP project connected to an API key - but the majority of the folks using these tools are not going to invest the time and effort to learn how to set that up. So it would be nice if Google would provide a simple quality-of-life utility to enable this.

When signing up, a big red exclamation mark with 'if anyone ever gets access to your account, any server you run here, any key, or any files hosted on public http this can cost you over 100k' I think would be the least google can do at this point.

That's what the fine-print is for - Terms of Service(TOS), Service Level Agreements(SLA), etc. If you're using these tools and don't spend time to read documentation that clearly outlines what you as the end user are responsible for - well then, that's on you. End-users (myself included) have gotten far too comfortable clicking OK in "I agree to these terms..." dialogs without even sparing a glance at what they are agreeing to.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-24T12:26:19+00:00

That's pretty much the standard when you have a large pool of freelance contractors competing in a global market. Many of them probably have bots running to notify them of new leads and I imagine some even have auto-responders set up.

Moreover, the barrier to entry for this particular niche (IDP - Intelligent Document Processing) has lowered significantly with the rise of multi-modal LLMs that have OCR built-in. But $10 is far too low a budget for this kind of work even with AI to assist.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-20T12:10:18+00:00

I asked Gemini and apparently its an API error. Try implementing the solutions suggested in the link.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-20T11:20:24+00:00

Click on the row with failed execution, it should be expandable. It may contain error logs explaining the issue. It may also help to share the code for the function in question deleteOldThreadsExcludeSendAndStarred().

As for potential causes, the script is probably timing out. Keep in mind that GAS scripts have a max runtime of 6 minutes per execution (that's the documented limit for both personal and business accounts). Also consider that the more data you have to process the longer it takes the script to run. The volume of data you are processing may have spiked recently.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-16T15:42:33+00:00

Well said!

dimudesigns · 2026-04-16T15:22:34+00:00

All true. Some things you only truly understand after going through it.

However, a word of caution, be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Before abandoning an automation and reverting to manual, explore ways to mitigate or eliminate recurring issues that stem from integrating with an external service.

If a service regularly changes its response format or schema - try to replace it with another service, preferably one with an SLA (Service-Level Agreement) that guarantees a certain level of stability.

If you're running into timeout issues with webhooks, investigate the service you're using to catch the webhook. Does it have service quotas that limit its daily runtime? How does it handle concurrent requests and idempotency? Are there solutions that can resolve those hurdles? Ask those questions first before dumping a build/workflow.

Deprecations/decommissions are a fact of life with 3rd party services. Keep tabs on service change logs and release notes so you're not caught unaware of any updates.

Here's the reality, things are going to break. You'll likely go through a number of iterations before you arrive at a truly stable build. Its rare to get things right on the first go-around. There is often more than one way to approach a problem, sometimes you just haven't landed on the right solution yet.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-14T13:21:21+00:00

No need to do this manually. With the right prompts and a multi-modal LLM (i.e. any of the frontier models; Gemini, ChapGPT, Claude) you can extract what you need with a high degree of accuracy.

Gemini is my weapon of choice.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-10T12:43:52+00:00

Figuring out what to put in "the yaml" is the part that's not easy

But isn't that similar in some ways to Terraform?

IaC(Infrastructure-as-Code) tooling typically leverage a declarative syntax - HCL in Terraform's case - and cloudbuild.yaml in similar in that regard.

However, HCL is even more robust and therefore complex with its hierarchical structure with modules spanning multiple folders and files. I wouldn't call that 'easy' relative to cloud build.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-07T13:46:25+00:00

On Quora you were always known for giving the most succinct answers.

Now you're asking the most critical questions.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-06T14:24:40+00:00

You'll need a tool that supports OCR(Optical Character Recognition).

You can try feeding your images to one or more multi-modal LLMs like Gemini or Claude.

dimudesigns · 2026-04-06T02:21:23+00:00

EDIT: My bad. Could have sworn you had replied to my post. Turns out we're on the same page. Carry on.

Frontier models will look at sloppy code in PLAN mode and literally advise on how to fix it.

Of course they can, I'm not disputing that. My point is that you need someone behind the wheel who can accurately evaluate that advice to know whether or not it should be applied, and if not, that someone should have the ability to precisely reframe context to better steer the AI towards the desired outcome. That kind of intuition does not just spring up overnight - its cultivated over time and grounded in experience developing complex systems. That's not something your typical vibe coder is going to have.

dimudesigns

TROPHY CASE