<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>brtkdotse</author><text>They&amp;#x27;re alive and well in Northern Europe at least. I&amp;#x27;d say a majority of contracting work is done through them since they somehow get exclusivity deals with big clients like H&amp;amp;M, Scania, SAAB and the like. They charge around 5-15% (almost always 10% though) of every invoice.&lt;p&gt;Before you balk at the number, consider that during my almost 5 years as a solo contractor I&amp;#x27;ve spent _zero_ hours doing sales. None. When I want a new assignment I send one email and within a week or two I have a 6 month contract.</text><parent_chain><item><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>One thing that makes me sad, is the old &amp;quot;contract agent&amp;quot; seems to have gone the way of the dodo.&lt;p&gt;I clearly remember these folks. They acted in almost exactly the same way as literary or artist agents; searching out opportunities for their clients, and setting up interviews, etc. As a hiring manager, I dealt with them frequently, and had friends that used them.&lt;p&gt;They used to make a lot of money, because they would charge a percentage of the rate they negotiated for you.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, it looks like they have been replaced by &amp;quot;race to the bottom&amp;quot; sites, like Upwork, or these contract companies, that hire you at a fairly low rate, and shop you out for very high rates. You get to &amp;quot;enjoy&amp;quot; the crappy treatment most companies give to contractors, but at rates lower than the employees that sit next to you, shooting spitballs at you.&lt;p&gt;I encountered this, when working with recruiters, after leaving my last company. The ones that didn&amp;#x27;t immediately hang up on me, after finding out I was older, started trying to lowball me into being one of their contract shop employees. They would &lt;i&gt;love&lt;/i&gt; telling me that I shouldn&amp;#x27;t ask for too much, &amp;quot;because of my age,&amp;quot; before &amp;quot;generously&amp;quot; mentioning that they happen to have a contract shop that would be willing to do me the &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; favor of &amp;quot;throwing some work at me.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a real slime-pit, these days.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Ask HN: Where are the good platforms for contract work?</title><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been looking for contract work for the past couple months, and it&amp;#x27;s been dire. All the job boards are looking for full time employees, and on Hacker News the only recommendation is Toptal.&lt;p&gt;Is there really no other platform for decently paid contract work that&amp;#x27;s not a complete race to the bottom? I find I&amp;#x27;m close to having to abandon 10 years of consulting because I have no idea where to find anything else than full-time employment.&lt;p&gt;The other two job boards I&amp;#x27;ve been keeping an eye on are mostly about React and other frontend roles, with offers few and far between. Linkedin is similarly dire for contract work.&lt;p&gt;Is Toptal the only option for someone with 16 years experience that wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to work for peanuts? Or just going back to being an employee?&lt;p&gt;(In case anyone&amp;#x27;s reading that&amp;#x27;s looking for a senior Elixir&amp;#x2F;Rust&amp;#x2F;Go engineer&amp;#x2F;sysadmin, resume&amp;#x27;s in my profile. I&amp;#x27;m based in London.)&lt;p&gt;EDIT: excellent responses so far, thanks. I like how many are suggesting going through recruiters, while the common motif on other similar posts is to avoid LinkedIn. I&amp;#x27;ve started cleaning up my Linkedin profile this week, and I already have a dozen recruiters setting up appointments with me. I will try and explicitly request contract jobs with them.</text></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>thr0wawayf00</author><text>&amp;gt; Nowadays, it looks like they have been replaced by &amp;quot;race to the bottom&amp;quot; sites, like Upwork, or these contract companies, that hire you at a fairly low rate, and shop you out for very high rates.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t help but feel like these platforms are like Uber for programmers: devoid of all meaningful professional contact and ultimately the commodification of programming as a job. The power dynamic has shifted to give most of the power to the buyer. Sad times indeed.</text><parent_chain><item><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>One thing that makes me sad, is the old &amp;quot;contract agent&amp;quot; seems to have gone the way of the dodo.&lt;p&gt;I clearly remember these folks. They acted in almost exactly the same way as literary or artist agents; searching out opportunities for their clients, and setting up interviews, etc. As a hiring manager, I dealt with them frequently, and had friends that used them.&lt;p&gt;They used to make a lot of money, because they would charge a percentage of the rate they negotiated for you.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, it looks like they have been replaced by &amp;quot;race to the bottom&amp;quot; sites, like Upwork, or these contract companies, that hire you at a fairly low rate, and shop you out for very high rates. You get to &amp;quot;enjoy&amp;quot; the crappy treatment most companies give to contractors, but at rates lower than the employees that sit next to you, shooting spitballs at you.&lt;p&gt;I encountered this, when working with recruiters, after leaving my last company. The ones that didn&amp;#x27;t immediately hang up on me, after finding out I was older, started trying to lowball me into being one of their contract shop employees. They would &lt;i&gt;love&lt;/i&gt; telling me that I shouldn&amp;#x27;t ask for too much, &amp;quot;because of my age,&amp;quot; before &amp;quot;generously&amp;quot; mentioning that they happen to have a contract shop that would be willing to do me the &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; favor of &amp;quot;throwing some work at me.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a real slime-pit, these days.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Ask HN: Where are the good platforms for contract work?</title><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been looking for contract work for the past couple months, and it&amp;#x27;s been dire. All the job boards are looking for full time employees, and on Hacker News the only recommendation is Toptal.&lt;p&gt;Is there really no other platform for decently paid contract work that&amp;#x27;s not a complete race to the bottom? I find I&amp;#x27;m close to having to abandon 10 years of consulting because I have no idea where to find anything else than full-time employment.&lt;p&gt;The other two job boards I&amp;#x27;ve been keeping an eye on are mostly about React and other frontend roles, with offers few and far between. Linkedin is similarly dire for contract work.&lt;p&gt;Is Toptal the only option for someone with 16 years experience that wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to work for peanuts? Or just going back to being an employee?&lt;p&gt;(In case anyone&amp;#x27;s reading that&amp;#x27;s looking for a senior Elixir&amp;#x2F;Rust&amp;#x2F;Go engineer&amp;#x2F;sysadmin, resume&amp;#x27;s in my profile. I&amp;#x27;m based in London.)&lt;p&gt;EDIT: excellent responses so far, thanks. I like how many are suggesting going through recruiters, while the common motif on other similar posts is to avoid LinkedIn. I&amp;#x27;ve started cleaning up my Linkedin profile this week, and I already have a dozen recruiters setting up appointments with me. I will try and explicitly request contract jobs with them.</text></story>