I am browsing Upwork's recent listings again, looking for something to apply to. Sadly most listings are pretty terrible... either super-low paid (less than $15/hour), unethical (data scraping bots etc.), or they are waaaay too vague, making it hard to figure out what that person/company actually needs done.

Employers complain all the time that they don't get quality proposals on Upwork. But please, people, you have to put more thought into the listings you create. Unlike in real life, on Upwork it costs $$$ to apply to jobs (not to mention the time to write a proposal), and most jobs get immediately overrun with applicants... many of them AI-generated/bot-created, but still.

Would I waste my "Connects" (credits) that I paid for to apply to something that is pretty vague and thus has already 50 generic proposals?

Please give us real devs a bit more info about what you need done specifically. Don't just write "Need help with React App", "add features to UI" etc. Which feature? What does your React App do? What industry are you in, generally? (I don't want to touch anything crypto/advertising related, and don't want to waste my connects applying to such jobs.)

Ideally, employers on Upwork would post a lot of technical details if they already have a codebase. E.g. for e.g. React jobs list the npm packages used from package.json so I can determine how quickly I can jump in and start changing things, or if there are components where I have to do some research and upskill. (Npm packages can be quite hefty and feature-rich... think of UI component libraries, 2D/3D plotting libraries, map libraries, etc.)

Who knows, if there is a ton of overlap with one of my showcase projects, I could show them that I already worked on a very similar codebase and can hit the ground running.

There would be fewer proposals, and with the proposals submitted, the employers could tell more easily if they are AI-generated or by a real person who worked on a similar problem.

Anyway, enough of this rant.

Sometimes companies do post very specific challenges. That can be very interesting to read, and you can imagine how you'd solve them. Sometimes on the stream I have to research some acronyms or buzzwords from various industries, as well as third-party tech products and SaaS products. That is fun because I learn a lot.

Enjoy!