Code of Conduct

Everybody using Squadrie: clients posting work, freelancers and squads doing it, and us. It applies on the platform and to anything to do with work arranged here — a conversation that started on a project and moved elsewhere is still covered.

The Terms of Service are the contract between you and us, and they win wherever they speak. This document is how we expect people to treat each other while they are here.

A marketplace works because strangers can rely on what they are told. Almost everything below follows from that one idea.

• Deal straight. Do not misrepresent who you are, what you can do, or what you have done.
• No harassment, threats, intimidation or sustained unwanted contact — including after a contract ends or an application is declined.
• No abuse aimed at somebody's religion, caste, gender, sexuality, disability, age or origin. Not in a brief, not in a message, not in a review.
• No impersonation: of another member, of a company you do not represent, or of Squadrie.
• No spam: mass proposals unrelated to what was asked for, unsolicited promotion, or recruiting members to another platform through our messages.
• No scraping, bulk copying of profiles or briefs, or automated use of the platform that we have not agreed to in writing.

You set the terms of a project, which means most of the ways this goes wrong start with you.

• Write a brief that describes the work you actually need, and screen for what the work requires rather than for who you would prefer to work with.
• Auditions exist to judge work, not to harvest it. Do not run one to obtain free output you intend to use, and do not ask for unpaid work beyond what the brief sets out and the applicant agreed to.
• Do not use proposals or a conversation to extract a full approach, then take it elsewhere. If you want the work, contract for it.
• Pay through the platform. Clause 7 of the Terms (Working with each other, and keeping work on the platform) is not a formality — escrow is what protects you as much as the person doing the work.
• Respect confidentiality: material a freelancer shares while pitching is theirs to share on those terms.
• Give a reason when you decline, and leave a review that describes the work rather than settles a grudge.

You are the promise that was made when a proposal was accepted.

• Only claim what you can do. Portfolios you did not make, or did not make alone, are the fastest way to lose an account here.
• Deliver what was agreed, and say early if something is going to slip. A late message is a problem; silence is a breach.
• Keep a client's material confidential — their briefs, their data, their unpublished work — during the engagement and after it.
• Do not take the relationship off-platform, and do not ask a client to. The same rule binds both sides (clause 7).
• One account per person. A squad is a group of individuals who each hold their own account, not one person running several.
• Do not mark work as complete to force a release, and do not withhold agreed work to force a payment.

The split is not a detail to settle later. When a milestone is released, the recorded split is what pays each member, and a dispute about it after the money has moved is far harder to fix than a conversation before the work starts.

Agree the split honestly and up front, do the share you agreed to, and do not quietly move a teammate's percentage.

Keep payments on the platform, in both directions. That single rule carries most of the protection either side has: escrow holds the client's money until work is released, the record of what was agreed is what a dispute is decided on, and the fee that keeps the platform running is what we are paid. Somebody who asks you to pay or be paid outside is asking you to give all of that up.

It is a breach to ask, to agree, or to do it — even when the work itself is fine, and even when both sides are happy. There is no version of this where we look the other way because the transaction went well.

Attempting to arrange it in a message — writing an email address, a phone number or a payment handle to move a deal off the platform — is treated the same as doing it.

Report from wherever you are: a profile or a portfolio item, a project, a contract workspace, a conversation or a ticket. Every one of those carries a report entry point, and they all open the same kind of ticket, with a reference you can follow.

You can raise it at /support too, and you will see the date we owe you an answer by on the ticket itself.

Say what happened and where. Links, screenshots and message references help; you do not need to prove it before reporting it, and you do not need to be the person it was aimed at to report it.

We acknowledge within 24 hours and resolve within 15 days — the periods the IT Rules 2021 require of us and the Terms promise. Where content has to come down on the order of a court or a government authority, we act within 36 hours.

Tell us if you are reporting in confidence. We will not hand your identity to the person you are reporting unless we have to in order to act fairly — for instance where their answer needs to address the specific allegation.

We read the record before we act on it: the brief, the workspace, the messages, the tickets. The loudest account is not the deciding one, and a member who reports often is not presumed right because they reported first.

Where something is upheld, we act proportionally and we tell the person what the decision was and why:

• A warning, with what has to change.
• Removal of the content — a review, a portfolio item, a message.
• A temporary suspension, or removal of a posting privilege.
• A permanent closure of the account, under clause 18 of the Terms (Suspension and termination).
• Referral to the authorities where the conduct may be criminal — fraud, extortion, threats of violence.

Where money has been taken by fraud, we act on the account and the platform's record; we cannot claw money out of somebody's bank account, and we will say so rather than imply otherwise.

Ask for a review through the same ticket. A second person reads it against the record rather than the first decision, and you will be told the outcome either way.

That is not a court and we are not one. Where you believe somebody has broken the law, the grievance route published with the Terms is the formal channel, and it carries its own clock.

We will add to this document when we find a way people are being let down that it does not already cover, and we will say what changed. It does not bind you to anything more than the Terms do, and it adds no obligation to pay anybody anything.