My startup Omnidrive first found oDesk when we needed to find contract C++ development skills to work on a project. At first look, it appears just like one of many other portals and marketplaces that assist project managers to find talent – but upon close inspection oDesk has distinct advantages that make it one of the best and easiest ways to find employee’s on-demand.
After 2 years in beta oDesk launched in May of this year as a marketplace for contract talent. We found that oDesk has a large number (3600 providers) of highly skilled individuals in a large number of categories, from document writing, Java development to C++ development. The process of finding a contractor was very simple, after we posted a job ad we received dozens of responses within days and Omnidrive had the position filled by a highly skilled team in India by the end of the week.
The high quality of providers is on thing that oDesk holds above competition, but it really shines once you have selected a provider to work with. oDesk uses webcams and screen-capturing technology on the providers side to monitor the progress of work being done. The online contracting business has long had issues of distrust and the project management and monitoring technologies in oDesk certainly alleviate that. We were able to watch and communicate with our provider using a webcam, which solidified the relationship which was only days old.
The providers are primarily from India, Russia, Ukraine, US, Philippines and Canada, and there are currently 255 job openings in the system. oDesk is also unique in that it doesn’t fix the cost of a project, instead charging an hourly rate, which allows the project manager to use the providers as required. For it’s part of the process, oDesk takes a commission on hours charges, and currently tens of thousands of hours are being charged out each month.
oDesk is based in Menlo Park and they have raised $6M from Sigma Partners and Globespan. oDesk eats their own dog food, as 50% of their 40-strong team are oDesk providers, and they use their own project management system to build the platform.
oDesk provides a simple, easy and safe option for sourcing and managing skilled contract labor.
hey thanks for the awesome writeup Nik! (and glad to hear you’re also a customer
for folks interested in learning more, here’s a quick flash video tour of oDesk that shows off the basic oDesk tools, marketplace & provider directory, and the super-cool work diary pictured above.
(full disclosure: i’m working with oDesk as a part-time consultant and advisor)
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
this seems really great… much better than elance and rent a coder…defintely going to try this…
what i really like about this is that odesk has actually spent time filtering developers (english skills etc..) and gives “some” viewpoint on the quality of the programmer…
C++ still rocks.
I’m sorry but since when do owners of startups close to you post news on this site? Michael, isn’t this why you hired Marshall Kirkpatrick?
It has come to my attention recently that some startups seem to get better treatment than others.
How come Omnidrive (of which the owner is a friend of yours), Faces.com (which started advertising here soon after a very positive review), and Zooomr get such good press?
I’m really starting to wonder about the neutrality of the “news” here.
Why not let Kristopher Tate write the next Flickr news?
“news.”
I can say that I have used odesk for over a year now and there is some good and bad behind that company.
First off, that company really does try, I give them that. They appear at least on the surface to care about their users which is rare in this day and age.
However, on the flip side, buyer beware. You will find quickly for the the savvy that the norm is to considerably overestimate projects. I myself was attracted to the fact that the coders were at par with the rest of the internet at least in terms of compensation. Then of course, the good part was that you can watch them, however this does build a false sense of security. I found literally on average an odesk coder probably estimated 2x to 3x the amount of hours needed for a project over what it should be. While I don’t think the ol’ bait and switch is the company policy, it sure did appear to be the norm.
The second and most frustrating challenge is that the fact that coders are monitored is good but it’s a double edge sword for buyers. We had one developer who estimated 20 hours for a project which is fine but in 20 hours, they probably completed 5% of the work. We were furious and it wouldn’t be resolved. The coder just said that it would take longer than needed but come on. Anyway, because the hours were already spent and we couldn’t do anything to limit those, we were out that money. Certainly the coder was bared from future projects but oDesk’s stance was that they did the work, so we had no choice but to pay.
I think it could be a good service offering but they clearly do have serious issues that need to be addressed and in a year, I’ve not seen that which I think is a challenge to them because if they don’t learn to move quicker at addressing some of the concerns, they will definitely lose out to the next better mouse trap.
This looks to be a great webiste, however I am wondering if others aren’t doing a better job such as elance.com
LongTimeUser: appreciate the direct feedback (& thanks for comment about ‘caring about our users’… like Avis, we try harder
Q: regarding your concerns over project estimates / completed work, do you feel these are issues due to the oDesk service, or rather due to the particular developer you happened to work with?
one of the advantages oDesk offers via both the oDesk work diary (see screenshot above) & hourly model is that if you’re not happy with a provider or the work you’re SEEing, you can stop any project immediately and go hire someone else. with other services, since you aren’t SEEing the work as it progresses, you won’t know if anything is going wrong until much later.
i sympathize with your situation where someone you hired didn’t work out, however it’s exactly this scenario that oDesk built its toolset to address — oDesk lets you find out when projects aren’t going the way you want, and lets you stop the project so you don’t waste any more money.
on the front-end of the process, oDesk has also delivered some new features this summer to help improve provider selection & hiring:
1) oDesk Feedback ratings on all providers help inform buyers on past performance (similar to an eBay seller feedback score)
2) oDesk Skills Tests on over 100 technical & business subjects + public scores on each oDesk provider profile help show how well people have mastered their skills
all this info aside, it’s important for us to hear about any problems you experience. oDesk was operating in beta for over a year, and we went “live” with our production environment this past May. we’ve already made several feature improvements in the past 4 months since launch, and we’ll continue to work on making it even better.
again, thanks for the feedback… we’ll keep listening.
- dave mcclure
Last time I heard the ODesk commission was around 1/3 of the hourly rate. Take $5 off of $15 and you get a rate that’s quite low which only gives more incentive for developers to overestimate the hours. After all this is the only way for them to make more money.
Then again, $2000/mo is a very high salary for an average programmer in big Russian city like St. Petersburg. In fact, I think programmers make 1-1.5k on average. This gives you are range of $6-12 so ODesk will find plenty of resources for a long time to come.
Last but not least, I heard that once ODesk switched their original programming team to the ODesk system, all but a handful of their programmers quit in frustration. I think you need to be desperate to work under the supervision of a web cam, screen capturing and keystroke monitoring software.
I ran an offshore development company back in the bubble days which is to say that I dug up projects in the US and shipped them off to teams in Russia for development. I made sure the dev teams had their own project management and solid tech skills and I shuttled back and forth between the client and the teams to make sure requirements were well understood and everyone was happy.
I always billed fixed price, according to milestone and never had a problem with programmers slacking off. Most of my problems were of the “we did everything by the spec but now you are saying the spec is wrong?!” variety. There was always an abundance of development talent, what did me in was a dearth of clients.
The value we found in monitoring was very short lived. I assumed like I imagine most did going in, that by having that ability, you would be able to accurately track results but that quickly become a false hope. I think it’s a good differential they have but it’s definitely going to find itself old very fast. I was unaware that they hired many of their own developers. I can certainly see how the intentions were good but I imagine that has created many internal issues.
When it comes down to it, I think odesk can end up being a good service provider but it’s really going to have to start thinking like a traditional buy and not a bunch of coders which what appears to be the case. The benefit must be seen to the buyers and that’s where the focus should be right now. Just my 3 cents for what it’s worth.
I have used elance.com and I’m very satisfied. I have found a very proficient programming team in India that charges 15$ per hour.
The thing I like about elance is the fact that you can take a bid on the total project cost instead of a per hour charge. This way if the programmer underestimated the time it would take then it is their loss. The open market of accepting bids from all of the programmers keeps the bids competitive.
I can see programmers getting really annoyed that big brother is watching them on a webcam. You can see from the code and the fact that it is working if they are doing their job right.
Concerned: I have been writing for Techcrunch for almost 6 months now, just haven’t been writing as often recently. When there is a conflict of interest it is disclosed (just as it is with any other writer)
Hello!
I am one of the “oldest” oDesk providers… Since 2004 year… I am a manager of offshore Russian firm. We now using elance and getafreelancer and oDesk. Believe me, oDesk is one of the best among them… The main bad thing about elance and getafreelancer is a bid system. I can understand the buyers that talk they like elance system, cause the price of whole system can drop to the floor (Indian programmers have the ability to drop each project price
) – but please think about the quality! Buyer at oDesk can control each step of process, he can remove the hours if he think the project is going bad and so on… The elance system set developers to economizу on resources and this lead to bad quality of the project itself. I can agree that elance and getafreelancer models are godd in some situation, it’s right – but all developers that even tried oDesk – don’t trade this for others…
US companies that continue to use offshore talent to build products whose target market are the people who’s job they just offshored is insanity. You are undermining the economy you rely upon for your business success.
Is there a bubble in Web2.0? Is there a bubble in the housing market? Keep sending US jobs offshore and you will find that your 700K condo is worth 150 when the bottom falls out…
AmericanMade – Our company was spending $150k a month on software development in the United States. It was not only expensive but very time consuming, which became the biggest challenge. As you can imagine, finding good software developers who can work in a fast paced environment isn’t easy and we tend to go through time in droves considering the high stress environment we are in. By outsourcing the vast majority of that development internationally, we reduced the cost to $30k a month, however, the difference allowed us to invest back into the company and grow it bigger and better which created even more jobs for the type of positions we could not outsource.
Finding developers for projects today is simply a matter of posting a job opening on a series of forums, when we do that, we get at least 30 interested people or groups for a single job. They are usually hired the same day and determined to stay with the company the next day. When we did development in the United States, it would average about $5k to find a person as there was job posting cost, advertising, recruitment time, interview process, the call back and much more. Today, it cost about $100 to place the same position in time and resources, and is typically done from start to finish in about 2 days.
In terms of quality, when we have in house developers, there was sick time , there was turn over and there was even employee theft. None of that exists with outsourcing as when one person fails, there are 30 more to take their position whereas when someone in house failed, we had to go through an HR process which usually would last two weeks.
Outsourcing has it’s draw backs, yes but it’s not so black and white. The cost of development nearly broke our company which wouldn’t have benefited anyone. Today, less than a year later, we are hiring more, making 400% more revenue and investing every cent back into the business and will never look back.
That people is the reality of good outsourcing.
Its impres’sive to witnes’s the quantity of apostrophes’ an MBA bash’s out the’s day’s.
I am a visitor to this site. I really enjoy the discussions. Having said that, I believe American programmers can compete in the global market not just on the quality of work but also the prices.
LongTimeUser – thank you for your well thought out response. However, let me make my stance clear. I absolutely advocate outsourcing and your illustration as to the pain incurred while trying to locate, interview, and hire FT staff speaks to the reasons why outsourcing is good. I agree.
Now the flip side – I absolutely do not advocate offshoring. Outsourcing and offshoring are not the same. My decision not to offshore is primarily an ethical / philisophical decision as stated above but is also a financial and management decision as well.
I have been very successful at finding highly qualified resources all over the US in places outside of the major metros like the Bay Area, Raleigh, Boston, etc. Yes, you can actually get programmers, graphic designers, & multimedia developers for beween $15 – $30 per hour just because the cost of living is lower where they are located in the US. Think Kansas, Texas, Florida, New England, Wissconsin…tech workers are breeding across the country.
Here is a real example: On a Thursday at 5:30 pm I was contacted by my client who needed an award winning Flash designer for a 3 month gig. All work could be remote. I sent an email to my network and by 9:00 am Friday my client had their resource for $30hr. He was located in Kentucky. In the Bay Area, that person would have cost $65 – $85 and they would have been too busy to even look at such a last minute opportunity.
Above, you state that the “difference allowed us to invest back into the company and grow it bigger and better which created even more jobs for the type of positions we could not outsource.”
What do you mean by bigger and better?
Exactly what types of jobs can’t you offshore? Let’s take a look at what can be offshored:
Customer Service – yes
Programming – yes
Graphic Design – yes
Marketing & Branding – yes
Product Development – yes
IT – yes
Executive Management – no
Sales – probably not
Janitorial – no, but illegals can do that
So what is a company left with? Managers, Janitors, & Sharks? Sounds like company owners with 400% more in their pockets? You know I’m joking…but I think you get my point?
oDesk appears to be experiencing technical difficulties…
(will: what difficulties are you experiencing? i just logged in ok a few minutes ago.)
americanmade: i won’t dispute that there are some roles in a company that are better served by being physically close by, however i’m also pretty confident there are many functions that can be performed remotely, and quite competently, by many talented people around the world.
personally speaking: i was born in West Virginia, however my wife is Japanese, my in-laws live in Tokyo, my best friends are Indian, African, Chinese, Pakistani, Lebanese, Israeli, Syrian, Russian, Greek, Korean, Filipino, European, Peruvian, etc, etc. the community i live in here in the SF bay area is full of immigrants, many with family still living in other countries… and many of their neighbors in those countries have life a lot worse off than we do here in the good ol’ US of A.
now, which one of the people all over the world who work as hard (or harder) as we do here in the US would you suggest i NOT give an equal opportunity to do any of the work that i choose to make available to anyone who doesn’t work in my office?
my family living in West Virginia probably has some of the toughest situations in the country with regard to the impact of globalization and outsourcing / offshoring… however, overall their lives and living expesnes are [mostly] made better / less expensive due to the same effects of globalization. while i won’t defend every scenario of jobs moving out of the country, i’ll certainly state CLEARLY that in general our standard of living is higher because of trade and interaction with other nations. the cars we drive, the televisions we watch, even the food we eat is made more plentiful and less expensive because we operate in a global community… and similarly, our own exports flourish because other nations also co-exist and participate in the global economy.
going a bit further, our country was FOUNDED on principles of equal opportunity and multi-ethnic immigration. it may be that i end up competing with folks on the other side of the planet for a better job, but i also feel comfortable that overall we all benefit from a [mostly] level playing field… and that regardless how we feel, we all better get used to it.
sorry for the soapbox, but i would strongly disagree with your perspectives on how work should be distributed, and any implications that people around the world are somehow less deserving of work than people here in the US. everyone certainly has the option to choose what work should best be done locally and what work done remotely, however in my opinion there’s no reason the work done remotely can’t be open to competition from the best man or woman available for the job, whether they are black or white, brown or yellow, gay or straight, religious or not, and located next door, across the country, or around the world.
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
Guys, I just want to tell you that the greatest place to hawk your skills and get the best payment for it is oDesk. It will be one year in November when we got registered wih oDesk guided by Jon (our first contact) and Sawan. It has been a superb innings upto now (touch wood) and we have a great relationship with Ron, Josh, Dmitry, Leena, Alexander. We have grown upto 19 developers registered there and are in the process of adding more.
Best thing about oDesk is the transparency for both buyers and providers and the hourly payment mechanism which gives lots of flexibility to buyers in organising their needs.
We have a dream and I know oDesk is going to fulfill it.
After quite a bit of searching on the oDesk site I finally found a tiny bit of the demographic of the buyers and providers. Seems that the buyers are primarily US, European, and Australian. The providers are primarily Russia, India, and the Ukraine.
(https://communi..._buyer_on_odesk)
It seems that the US is number one for looking for available labor outside of the US. Why is that? Does Russia hire primarily Russians and stay inside their borders? Is it the language barrier in that stereotypically Americans only speak English while just about everywhere else people speak their native tongue as well as English (and more)? Or is it that the bulk of the development work comes from the US companies?
I definately like the comments and feedback regarding this article kudos for reviewing it.
Dave McClure: Did you really read both of my earlier replies? If so, then you completely missed the point, can’t comprehend what I am saying, or don’t want to.
Yes, I am also “pretty confident there are many functions that can be performed remotely, and quite competently, by many talented people around the world.” I am not disputing the incredible talent that can be found in India, Russia, Ukraine, or the Czech Republic…or anywhere else for that matter. That’s not the point.
Yes, there are people everywhere that “have life a lot worse off than we do here in the good ol’ US of A.” So what you are implying is that you are running a charity to help improve economic conditions in other countries?
What would have happened if companies like HP, Intel, IBM, and any of the others that have been pouring MILLIONS if not BILLIONS of dollars into India had put that money into developing new infrastructure, educational programs, tech schools, learning labs, & jobs into New Orleans? I hear property is cheap and there is an abundant supply of people looking for work there.
Dave, you have the right to CHOOSE any hard working individual anywhere in the world you want to work with. I also have a choice to hire or contract work with anyone who I want to. The difference is that I CHOOSE to use US based resources. Please, don’t mask the motivation for offshoring with the warm and fuzzy feeling imbued by the term “Equal Opportunity”. Give me a break. The real motivator is PROFIT, period.
In regards to this statement you made:
“i’ll certainly state CLEARLY that in general our standard of living is higher because of trade and interaction with other nations… and similarly, our own exports flourish because other nations also co-exist and participate in the global economy.”
Ok, what mind altering delusional drugs are you on? I have two words for you…TRADE DEFICIT. In 2004, our annual trade deficit was…drumroll… $618,700,000,000.00!! That’s more than half a TRIILION. I can’t find any numbers for 2005…maybe they don’t want us to think about it. In 1995, before the Web took off and before the big push for globalization our trade deficit was below $100 billion.
You also state:
“the cars we drive, the televisions we watch, even the food we eat is made more plentiful and less expensive because we operate in a global community”
Yes, we have moved from a country that PRODUCES things to a country that CONSUMES things. What happens to a consumer economy when the consumers can’t find a job because the jobs all went to India, China, Russia, or wherever? They stop spending money on consuming things because they can’t afford it…even if it is Walmart cheap.
If I didn’t know better, I would think you were a politician throwing around cozy catch phrases like “Equal Opportunity,”Level Playing Field,” and “multi-ethnic immigration.” If you are really for “Equal Opportunity,” I dare you to contract work or hire someone who lives in East Palo Alto, Oakland, Compton, or the deep South. Oh, I forgot, they don’t have the tech skills required for the job. Why is that? Because building jails is more profitable than building schools.
I am not against Equal Opportunity in the real sense of the word. I am not opposed to LEGAL immigration. I am opposed to gutting the American economy for the sake of corporate profits. When we send jobs offshore that is exactly what we are doing and that is my point. How many years will it take for corporate executives, the asset class, and the old money class to kill the middle class and push those-who-had class into the have-not class? Wake up America!
AmericanMade if profit isn’t a motivator, than what is? Would you feel better if HP announced a 50% drop in profits but having all their development done in the United States? What do you think that would do to their share price? I don’t imagine that investors would think, well, they are at least contributing to the US work force, so lets overlook the profit aspect.
As for knowing your mindset, that’s fine but at the same time, I would ask how much your company spends on development? Now consider, if that were one area which you could save on cost, wouldn’t you then find other areas to improve upon? Just because a company outsourcers don’t make it some greedy corporation, in fact, our company gives a lot back to the community but rather we outsource yes to make more money but also to stay completive which in business, if you don’t adapt, you find yourself out of business very quickly.
The United States is as most would agree the greatest country on the planet but face is, not everyone moves things internationally because they simply want to turn a buck, While that is one of the biggest factors, as a business person I can tell you that it’s not the only factor as no one would simply change their entire operations on a single point.
If you elect to keep all your operations in the United States, that’s fine and certainly your choice but in time you will find it difficult to compete with other company’s who do outsource certain aspects of their business and find competitive advantages in other ways.
Not everything is so black and white so I ask again, how much does your company spend on development and if you could save 80% of that cost in one way or another, wouldn’t you use at least the bulk of that money to improve in other areas?
The big issue here is how do you make sure you get what you pay for. From the look of it, paying 7-12/hr looks good. But you have to monitor progress, set milestones, and review the work thingys daily. What I would like to see is better training for people paying the developers. It is hard to know what to do if you have never done it and I do not think odesk does a good job in educating you on what you know and don’t know. Also, I think the programmers are not that good. My firm went thru several of them before we found a good one. I do not like paying for someone else to learn and that seems to be par for the course at odesk.
LongTimeUser: Now, I never said there was anything wrong with profits. Businesses exist to make money. The question is…profits at what cost? The predominant thinking within corporations today is… profit no matter what the cost.
I wouldn’t “feel” any better or worse if HP announced a 50% drop in profits…I don’t gamble on stock any more than I let it ride in Vegas. Actually, now that I come to think of it, if HP did report such a thing, I would be extremely giddy…considering the actions of the existing and hopefully soon to be replaced board of directors. Their ethics are clear for everyone to see.
Does it matter if I spend $50K, $150K, or $500K on development? Again, I am not against outsourcing…I am against OFFSHORING. It doesn’t matter how much I spend on development. What matters is this:
Silicon Valley – 0% cost savings
New England – 10-15% cost savings
Midwest – 15-25% cost savings
South – 25-35% cost savings
Rural areas – 35-60% cost savings
How much cost savings do you need and at what cost? I can live with 15-50% cost savings…I don’t need the extra 30% “cost savings” by using offshore workers. In my experience, I can find plenty of cost savings in the US, remain profitable, and keep US citizens employed. All of these efforts go towards feeding the American economy…not undermining it. Small businesses may save the American economy, not corporations who march to the beat of the shareholder drum no matter the cost.
The trick in business is not to become a commodity where you have to compete based on price alone. This Walmart mentality IS the problem. How many 99 cent tacos does Taco Bell have to sell to be profitable? Quick illustration – web2.0 companies are so entrenched into this Walmart thinking… “well hell, let’s just give it away for free…our competitors can’t beat us if it’s free” – LOL
Repeat after me:
I won’t become a commodity
I don’t have to be the low cost leader
I can create a product and service based upon value
I don’t need 400% profits
I don’t need to make $137 million when the workers are making $75k in the US and $7K in India – but if I do, I promise to build a school to help educate the less fortunate here in the US.
If Warren Buffet can live in the same old house for the past 40 years, so can I – I don’t need to live in Palo Alto, Los Altos or Beverly Hills.
dave mcclure – sorry, just saw your post, was unaware that odesk was here. Regarding the question, I don’t know really. While it’s very possible to have issues isolated to specific developers, we found that to be the norm in the vast majority of users. Regarding the “oDesk work diary” that really has little value in terms of how oDesk works, being that the policy seems to be that if the person did the work, then they get paid. However, it’s very possible for a person to certainly put in 50 hours on anything, that doesn’t mean the job was done.
Personally, we have given tons of great feedback to odesk and even previously recommended at least 10 new clients to odesk, however, in light of some recent issues with odesk, we have dropped all our projects. This of course is unfortunate being that we had so much more business to give oDesk. While I feel that oDesk still has lots of potential, we have decided not to work with them anymore.
Sam Ossman – In part, I agree. Too often people assume that just because you can monitor people that improves the quality of their work. We went into odesk thinking just that and were quickly disappointed. If I had to say the only real value I see in odesk at this point is that their management appears to be professional and does seem to care about users, other than that, the rest will be seen in how they address their issues. My advice to them would be that they bring in a professional business advisor, someone new and fresh from the outside to completely rework things because it’s unfortunate to see a company with promise go down the tubes because they don’t address their clients needs. I’ve seen it so many times in my ecommerce career.
AmericanMade – it does matter what you spend because the reality is that unless you are in someone else’s shoes, while you can speak to the issues, you have no background in understand their mindset. Managing a group of 3 developers certainly has it’s issues but managing a group of 20 or even 50 developers has an entirely set of issues and one of those is cost is that’s a reality that can not be dismissed.
AmericanMade – you can criticize the Wal-Mart mentality all you want but despite peoples beliefs that company’s like Wal-Mart do evil, look at the reality. Those company’s force innovation, they require and demand the highest level of quality and at the lowest price. This forces people to innovate and without that innovation, where would America be? Want to know what makes America great? It’s not the cheap labor or the abundance of people, it’s in their abilities to innovate and create and that innovation has several forms and sometimes its in competing with others.
AmericanMade – While your objectives may not be to turn a profit, others are and if you wish to continue in business without turn a larger and larger profit, that’s your choice but the reality is that in order for business to survive, they must consistently turn a profit so while you may not be happy having record profits year after year, that’s your right, I give you that but I think the majority of people online are looking to make more money. I think the problem here is that you assume the money should go to you and not others. Why would I decide to spend 20% to even 50% more with you just because? That means that you get that money and not outsiders but when in reality by giving money to them, I in term have more money which means I can do more.
Profit is not a bad thing, what is bad is assuming that it should go to you rather than to someone else.
LongTimeUser: thanks again for the feedback… if you want to remain anonymous, would you mind emailing me direct? would love to hear more about your concerns and what we could have done better to address them. promise i’m not trying to change your mind, just to understand your situation better & see if we can learn anything from it. thanks in advance if you take me up on the offer
Sam Ossman: re: your comment on what oDesk does for education / filtering for talent — we offer feedback scoring on all of our providers (launched a few months ago, feedback available for up to a year ago), and as far as we know we’re the only company currently offering free testing on over 100 different subject areas. i’m sure there’s always more we can do to improve on this in the future, however as far as providing a great place to find quality developers & other technical talent we believe we’re pretty far ahead of anyone else offering services online. if you’re up for it, i’d encourage you to give us another try and choose any of our top-rated developers for your projects.
AmericanMade: i think you’ve clearly identified your principles… obviously we have very different perspectives. oDesk *does* provide Remote Work opportunities to US-based talent (particularly in rural / non-urban locations), however the majority of our providers are outside the US… primarily because people in those locations don’t have the same opportunities & choices we have here. why you choose to call those folks “outsiders” and not give them a shot the same as anyone here is beyond me, but i guess you’re entitled to your opinion. as i mentioned before, to me those “outsiders” are my family and friends… and in another generation or two, they’ll probably be yours as well
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
Dave McClure – do you work for odesk? I will be glad to provide you some feedback but not sure what if anything you can do. What is your email address or at least where can I find it?
Dave MClure & LongTimeUser – you still don’t get IT do you?
DM: clue – its not about race or equal opportunity nor is it about labeling someone an “outsider.” It’s about supporting the US consumer economy which is holding everything up like a house of cards. If you undermine it, it will only be a matter of time before it comes crashing down…including the value of your house and the ability of your US customers to pay for your services.
LTU: clue – re-read my posts 2 times, reflect, try to really understand what I am saying before commenting. Hint – Walmart is not driving higher quality but lower quality and lower prices. He who has the lowest price wins is the Walmart mentality…it doesn’t drive innovation, it drives you out of business (if you are in that space).
AnyoneWhoReadsThis: What happens when all of the entrepreneurs and business owners give away our Intellectual Property to countries like China and India? How long will it be before they have all of the ideas, know how, and more importantly the money to pull the ideas off, before they no longer need our money to fund them. Then your job as business owner has just been offshored.
DM: Seriously, I will try your service. If I like it, I will refer my US contractors to use it. I apologize for hijacking the focus of this article which was the review of your service. However, I can’t just go with everyone on this whole send it to India gig just because it is cheaper and it’s what everyone else is doing. There are serious long term reprecussions that they aren’t telling you and which most people don’t even care to think about. If it doesn’t affect me know, then it’s not a problem. If you have children, unless you plan on leaving them the fortunes you earn, their reality in the New World Order of Globalization could be that of hut dweller in the newly created sahara of silicon valley. Not that I am against hut dwellers…so don’t go off on that tangent.
Just think next time you drive past East Palo Alto…wonder to yourself “Is there anything I can do to help one person there learn a skill to feed their family?” Poverty is alive and well in America, it’s not just in a Third World country. If you can’t help your fellow countryman (black, brown, yellow, white, green, or pink), but would rather send money offshore, well that speaks volumes.
LongTimeUser: i’m currently helping oDesk with some marketing consulting efforts, and working with the mgmt team & mktg dept as they expand the oDesk rollout and rampup their online marketing. i do work with a number of promising internet startups, and i’ve been impressed with what i’ve seen from oDesk so far. that said, i’m always interested to hear what’s working (or not) for any of my clients… listening is an important skill too
you can reach me at dave [at] 500hats [dot] com… contact info for email & skype also on my blog.
hope to hear from you & thanks for reaching out,
- dave
>>just think next time you drive past East Palo Alto…wonder to yourself “Is there anything I can do to help one person there learn a skill to feed their family?” Poverty is alive and well in America, it’s not just in a Third World country. If you can’t help your fellow countryman (black, brown, yellow, white, green, or pink), but would rather send money offshore, well that speaks volumes.
AmericanMade: you bet my friend… i think & act both locally and globally. i participate in both of the following non-profit organizations that help work on poverty, education, and housing issues:
1) i contribute time & money to Unitus, an organization that helps lend money to poor people around the world to help them start businesses and educate their families.
2) i contribute time & money to Full Circle Fund, an organization that provides grants to social entrepreneurs in the SF bay area (primarily SF, Oakland, and the SF Peninsula) working on local community issues in housing, education, and technology access.
i put my money, and my time, where my mouth is… i just don’t limit it to my own backyard.
in any case, sounds like we share some common ground in a few places, even if you think i’m an idiot on a few issues… so i’ll take that as a minimal foundation for starting some communication, and i’ll re-read your posts above to see what i missed the first time around.
peace out,
- dave
AmericanMade – I always find it interesting when people say “you don’t get it” that often takes on the mentality that the world is wrong but they definitely have all the answers. Let met know how many times you’ve run a public company or even a major private company at that and then tell me you understand the challenges on all sides.
AmericanMade – sending money or not sending money offshore isn’t going to help those people in East Palo Alto, what is going to help them in finding cheap ways to offer them goods. Just imagine had Wal-Mart not been available, people would still be spending $5.00 to buy a notebook for their kids to go to school with or $200.00 for a bedspread, instead they spend $1.00 for that notebook and $25.00 for that bedspread. I am betting that not only do you not understand the lives of Corporate America but you don’t understand what it’s like to be in that situation either, whereas I can say, I have lived both.
Doing the right thing isn’t about “giving” opportunity to people just because there are in one location or another. Where America will win the Global fight in business is in it’s innovation and not in price. The problems in America and with poverty don’t exist because we ship things offshore, they exists because people like yourself think there is a simply answer, black and white, that’s all it must be but more so that you, not having lived either case have all the right answers.
Thanks LongTimeUser for all the detailed posts about what works and what doesn’t in oDesk. I hope my own oDesk review is not prematurely upbeat.
For a small shop, though, not only can we not afford the ongoing HR recruiting costs – but we can’t afford to have five or six developers on the team with diverse skillsets. Expecting a single developer to do the CSS and to handle security is not fair to one’s web application nor is it efficient. One or two developers can’t do everything.
And AmericanMade, as long as you are talking about funding for Katrina cleanup and improved education stateside – let’s talk about the costs of Perpetual War.
Almost eight times as much money has been spent in Iraq (over $400 Billion) as has been spent on Katrina relief ($62 Billion).
Good point about the trade deficits though. Yanks are spending more than $760 billion a year that you don’t have.
The fish rots from the head.
Having used oDesk, the pros and the cons, I’ll give you my business and legal advice – expect to pay at least 25-50% more on your projects than you’d expect. I’ve found that many programmers make up the difference by taking a lot longer than it should, primarily because they are juggling different work at the same time. The 33% commission oDesk is allegedly charging seems to support the notion that this will not change here. I wanted to give the developer a bonus – and I have to give oDesk a 10% commission on that as well? Are you kidding me? Heck, I’ll send him a paypal for that since the job is done and we don’t need escrow to send a bonus for work done.
It is getting better but there are still a number of items they really haven’t changed. I’ve used them a few times but I’m not sure this will continue too long once the relationship is in place.
It’s funny when we talk about innovation. We are dead last in almost all categories in that respect. Our health care can’t compete with universal health care. We don’t have the same broadband speed or prices in that respect in comparison to other countries. Europe has the same standard of living or higher while using less energy than us. The CAFE standards are a joke and the list goes on… Meanwhile the gap between the rich and poor especially here continue to increase. Life got better for the rich.
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oDesk is a great service. I have used it since 2 years ago for simple projects and now it is my main source of income. Also, Payoneer partnership was one of the most important decisions the company took.
Last week I was so excited and thought oDesk was going to be the greatest thing in the world. Then I finished the oDesk tests and began to apply for positions.
On oDesk the going rate for someone to write blog entries, or respond to emails is $1 to $2 per hour. Yes, that’s right: one to two dollars an HOUR.
Programmers seem to make more. I saw some positions for experienced–very experienced–web site developers that offered $15 per hour.
I remember in the 80’s reading horror stories about Chinese employers only paying women $1 per hour. Everyone was up in arms at the injustice– called it sweatshop labor and even slavery. Yet here everyone is happy that now ANY company can get those sweatshop laborers! Yay oDesk. NOT.
After having initiated a number of projects on oDesk with varying success, my biggest concern is that the feedback system is completely unreliable for ranking the developers who will be providing services.
Feedback you make appears to be weighed by the amount of payment you make so that providers who abandon jobs and receive no payment for those jobs are then not penalized. Despite abandoning job after job they retain a high rating. This encourages providers to bid far lower than they can accomplish the job for and then abandon the job when they realize they can’t do it. It’s a tremendous time waste for the buyer. But that is not the worst of the feedback system. I even had a provider who hacked into my system to extort money from me when they failed to complete the project because despite their earnest efforts they simply were not qualified. Understandably I gave them very poor ratings and complained about them hacking my site, but despite the complaint having been verified by oDesk support, when I checked again any details of the incident were gone.
Looking over the online work history of other providers who have performed poorly for me, I have seen numerous cases where negative feedback from buyers other than myself appears to have been erased. I am extremely generous with praise when a provider even comes close to fulfilling specified requirements, and I generally pay a bonus when they do so. When I make a negative comment about a developer it is only done when they REALLY mess up. It is dishonest that my negative comments and those of others are erased when my positive comments are featured so prominently.
Overall the oDesk provider rating system is not credible and introduces too much risk into the IT process. I recognize the company’s need to have a rating system that doesn’t thin the ranks of developers too much, but that must be balanced with the need for a rating system that rewards providers when they pay attention to detail in reading specifications and when they exercise diligence in completing them. I fully support that a feedback system should provide an opportunity to improve on poor feedback when received, but feedback should be improved by the developer’s gaining technical knowledge and experience at completing projects, not by the oDesk administrator hitting the delete button on negative feedback.
What do you think of oDesk providers setting their rate too low?