Finally a place for good quality outsourcing and coders.
In 5 days I received about 25 applications. Of these 25 applicants, 20 of them had a better combination of skill set and experience than any resume that I have had float across my desk in the last year….My providers are highly skilled, great communicators, detail oriented, affordable, and they WANT TO WORK! When is the last time you went to the university down the street and picked up a developer with those credentials?
I’ve checked the resumés myself and Adam’s right.
oDesk home page
Actually oDesk is more than a place for outsourcing, but a whole system for hiring and managing coders. It’s rather techcentric. It’s not the sort of thing that a client would enjoy managing (one does need to know how to spec a project in technical terms and how to speak to a developer). It’s something for someone like me with one foot in the commercial realm and the other on the technical side. But to be honest I would probably have John do most of the developer management (depending on the project).
The decision about whether I would manage the project directly or not, would probably depend on whether John was already involved in that area of the business. Most of the SEO work is my direct province. To put someone between myself and the end developer would likely not improve matters. Most of the WordPress refinements and CMS (apart from the WYSIWYG editor and even that I’ve tried to hand off – but developers just don’t understand WYSIWYG editors) are John’s sphere. I am about to interview amother full-time developer locally with superb qualifications (finally!) this week. But if it doesn’t work out or we need still more hands on deck, oDesk here we come! I will probably hire Russian and Ukrainian developers as I speak the language fluently. I don’t really want to move to Tomsk (Vienna is quite nice, thank you!) to have to work with them. Without oDesk, you’d feel pretty cutoff. But with oDesk, I can live in Vienna and work in Tomsk a few days a week. Fantastic.
Some things I really like about oDesk apart from the system itself.
- reasonable fees: oDesk takes a flat 10% fee. Small enough that nobody is really tempted to push them out of the middle. In exchange they provide a superb regulated environment.
- transparency – you can get objective tested evaluations of most of the developers and you can even check out their personal sites and contact them off oDesk if you wanted to.
- good design: unlike rentacoder.com, oDesk looks like it was meant to be used by people in attractive offices not tortured coders in industrial parks. As an ex-adman appearances are important to me.
- high rates for the providers. As a buyer that sounds like a crazy notion. But really I don’t want to be hiring a developer for $2/hour. Not only would I not feel great about it. He will probably either not have the skills or do a shoddy job. oDesk gives really talented guys in Tomsk (who might like Tomsk – I’ve been to Irkutsk but not Tomsk) a fair shake at earning something like a Western wages. $10/hour ($9 after oDesk’s cut) might not sound like much to you but it’s a great wage for a programmer beyond the Urals or in Romania. Expect to see some international programming stars rise out of oDesk.
I could even imagine that I would consider taking on an oDesker as a permanent programmer six months or year into the relationship. Who knows I might even move the guy to the West if that’s what he really wanted and the commercial project justified the expense. Certainly, somebody who was doing regular work for Foliovision over six months would be more than welcome to visit home base for a couple of weeks, partly tourism and partly work.
Vienna is the new Paris! Code for us and see Vienna in style.
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.
I have had a terrible time dealing with Odesk. The developer delivered a project with nearly 100 bugs. Then refused to work on them because he had another project. And Odesk failed to do anything about it because he is one of their long time coders. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THEM AT ALL. In otherwords odesk sucks!!!
I’m sorry to hear about your problems Paul.
It sounds like you should have started with some smaller projects with this guy the first time.
I’ve started to get very wary of giving large projects to coders. They often take it enthusiastically, screw it up and still want to be paid.
Not quite sure what the solution is, except to dole the work out in chunks. You effectively have to become the hands on project manager.
It requires that you filter up the right provider to prevent such annoyances. And example, you might require on the job posting that, candidates must score 70% higher of the oDesk test (java, html, etc etc.) before interviewing them and hiring.
Nice review Karel.
Really good detail – I like your focus on productivity and smoothness of payment from the perspective of the developer.
Your ideas about quality in software struck a cord with me:
That’s exactly right. We have to focus more on quality and less on price.
I see you are not far away in Prague. I am looking for another PHP developer and a CSS designer for Bratislava. If you know anyone really good looking for work and willing to spend at least a few days every couple of weeks in Bratislava, let me know.
I have a couple of questions more for you.
I have written a detailed review of the oDesk service in this post.
Thanks Alec,
ad your questions:
Concerning the php,css work .. please send me a note to karels at ework dot cz .. I might have something .. thanks,
I had a few bad experiences with Odesk, and finally have learned my lesson. Sure everyone says there are good and bad programmers, but the problem with Odesk is their dispute system. If a programmer runs up the hours and/or delivers garbage. Which happens more often than it doesn’t, then you have little recourse. Their system charges your bank card anyway, then you are at their mercy to get a refund. You’d be more likely to get hit by a meteorite. So I advise everyone to stay away from Odesk.
oDesk like any other business is about money. They are simply middle men and do nothing to protect buyers. BUYERS BEWARE!!!!! This is however great news for sub-standard coders! Write horrible code get paid every week and if the buyer doesn’t figure out you are a horrible coder right away or watch you like a hawk…you just made some cash for something useless! The just open a new account under a new name and repeat..over and over again. NICE!
Unless you are willing to check all the code that is done for you…everyday….good luck!; ) While it might be a great “deal”, in the long run you will pay just as much if not more, in order to get things right AND it will take longer. Pay a little more and get someone you trust and can have face time with. The extra money will be well worth it.
There are great coders on oDesk, most of them have been scooped up by big companies. So the real talent pool is thin. Bottom line, Odesk sucks big time! They only care about making money and could care less about protecting the buyers. A very bad business plan and it is only a matter of time that word of mouth gets around and they go under.
Well that could be a bit of a problem: If the bigger companies are out headhunting on oDesk and then take it private as soon as they find somebody good, then oDesk doesn’t make any money and the talent pool gets very thin.
I hope what you are writing is an exaggeration, John, but thanks for sharing your point of view.
It’s not the first time someone has complained about getting junk code from oDeskers. Sounds like the dispute resolution system needs some enhancement to provide more protection to buyers.
I will say this Alec. You are more responsive than oDesk.
We now live in a world were big e companies like oDesk and eBay hide behind their policies and have completely no customer service touch. Once they have your money, good luck getting it back.
Of course there are some good coders on oDesk, good luck finding them. After going through a few horrible experiences I decided to go the test score route. Find the guys who were in the top 10% in a given discipline and go for it. Well, i found out quickly that anyone can take the test for someone else. I hired the #4 guy for a certain discipline and and he couldn’t code to save his life. Furthermore, he took forever and sent my project into a tail spin due to delays and horrendous code.
ODesk is a huge risk for the buyer and none for the coders and oDesk. Check out some of the larger Affiliates like Soft Reactor. They have 50 + coders and thousands of hours and very little feedback. Do you want to know why they have such low feedback for hundreds of jobs? The reason why is a small single guy like me cannot bear getting bad feedback back from Soft Reactor, because then no one will want to work for me. However if you give a place like Soft Reactor bad feedback, they can absorb it. Plus they are ruthless business men and will just simply fire their coders and wash away the bad feedback.
Now if you go the freelancer route it is even worse.
I hate oDesk. But I am stuck there right now. I have blown over $10k and I still do not have a functional site.
I have hired something like 16 different people and i can honestly say that only 4 of them have been good. And 2 of the 4 are writing content for me. So that = 2 decent coders out of 12 hires of coders.
A horrible batting average at best.
You can give a coder bad feedback, but they can make the feedback private. So no one has to see their dirty laundry.
The coder who cheated me was able to turn around and get another project within a few days anyhow. No doubt he’s doing the same tricks and exploiting another dupe.
The reason I closed my account with Odesk and began searching for greener pastures was that I took issue with their dispute resolution system; It only permits you to dispute whether they actually worked during the hours logged. If the coder blows away your deadline, or delivers junk code, or even nonrelevant code, then there is no disputing at all. You could ask for php and get java, or even html.
It reminds me of having to deal with the poor quality of US Postal employees, as long as they show up and could fog up a mirror underneath their noses, they get paid.
Hello John and Ben,
I think that’s terrible that coders are allowed to hide the feedback. That slants the odds in favour of the dishonest hack. What a shame.
But I do have to say John, your odds on getting a good coder are pretty standard in my experience.
When you find someone good, I’d recommend you hang onto him.
What’s this project about? You’ve piqued my curiousity. If your numbers are really in that neighbourhood ($10k), you could probably afford to hire us. We code very well and are particularly good on user interface.
That’s your problem and a lot of other’s problem, but it’s 100% your mistake/fault…
oDesk have interview feature and you need to interview with coders before choosing them.
When you accept Indian cheap coders, or cheap coders with no experience or inexperienced people, you should know that you’ll have such problems.
You should review coders and choose RIGHT person, you need to stop working more with coder who is wasting your time within 3-4 days.
So don’t blame others…
Ha, within “3 to 4” days, I would have lost several hundred. I might as well throw my money in the garbage can and save the frustration.
I’m not in the business of sending my hard earned money overseas. My government does that for me.
Saying it’s 100% the clients fault for choosing an Indian coder shows how small and full of douche your mind is. How would you say one should interview coders to find the right one when they can hide their bad feedback.
I got burned by a jerk from Lithuania first, then a douchebag from Indonesia, and the last straw was a hack from India. I’ve been PMing for years, and never had the frequency of garbage that I found on Odesk.com. I’m not whining and trying avoid responsibility, but I am trying to help others avoid my bad experience.
Odesk is simply a haves for the scum and villainy of the internet.
If you find a good honest coder – keep him! I found one, but on Elance.com
I’ve just accepted my first job at oDesk, and I do content rather than code, so I may not really have the experience to join this discussion. Still, I can tell you that I live in the U.S. and charge U.S. prices. I wrote to the buyer and offered my credentials, and he is paying me for a single brief project before deciding whether to keep me on for the long term.
This is exactly what I do with local clients.
I like oDesk so far, because it seems like a good way for me to pick up a few extra hours when I have room in my calendar, without overcommitting myself or lessening my availability for my regular clients. I don’t mind the watching — buyers are guaranteed productivity and providers are guaranteed payment, even though we’re all strangers, so we don’t have to worry about that.
There are providers and buyers who are working with very small budgets. I hope the people who are accepting jobs for $10 an article live in a place where that is a useful amount of money, but I don’t have to work for that rate. And the buyers who have only a small budget can find someone with the skills they need at the price they can afford. It seems like a win-win situation.
@ JCodingGod
I agree with you. The preinterview is very important. Here’s what I consider a priceless tip (it’s a variant on the approach in Getting Real) for others having difficulty with oDesk:
Make your first project a tiny test project, to which you already know the right answer and how the code should look. The project should take 20 to 50 minutes for an excellent to good coder.
Those who aren’t good won’t be able to finish it at all. You are out of pocket a grand total of $10. And move on to the next candidate.
@ Former Odesk User
I think when hiring coders from sites like oDesk or rentacoder or Elance, you have to plan to succeed one in three times. The main issue is to get out of a bad situation early. Please try the tip above and let me know how it goes.
Generally, in my own business I’ve moved away from all remote coders (alright I still have a couple, but we’ve worked together for days in person so we understand one another pretty well). There are huge advantages to being able to sit down together in front of the computer monitor and point and look and tinker and laugh together.
It makes work much less of a grind and more of a sport.
Again, I will emphasize, if you find someone good, up his or her rates voluntarily and keep him/her! Even Microsoft recognizes that there is a 1000 to 1 value ratio between a brilliant and a run-of-the-mill coder – although personally I think there are more good coders out there than there ever were.
Via the internet, the ones who want to be good are able to pick up best practices without ever working at Sun, Oracle, IBM, Google or any of the other big firms.
@ Rebecca
Congratulations on your first job. Sounds like you have the right approach with a small test project. As a supplier, the rates have to work for you or there’s no point. Good for you.
Stop by again you have a few more project under your belt and let us know your experience as a supplier.
@ John
If you still need help, feel free to drop me a line.
When I see some of the “solutions” that some people present here I have to laugh. Here’s the deal. Many of these coders come from desperate circumstances. Playing tricks and scamming the system is a way of life for some. I am sure there are many that have ways of starting a new id on oDesk after they have burned one out.
The interview as a method of weeding out canidates? Are you serious? I interviewed a lot of “coders” who promised me the world only to find out they could not deliver, niether on time or accurately. Then you have to start all over again, minus the money you already paid for crappy code. So you lose both time and money.
Anyway I found 3 very competent guys after a lot of searching and $$$$$ down the drain. I have built trust with them and have treated them well (eg big bonuses). We are now loyal to each other and don’t need oDesk.
Bottomline, hiring offshore is a clusterfuck. Hope you have better luck than I did.
Hello John,
I’m glad you’ve found some good people finally.
But I think you could have managed your projects on oDesk more carefully and had a better experience.
My tip above works. Try it sometimes.
I’ve come back now that I’ve had a couple of assignments at oDesk, and I see nothing to complain about. Both my buyers have asked me to continue working for them. I’m enjoying both the assignments. I’ve been paid just as promised, and the monitoring hasn’t felt intrusive. All in all, oDesk seems well designed.
I do get responses to my applications telling me that I’m too expensive, but I also refuse to apply to plenty of jobs because the pay scale doesn’t suit me. Users of the system have the freedom to set both what we’ll pay and what we’ll work for.
I should also mention that it’s very easy to provide samples of your work, both in your oDesk portfolio and as I do by linking to my website. Buyers should have no difficulty in determining the quality of the workers. I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for people who offer very little and expect a lot.
I do of course have sympathy for those who’ve had bad experiences at oDesk, but I like the system. I expect to keep it as part of my freelance experience.
Hello Rebecca,
It sounds like you are doing a good job with oDesk, only taking work which suits you and at a price point which makes sense for you.
I would imagine hiring you is still less expensive than hiring a company or going out and hiring the local top gun, so it’s quite a deal for the people who have a viable business plan for the internet.
I hope your contribution will help other buyers and workers on oDesk. Thanks for sharing!
Yes, indeed. In fact, it’s less expensive than hiring me privately. At oDesk, you just get — and pay for — hourly online work. Since private clients also get face to face or phone meetings and research and ongoing support, I charge a lot less at oDesk.
Experienced freelancers are almost always better than average company employees (having same years of experience) in terms of productivity. I can tell you this from my personal experience as well as experiences from friends. Freelancers are much more productive because they think and work in different ways. A freelancer is not just another cubicle guy.
At oDEsk, they are creating a virtual cubicle. They track the worker in every possible ways they can think of and thats just “pathetic”. Even strict companies don’t track and restrict activities of their employees the way oDesk does. oDesk is snatching the “free”-ness from a freelancer and pushing the worker inside an “electronic cage”. This is called eSlavery. There is no scope of creativity or productivity.
If you want best result, use your “brain” and identify a freelancer who is among best in the profession. Offer good money for the work. Remember, “you get monkey if you pay peanut”. Let the guy do his job at his convenience.
I assure you that oDEsk sucks big time. Sooner or later they are going to shut the shop if they don’t change their way of caging the workers.
My request to freelancers: Don’t let oDesk (or any other company) destroy freelance community by converting the freelancers into slaves.
BOYCOTT oDesk NOW.
Hello Rover,
I would never recommend hiring a cubicle type personality. In fact, we won’t hire them at Foliovision. But I don’t think you have to be a freelancer to have the right creative mentality. I will grant you that a successful freelancer is more likely to have the right mentality – it’s a job hasard.
I totally agree with you that I don’t have time or inclination to sit on top of a bunch of programmers. In a way it’s like a galley – it requires a foreman on the deck cracking a whip.
But you are discounting the oDesk model too far. The entire Mediterranean was under the control of galleys for hundreds of years.
I really think some coders and some buyers would find the oDesk system a great way to get to know one another.
What is worrisome for oDesk is that they are serving as an introduction service. Under their current system, they won’t get a cut of the ongoing relationship.
What shall we call it – chaperoned dating?
But Rover, I don’t think you’d go on a chaperoned date either. You’d do best to go back to reading Kropotkin and planning the burning of the Senate.
Just forget you ever heard about oDesk and you’ll be happier for it. And there are far greater evils in the world than oDesk crying out for attention and resolution.
I don’t mean to be an oDesk cheerleader, and I can see possible problems there for both buyers and providers, but the emphasis on the oversight suggests to me that some of the commenters haven’t tried it. Here are some ways I’ve had my work checked by clients:
What’s the difference? It’s a cheap and effective way to share the work I’m doing. I can see what my teammates are doing when we’re blogging for the same client and make sure we don’t duplicate topics. I’m also supervising another oDesk worker for a client, and I can see what she’s up to also and give suggestions, just as I would if we were in an office together. If I need to take a phone call, I can suspend the screenshot. When I need to move to another machine (to use special software, for example), I leave a note saying what I’m doing. Whatever concerns there may be with oDesk, the screenshots are a straw man.
As far as the idiot who commented about “eSlavery” and lamenting the fact that Odesk provides numerous ways to track and monitor a worker:
I am guessing you have no experience with programming as actually programming is something that should be tracked and monitored and it doesn’t require nearly as much “creativity” as you think, its technical work and I am sure most companies do track their workers in a variety of ways
What is the alternative to monitoring the workers? To just not monitor them at all and hope for the best? You do realize that these are workers from places like India, Russia, China, etc and they often have poor to fair English skills.. the only way to have any chance of having them work effectively is to monitor them as much as possible, if they have a problem with this then they are being dishonest and trying to cheat the buyer.
Rick, your point is a good one. By monitoring the programmers closely you can see when they are going off track.
Again, I would suggest that having workers that one has to monitor so closely is hardly efficient but on the way to scaling to the point where one can have more self-sufficient (and expensive) employees, oDesk is probably a very good stop.
It’s interesting that Rebecca doesn’t feel that she is being imposed on as she works. It works for her. I could see how it might not work for some workers. I don’t agree with you Rick that they are necessarily dishonest or trying to cheat. Some people just don’t work well when being watched or they have all kinds of weird stuff on their monitors that they don’t want to share.
For those who are like that, there’s always jobs at Rentacoder for which they can bid. The eslavery argument would be stronger if oDesk was the only model for freelances on the market. It’s just one of a bunch.
I’d like to hear some more comments from people in the system as suppliers. I wonder if there is anyone both buying and selling services at the same time on oDesk.
I am one who was both buying and offering services at oDesk. I’m a writer with both on and off oDesk clients and I had a couple of months where I tried the ‘team’ approach. Frankly, it got a bit cumbersome for me (I am NOT a good manager) so I stopped.
Like Rebecca I’ve been on oDesk for more than a year. I make a decent wage (not as high as Rebecca but then again I had no experience as a writer when I started so I’m doing fine given those circumstances).
As far as the earlier comment about screen shots: Give me a break. You can negotiate with a buyer to not use them if you’re not comfortable.
Here’s what I like: A) I don’t have to invoice B) oDesk collects my money for me C) oDesk issues me a 1099
Could I make more money other places – sure – I could even offer to go off odesk and bid outside the system but frankly, why would I – too many conveniences.
In fact recently I have eliminated all of my ‘off odesk’ clients so I can focus on all oDesk work so I don’t have to worry about all the crap that I hate (like tracking wages, hours, etc).
Hello Doreen,
That’s a great story about how to use oDesk for its advantages to you.
Learning to manage is not easy. I think a lot of the issues which people claim to have with oDesk are actually management issues. In Foliovision’s work we’ve gone down the route of not using remote workers as much as doing the work in house, but we may go back to doing some outsourcing again.
Curiously enough, we are looking for writers, particularly Canadian or with good knowledge of Canada and/or real estate, financial and insurance markets.
I’ve really come to appreciate oDesk’s management aspects. The combination of private clients’ slowness to pay at the end of 2008 and the upcoming tax season is making me fond of the oDesk advantages Doreen mentions. I’ve only been there four months, though. Doreen’s the veteran. And I regret that I’m not Canadian. You seem like a fun outfit to work for.
I’m not Canadian either but I’ve written a lot for Canadian clients oddly enough. I also don’t necessarily consider myself a veteran, though I have been at oDesk more than a year, there are a lot of folks who have been there a lot longer than I have been and who have a lot more experience.
I guess overall for those who complain about the ‘oDesk slavery’ and I’ve heard a lot about them I often marvel at them. I guess my overall opinion is that if you don’t like the rates, feel free to shop your wares elsewhere, if you don’t like the hourly monitor, well then work on fixed rate jobs.
As far as buyers who get stuck with bad providers: I know it happens, but frankly, you have as much chance of getting a bad employee as you do of getting a bad freelancer. I have to admit that I tend to lack sympathy for a buyer who wants to pay bottom dollar and wants top dollar work.
I don’t have the highest (or lowest) rates on oDesk but I take pride in my work. Let’s face it all freelancers have only one thing to trade on and that is their reputation. Freelancing is all about marketing.
Hello Doreen,
You have grasped the fundamental principle of freelancing: you are trading on your reputation.
By writing far better than my colleagues I jumped from the bush leagues (Vancouver Sun, Moscow Times) to The Economist in two years.
By doing better television commercials, I went from neophyte (albeit a documentary producer already) to the top commercials producer (agency side) in town in three years.
Unfortunately, making better dance films eventually won me the Van Gogh prize (threadbare clothing, a lot of hunger and Orwell’s furnished rooms).
So as long as you pick the right field excellence will always be rewarded.
For what it’s worth, the excellence in all of those fields cost me sleepless nights and occasional two week stints not leaving the house, nor seeing friends. Excellence is a two edged sword. Higher prices but higher costs.
Keep up the quality, Doreen, and you are on your way to the top, oDesk or noDesk.
PS. It’s not all about marketing – don’t believe those IM fairy tales – it’s all about excellence with a little bit of marketing tacked on.
My personal philosophy of marketing is that you have to be very good at what you do, and let people know.
I had a terrible experience with oDesk. Selected a developer who scored high enough on the oDesk skills test, he had good reviews and we discussed the project. He said all the right things, was very re-assuring about his ability and willingness to complete the project. He missed 3 deadlines and it became clear that he didn’t know what he was doing. I will still have to pay him because he sat at his computer with my file on his desktop and managed to make keystrokes. oDesk is a disaster
My experience with Odesk was horrific – the developers I chose claimed to have 3000 hrs experience but I find it hard to believe they had ever done a job before. They said all the right things in order to get the job and gave me an estimate of 2.5 weeks. The job took 2.5 MONTHS!!. I am not a programmer but realize that the core problem was that did not bother to develop a proper set of specifications. So that when they claimed to have done a task and I said it was not what I wanted they replied that I had never told them that I want it done this way and wanted more money to do the task as I required. In this way they ended up taking the whole budget I had for the job and I had to spend an enormous amount of time trying to get them to understand what I wanted. So I ended up working for 2.5 months for nothing. They of course also got frustrated, became increasingly hostile and blamed me for my technical incompetance. I finally disentangled myself from them and found a local developer who pointed out that most of the work they had done was by hard-coded hacks into the existing site whose core was out-of-date and needed to be re-done. A truly appalling job and I would never use O-Desk again under any circumstances.
Hello Bernard,
I’m sorry about your bad experience.
It sounds like you were not ready for oDesk or development when you started your big project: You “realize that the core problem was that I did not bother to develop a proper set of specifications”.
I’ve run into the same problem. You learn with experience. Working with a local developer is more expensive upfront but can save a lot of time and frustration later.
In the end, I built a company where most of the development is done by our inhouse programmers. Our experience outsourcing has not been terribly favorable.
If you can reach out and grab him or call the police a developer is less likely to take the money and run. That said there are some great developers out there in cyberspace. I have had some great experiences with remote developers as well.
If you were to use oDesk again – which clearly you won’t – I don’t think you’d ever lose more than a day or two of wages.
PS. Oh yes, and never modify core files. Another basic lesson learnt the hard way.
Oops – I see there was a typo in what I wrote – what I should have said was that “THEY did not bother to develop a proper set of specifications” – I gave them a brief but I now realize it was not adequate for them to base any kind of estimate on – they did not ask a single question which is what I mean by how experienced could they have possible been to take on a job in this way. There sole concern was to get the job. Then when it started to come unstuck they abused me for my lack of technical understanding – the only way this kind of job cld work is if you have an experienced programmer as a project manager.
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.
Thanks for the behind the scenes insight Andy.
I find oDesk’s carelessness about the supplier’s situation astonishing. A rating system is a delicate balancing act, but it’s clear from your note that it’s way out of line now.
I hope oDesk can propose a change to redress this imbalance.
tired of my frustration with these guys, I decided to learn how to do it myself. Am much better, get the code I want, I even have some local guys I can depend on when I get in over my head. There are some really good development platforms out there that allow you to deploy robust apps quicker, more sustainable, and you work for your money instead of having to outsource. My favorite for web apps is Drupal, I’ve been able to produce some really great E-commerce sites with it. In fact, I’m planning on redeveloping in Drupal a site I spent about 10 thousand on a few years back with outsourcers from Odesk. Alot of the cost was fixing crummy code from crummy Odesk devs. Seriously, do we still do this?
I agree with what you are saying to a large extent. There are plenty of open source apps and free plugins that will get you most of the way you want to get for any development you need to do. However the “last mile” often requires specialist skills, and sometimes involves repetitive grunt work that I for one am ill equipped to do efficiently.
As a professional IT manager from the experience of seeing so many people asking for completely unnecessary and extraneous skill sets when hiring, I know that it takes some skill to clarify the precise problem that needs to be solved, identify the skills required to complete that job, and assess whether the candidate has the required skills. However if you CAN narrow the scope of the problem you can certainly get good results out of oDesk or any other developers.
I would go so far as to say that any business owner thinking of spending lots of time themselves working on a solution they could outsource should seriously assess the worth of their time and consider outsourcing. Perhaps the inability to dissect problems and delegate work is a business growth limiting issue. Some startups and small businesses certainly have more time than money, but that is not always true. I believe Companies like oDesk are a great asset. Whether it is oDesk or some other upstart that does it better and eventually puts oDesk out of business, such companies truly have a fantastic future.
Hello Andy,
As an IT manager you are the ideal user of oDesk.
A big issue with outsourcing is that the person doing the outsourcing is not at all prepared to manage IT projects.
Unfortunately, these sites seek to cater to the widest possible audience. Which leads to a lot of broken sites and software. If someone does not have a strong project management or technical background s/he should find a project manager first and then think about outsourcing.
We’ve decided not to outsource and instead to build the resources in-house. Although we are good at managing these projects, there’s nothing like getting together in the same space and looking and pointing at a monitor together.
While nominally more expensive, the savings in time and increase in quality more than make up for the expense.
Alec,
I congratulate you on the lively discussion that you’ve generated on your post and thank you for your informative replies. I completely agree on the benefits which you pointed out regarding the instant feedback that you receive from face to face development work. Because of the short-comings of off-shoring these benefits are a tremendous opportunity for some company in the future. Perhaps a blended offshore/face to face model will dramatically change the development landscape one day. Such blended teams do exist and have worked but I don’t believe that even any big consulting firms have figured out a way to do so predictably. It’s a problem that I’ve been trying to crack for years. I still salivate over the market opportunity.
Hello Andy,
Thanks for the kind words. But I think the blended model already exists. It’s called hiring a software house. It’s more expensive but a hell of a lot more reliable.
That’s what we do. Provide integrated solutions and do custom coding for some fairly large applications.
We have our book filled for at least three months in advance. The issue is more with finding talented and reliable developers to add to our team.
We will look at new projects, but we pick and choose.
Im glad I read your posting as I was just about to use ODesk because it looked to good to be true. I need someone with Advanced PHP/Zend programming skills to finish up a search engine I have created. There were at least 5 quality looking programmers from Russia/Belgium etc that I was going to try out. But now Im thinking twice b4 I even go that route. Any suggestions would be great. P.S. I am a graphic designer trying to develop a search engine. I have a very limited budget so oDesk looked great to me. I can only pay $15-$25 per hour until I get funding. Thanks for your time…
Hi Shemp,
I think trying to build a search engine with external coders is madness.
If you have some budget (it sounds like you do), you’d do better to find someone local and gifted to work with you, preferably at least part time in the same space.
Overall, building a search engine is a monumental task. Make sure you have your specs and expectations well in order before you start.
Trying to build a search engine on a limited budget is a folly. Going offshore will only compound your problems if you do not have the tech knowledge or do not have someone with advanced programming skills inhouse who does.
I agree that making use of remote resources in this case is difficult, but I don’t agree that it is folly. Just as there is risk there is also opportunity in walking a different path. You appear to have already created part of the code so I assume you are intimately familiar with its workings. If you are in addition able to divide the work into a set of specific tasks that have specific rather than broad knowledge requirements, and that are decoupled by defining clear rules as to how the developed components will work together (interface), and if in addition you are prepared to accept the delays in schedule that will inevitably happen when dealing with remote workers of uncertain skill and working to specifications that will need extensive revision because they are for something completely new … then I have seen firsthand that you can succeed. The key is being able to offload the grunt work and isolate the grunts from having to contribute inspiration. Having said all that … why would one develop a search engine? Aren’t there enough open source search engines on the market?
Thanks Guys, Thats what Im trying to get (local programmer) but putting ads on Craigslist hasnt been successful for me as nobody reads my exact job requirements and just sends me a bunch of junk info. Im located in Orange County, CA… Im basically just trying to get my 1/2 built search engine updated enough to get show for getting some funding. Had issues with old programmer. Need Zend/Ajax programmer if anyone has any advice it is much appreciated. Shemp
I’ve had a lot of good luck on oDesk. In fact, I’ve been both the buyer and the provider. Recently wrote an oDesk eBook about how to get started in the oDesk marketplace–once you get started, its full of awesome opportunities!
I also used Craigslist before finding oDesk and got a ton resumes that were difficult to sift through and unfortunately NOT indicative of the talent I was considering.
oDesk has made it much easier for me to evaluate candidates before diving in. As a result, I’ve completed projects quickly and successfully. They won me over big time.
Actually the country is called Romania, not Rumania :) Unless you were pronouncing it wit a French accent. And yeah, you can find pretty damn good Romanian programmers, not just saying because I’m Romanian.
I would not recommend ODesk simply due to the fact they do stand behind their service. I engaged with a contractor who had stellar feedback. Within days after hiring them, someone else wound up taking the lead on the project who was the original individual. All the promises I had been told and all the knowledge I had passed along was worthless now since it was someone new who knew very little about what we were trying to accomplish. I was extremely patient, but now its been over a year and over $20k in the hole on a project which has missed one deadline after another.
I would generally work my way up with a progammer starting with smaller projects. The only reason I gave them them this opportunity was because I thought that ODesk was a safe environment. Thought is the keyword, and let me advise you….stay away from this haven filled with lousy developers who promise you whatever you want to hear, and don’t care about delivering quality work as the employer’s card gets charged anyway.
Hi Richard,
I feel your pain. I’d recommend that you tighten up your deadlines and drop bad coders faster. We rarely work remotely any more but even with coders present in the office, about half of them don’t make the grade.
That’s life.
Those who make it are wonderful though.