As long as oDesk does not change at all, I'm happy. The only reason I hire on oDesk is because it is NOT elance - have had horrible experience with elance both with providers and the company itself and how it conducts business (or what it calls business).
Although this is called a merger, it is only that in name. It seems elance's CEO will call the shots.
"Who will lead the new company?
oDesk executive chairman Thomas Layton will continue in the same role at the combined company, and Elance CEO Fabio Rosati will serve as chief executive officer."
There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker. It is ripe for disruption as the dominant sites grow bloated and complacent, only seeing acquisitions as the way to grow.
We're looking for a lawyer to help finish up our merger. The previous guy did 90% of the work and then stopped responding to our emails!!! This shouldn't take an experienced lawyer more than a few hours.
I have mixed emotions about this because I have made a solid income at times with oDesk's time tracker, but I don't want it to become the standard way of doing things. That's because majority of the work I do now is on a subconscious level, so I'm basically thinking about a problem all day and it may only take an hour to code up the solution. I guess a workaround is to double or triple hourly rates, but I don't see that happening, because as more places merge, we may find ourselves in a race to the bottom.
That said, I got burned on eLance by charging a flat rate for a client that was never satisfied with my work. I made less after several weeks than other contractors make in an hour. I guess that's the main reason I went to oDesk (though I always liked eLance).
Please, somebody, somewhere, come up with a daily rate mechanism that doesn't invade workers' privacy.
That and finding a way to spread workloads across multiple developers (to reduce stress and make for a better product) are the two main challenges I see right now in freelancing.
Our company Lambda (http://getlambda.com) helps negotiate contract work for our freelancers. We often set up the following arrangement: the client pays in advance for a week or two of work, and we agree that "a week" contains X hours of developer time. If there are hours unused by the end of the contract, we refund the money. It's an elegant way to avoid most payment issues.
What do you consider a solid income? It seems like the majority of the jobs posted on oDesk are asking for a lot and only willing to pay very little. I wonder how even someone willing to work for 2 bucks an hour could possibly make reasonable money on there.
This kind of trite comment adds little to the discussion.
I have some people that work with me on oDesk that I've found over the past few years. I don't pay them a lot by US standards, but they're good people. I've sent them various hardware, like Kindles and a new laptop to help them do their work better, and it has worked out well, although I was kind of nervous about it at the time.
For Wordpress installations I get it but it's the School Administration Solution for US$400 that's scary. Otherwise I agree, good luck to all inhabitants as the ghettos merge.
If you really want to destroy someone's day in a low cost country, campaign to stop this type of work getting to them. Then they will be out of a job.
To several billion people, working for $20/day in their local lives using a computer would be a dream job. Someone who is employed is making money for their family and probably feels good about themselves.
I sincerely hope this doesn't affect the thousands of families making a living working off of oDesk. This change will have real effects on REAL people, let's hope they are all positive. :)
It would seem that the two main incumbents in this market (founded in 2005 and 1998, respectively) are getting nervous about Freelancer.com's (founded in 2009) rapid growth (predicting ~73% in 2013) and recent IPO [1].
I tend to evaluate a service based on what they provide, their reputation and sometimes the care put into their branding, but rarely do I make a blanket judgement on name alone. Anyone on HN should know how challenging it is to pick a name in the competitive domain landscape.
This merger is likely a response to competitor, Freelancer.com going public in Australia this year. It also positions the much larger, Elance/oDesk for an IPO next year. Smaller, niche freelancing marketplaces like Guru.com, 99Designs, WorkersOnCall.com and others will now be looking for acquisition exits from the new giant. The freelancing marketplace industry has been growing 100% year over year for the last 7 years and is expected to continue for the next five years. Once tied to the economy, the freelancing industry trends have now disconnected from the economy in general and are on a steady trend no matter how employment levels rise and fall. All in all, the merger is good news for the industry which saw its first exit this year.
With vworker first being absorbed by freelancer and now this, there's a decided lack of competition developing in this market.
I think these guys know that a startup will struggle to compete, getting the critical mass of devs and employers is the same problem as starting a social network.
I share the view that ODesk quality is an order of magnitude better than elance, I think only those using elance will being thinking anything positive at this moment...
Our startup Lambda (http://getlambda.com) competes with both, but we're not the least bit concerned. I already thought of elance/odesk as being effectively the same, in the sense that they're both known as places to find cheap, off-shore labor. I don't know any devs in NYC who've seriously considered working through either site and don't expect that to change. Likewise, I don't know many hiring companies that have used their sites for anything more than throwaway projects.
We have a few other competitors targeting the high-end of the freelancer market, but that's still open territory.
I've had opposite experience in general. It's all about hiring well. The problem is that hiring well shouldn't be using the "high ratings" that contractors have - it shouldn't be used to determine who you hire.
Just recently when Freelancer.com acquired vWorker I expected the overall quality improvement at Freelancer. However despite any logic it became worse.
I have the same expectations for this merger/acquisition. Elance won't become any better and Odesk will cease to exist very soon after transferring all users to Elance.
Sadly this merger is dictated by nothing else but increasing market share of Freelancer.com.
I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. Since the vWorker acquisition actually all the quality metrics are up. The vWorker user base was also a very high quality workforce and today dominate highly our freelancer rankings and awarded projects. This is reflected in our financials- we are growing revenue at almost twice the rate of our competitors. We're also publicly listed (ASX: FLN) so our financials are transparent.
If you have any other questions, I'm happy to answer them or shoot me a note at [email protected].
Henrik, founder of Coworks here. From a shareholder's perspective the merger probably makes perfect sense. They should be able to consolidate investments, overhead, PPC etc. From a contractor view I can't see how it changes much really. From a client perspective it is usually bad news with mergers like this. I think it has been great to have a fight for the lead in the outsourcing industry. The sad thing is that the industry as a whole needs better client processes, more high quality talent, better UX, better vetting systems etc. and that is not likely to come from the market leader at this stage. They will most likely be occupied with merger milestones for a while. Even talented management teams like these have limited bandwidth. It does leave opportunities open for all others looking at building the next generation remote work platform.
While this is huge news there's a lot to be done in this space, and it has only recently started to gain momentum.
For the past couple of years we've been busy building Socialance, sort of like a hybrid if oDesk & LinkedIn. A site where you can hire people recommended by your network.
I know building a marketplace is an extremely challenging task, but we've come this far, we're going to see it through.
It seems plenty of you are heavy users of either site, or have strong opinions about the sector. If you want to help out my email is [email protected] (we're bootstrapped, took part in Startup Chile and are based in London).
If it sounds like something might be interested in using, please drop your mail at http://Socialance.com
I run a curated freelancing platform for creatives called Coworks. Being part of the industry it's really interesting to read your thoughts on the merger. Even though I've followed them very closed for two years as a competitor I was really surprised by the move. My take on it is: 1. They can lower their acquisition costs by not competing with PPC and in their content marketing. 2. Their real competitors, who are still sleeping behind the wheel, are Manpower, Randstad etc. With the merger they get the muscles to battle them for the online staffing market. 3. Last but not least- they'll ditch one of the platforms (elance?) and save half the money on Tech.
So, it seems like most people had a bad experience with Elance. I have to admit that I had pros and cons too.. but now that I've learned how to use it smartly it's so damn useful. I think you can find very smart people and if you build a respectful relationship with them, it becomes very handy if you're dealing with multiple projects like I do. I know how I can trust them to do a great work and they trust me back to have quality projects / quality specifications and well paid.
Yup, I believe what these sites provide is a platform for introductions and initial agreements, but both parties still need to do the relationship building themselves.
I opened an oDesk account to get some remote help on some software dev that was beyond my skills at the time. The contractor I hired was from India, I think I paid him $15/hour.
Then I opened a profile for myself as a contractor. I charge $100/hour. So far I've gotten about 10 hours worth of work from two different US companies. I'd like to increase my rates in 2014. This is purely for interesting work to me, I've already got a day job.
I'm pretty happy with Elance. Currently Elance charge a 8.75% fee and oDesk charge 10%. Hopefully they won't jack up the price now that they own the market.
Outsourcing is very much in vogue. People hire through trusted freelancer sites like Elance and oDesk. Unfortunately what I feel, many of the Freelance sites on the web can’t simply help you when you need a complex, abstract project done in those domains. However, they
are good in tangible services like web development, logo development etc.
In my humble opinion, Statlance can be a good option for projects needing abstract thinking.
[+] [-] lingben|12 years ago|reply
Although this is called a merger, it is only that in name. It seems elance's CEO will call the shots.
https://www.odesk.com/blog/2013/12/mergerfaq/
"Who will lead the new company? oDesk executive chairman Thomas Layton will continue in the same role at the combined company, and Elance CEO Fabio Rosati will serve as chief executive officer."
There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker. It is ripe for disruption as the dominant sites grow bloated and complacent, only seeing acquisitions as the way to grow.
[+] [-] alanstorm|12 years ago|reply
Pay: $10
[+] [-] zackmorris|12 years ago|reply
That said, I got burned on eLance by charging a flat rate for a client that was never satisfied with my work. I made less after several weeks than other contractors make in an hour. I guess that's the main reason I went to oDesk (though I always liked eLance).
Please, somebody, somewhere, come up with a daily rate mechanism that doesn't invade workers' privacy.
That and finding a way to spread workloads across multiple developers (to reduce stress and make for a better product) are the two main challenges I see right now in freelancing.
[+] [-] albedo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmorici|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krapp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|12 years ago|reply
I have some people that work with me on oDesk that I've found over the past few years. I don't pay them a lot by US standards, but they're good people. I've sent them various hardware, like Kindles and a new laptop to help them do their work better, and it has worked out well, although I was kind of nervous about it at the time.
[+] [-] yogo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brc|12 years ago|reply
To several billion people, working for $20/day in their local lives using a computer would be a dream job. Someone who is employed is making money for their family and probably feels good about themselves.
[+] [-] sergiotapia|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flavor8|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jboy|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/au/freelancer-more-than-triples-first-d...
[+] [-] dongsheng|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] undoware|12 years ago|reply
Never use a service whose name you could make up thoughtlessly.
[+] [-] prawn|12 years ago|reply
I tend to evaluate a service based on what they provide, their reputation and sometimes the care put into their branding, but rarely do I make a blanket judgement on name alone. Anyone on HN should know how challenging it is to pick a name in the competitive domain landscape.
[+] [-] eli|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apalmer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedcoombs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidjgraph|12 years ago|reply
I think these guys know that a startup will struggle to compete, getting the critical mass of devs and employers is the same problem as starting a social network.
I share the view that ODesk quality is an order of magnitude better than elance, I think only those using elance will being thinking anything positive at this moment...
[+] [-] leknarf|12 years ago|reply
We have a few other competitors targeting the high-end of the freelancer market, but that's still open territory.
[+] [-] loceng|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uladzislau|12 years ago|reply
I have the same expectations for this merger/acquisition. Elance won't become any better and Odesk will cease to exist very soon after transferring all users to Elance.
Sadly this merger is dictated by nothing else but increasing market share of Freelancer.com.
[+] [-] mattbarrie|12 years ago|reply
I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. Since the vWorker acquisition actually all the quality metrics are up. The vWorker user base was also a very high quality workforce and today dominate highly our freelancer rankings and awarded projects. This is reflected in our financials- we are growing revenue at almost twice the rate of our competitors. We're also publicly listed (ASX: FLN) so our financials are transparent.
If you have any other questions, I'm happy to answer them or shoot me a note at [email protected].
Regards Matt
[+] [-] ckdarby|12 years ago|reply
Clearly they need to use their own services for a system admin & someone with aws+scaling experience
[+] [-] hendi311|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guillermovs|12 years ago|reply
For the past couple of years we've been busy building Socialance, sort of like a hybrid if oDesk & LinkedIn. A site where you can hire people recommended by your network.
I know building a marketplace is an extremely challenging task, but we've come this far, we're going to see it through.
It seems plenty of you are heavy users of either site, or have strong opinions about the sector. If you want to help out my email is [email protected] (we're bootstrapped, took part in Startup Chile and are based in London).
If it sounds like something might be interested in using, please drop your mail at http://Socialance.com
[+] [-] Silverreven|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d0m|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kokey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmourati|12 years ago|reply
Then I opened a profile for myself as a contractor. I charge $100/hour. So far I've gotten about 10 hours worth of work from two different US companies. I'd like to increase my rates in 2014. This is purely for interesting work to me, I've already got a day job.
[+] [-] seferphier|12 years ago|reply
Can u refer me to ur contractor in India?
[+] [-] fuddle|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedevil2k|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kimberleytin|12 years ago|reply