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oDesk to merge with Elance

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Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#101

Post by User1398 »

jfoster wrote: post #61
Iftheshoefits wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2/hr is a lot of money to some people in some places, particularly certain "developing nations". Of course, you get what you pay for. Most people looking to hire on these sites aren't interested in quality; they want quantity at a discount. It works well for both them and the people doing the work at least in the short term. After all, some money (food) is better than nothing. I consider it a pretty base form of exp…

Can you give an example of a place where $2 peer hour is a lot? I often hear this type of assertion being made. I can believe that $2 per hour is enough to live off in some places, but I don't know of anywhere it would be considered "a lot."

I spent some time in Indonesia, where the helper for your guest house is making $50/mo. They're cleaning the rooms, running errands around the city, making breakfast, gardening, etc.

What you make in a couple of days, they make in a year. It's mind boggling. Yes, cost of living is cheaper, but not that cheap.

On the plus side, you feel like you can make a difference in their life. If you're living there, you can pay them a great salary, without breaking the bank. Or if you're visiting, they might not expect tips, but hand someone $5 that went out of their way to give you a free ride on their moped, and you just dropped a few days income in their pocket.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#102

Post by tluyben2 »

bluekite2000 wrote: post #82
tluyben2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had issues with both, but most with oDesk. Companies / people - saying they are from the US or EU but actually being from India, obviously lying about it to appear more credible, - starting a project with (1 or more) seniors to get the project and trust and then switching those for the random people dragged in from the street (the worst juniors you can imagine), - blackmailing withholding parts of deliverables,…

where are you buiding your remote team? I m in saigon (ho chi minh) vietnam this month for that same reason.

i built sucessful teams in the Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, India, Spain and Portugal.

I built a team in Vietnam two years ago together with another company, but i'm sorry to say we were badly scammed there with the most common scam; as soon as you are happy and the machine is well oiled, juniors replace the seniors for the work except in Skype calls where the guys you recruited and know still show up to play the part. We should've stayed on location maybe but I find it very uncomfortable to work with that level of distrust.

Hope you fare better! I met great coders there. Almost all played along with the charade; one of them contacted my recently telling he was sorry and explaining that it is common practice because they make more money that way and clients usually don't notice. Had this over the years in all Asians countries we worked with, however except this one it never happened after actually being on location.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#103

Post by seferphier »

dmourati wrote: post #94

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 al…

The hard part is to find a great contractor that is not only technically skilled but responsible. Very difficult

Can u refer me to ur contractor in India?

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#104

Post by brc »

sergiotapia wrote: post #68
jfoster wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of a place where $2 peer hour is a lot? I often hear this type of assertion being made. I can believe that $2 per hour is enough to live off in some places, but I don't know of anywhere it would be considered "a lot."

Where I live, a software engineer makes about $500/month. That's $3/hour and some change, I know software developers who make even less. Freelancing for me is basically a no-brainer as I will not work for those wages if I can help it. I have the incredible fortune of being able to speak and write at a native level, that gives me and a few others an edge but most people suffer a lot. If you land a job making $5/hour,…

I'm curious. At that sort of rate, buying hardware to work on sounds very expensive compared to your income. What sort of machine do you use, and how much did you pay? I'm guessing you don't have a $3k MacBook.

Seems like there would be an opportunity for developers to donate laptops/hardware to people in developing countries who could use them to make money. I have at least 5 sitting around my office, only 2 of which are in use. I guess the logistics would kill it, but still.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#105

Post by goblin89 »

loceng wrote: post #56
sergiotapia wrote: post #21

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. :)

Are there certain people who aren't allowed to work on Elance who work on oDesk?

It could be argued that oDesk is more fair. I tried elance once and AFAIR they encourage you to pay in order to appear higher in listings. This was a turnoff. oDesk's approach to contractor/job listings seems to be centered around smart algorithms and analytics instead.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#106

Post by brc »

krapp wrote: post #10

Oh, good. Now the experience of begging for slave wages fixing people's wordpress installs can be even more streamlined.

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.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#107

Post by adamzski »

weland wrote: post #99
lingben wrote: post #3

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. https://www.odesk.com/blog/2013/12/mergerfaq/ "Who will lead t…

> There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker. I really hope oDesk - Elance won't go the same way freelancer - vworker went. I used to have an account of RentACode, a long time ago. It was mostly a good experience, considering the state of freelancing back then. When my significant otter got fired, I dug the account and handed it over to her -- it…

lol yes a very similar situation for me but from the other side.. I employed people on rentacoder and it was not too bad just had to be very careful but then freelancer LOL it seems like an army of people who are only in the business of scamming, also the actual freelacer company looks really shady themselves! I only posted a few jobs on freelancer many many years ago but that was enough.. I logged in recently to freelancer and they seem to be ripping off 99designs/fiverr/whatever else they can find to copy..

I remember that now with rentacoder, they had a great escrow system.

oDesk are good, they dont allow employers or freelancers to get away with much wrong doing, they re all I use now and I hope they do not change

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#108

Post by adamzski »

aytekin wrote: post #18
lingben wrote: post #3

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. https://www.odesk.com/blog/2013/12/mergerfaq/ "Who will lead t…

It is like Google merging with AltaVista and AltaVista CEO becoming the new CEO. We depend heavily on oDesk for our support team so this is a very scary news.

I completely agree, it seems like oDesk are throwing their business away.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#109

Post by fayyazkl »

alecsmart1 wrote: post #30
lingben wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

out of curiosity, how exactly does the blackmailing on oDesk work?

Something as simple as the contractor wont provide you with the full code until you leave a 5 star rating.

Just to balance the concept, usually people who have maintained good ratings for a long time, don't do this. I have worked for like 5-6 years at odesk part time, done around 40 jobs of varied sizes (hourly as well as fixed prices), never even once held back code or any thing, and barely once received some what negative feedback in which case i believe it was still my fault. So all sorts of people exist and work online. Those who have build reputations over years value it far more than the money, and an employer can easily trash the reputation with feedback. That being said employers from the western world are generally nice or may be it was just my experience :)

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#110

Post by fayyazkl »

As long as there was competition, they were forced to maintain standards as well as individuality to retain separate policies. From a contractor's perspective only on one site, it would be positive in the sense that you can use the same credibility to bid for projects from other side ONCE they unite.
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