oDesk to merge with Elance • Hacker News Board

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#141

Post by zackmorris » Fri, Dec 20, 2013, 6:42 PM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #25

zackmorris wrote: post #8

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 t…

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.

I'm a day late answering this but just wanted to add that I consider a solid freelancing rate to be anything higher than the overtime rate of the industry standard. So if you normally would have a $50,000 a year programming job at roughly $25/hr, your freelancing rate should be at least 1.5 times that or $37.50/hr. I've also had trouble staying booked, so if you can manage 20 billable hours a week, you're probably ahead of the curve. So that's a $36,000/yr income I guess, but you own your own time and don't have to be in an office all day. That alone is worth $14k to me.

I came in a little below that and got several gigs at $30/hr, mostly in esoteric areas like OpenGL programming.

Also I would recommend watching your job invites and you'll start to notice which areas are the least sensitive to hourly rates. For me that's been 3D work in iOS, but YMMV.

I'm trying to move to a daily rate, in that case I would assume only 2-4 hours of coding daily because when you are really in the zone, most of your problem solving work happens off the computer. So I think that's why we see rates of $75 or even $125 or more quoted so often.

The other thing I've learned is that institutional work pays a lot more, so it's better to find gigs for consultancies/studios/education, things like that, as opposed to individuals. They seem to expect a rate of at least $50-75/hr and up. In large cities the rate probably starts at $100/hr.

Anyway, I'm basically taking a pay cut as a freelancer so that I can work on my own projects, which have the potential to pay back exponentially someday, and are at the very least challenging and rewarding and keep my psyche going. I've had jobs where the boss charged $100/hr and paid us $15/hr, and on top of that wanted us to work 9 hours or more a day, and I did the math and realized that I would never be able to achieve my goals if the lion's share of my efforts went to someone else.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#142

Post by mnazim » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 5:15 AM UTC

seferphier wrote: post #103

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?

We are one. Give us a shot. Email in my profile.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#143

Post by Kimberleytin » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 6:52 PM UTC

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.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#144

Post by karatchov » Sun, Dec 22, 2013, 9:07 AM UTC

mattbarrie wrote: post #125

weland wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hi Weland, I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. I thought I would reply to your comment, and I'm also happy to get someone to look into your account if you get send me your username. A few comments- we do have escrows by default- called Milestone Payments. We don't however force people to use them if the two parties decide to come to an arrangement where they don't want to use them. The vast majority of projects do. Also y…

Hy

Being an old RAC then vWorker freelancer, I totally share weland's view.

Lately, I restarted on freelancer.com, and the amount of WTF moments that I faced are quite substantial. Let me give you a summary (and why I decided to move to elance):

-- The worker being constantly extorted in every corner of the site:

-Pay $5 in order to take a test.

-Pay more $ to get your bid in the first row/highlighted

-Pay some $ to unlock more BidsPerMonth and Skills

-Pay upfront 10% of every job you are awarded, even if the employer is determined to scam you and never pay

-What about a constant Ad to remind you that you can always choose to pay more. ...

-- Milestone payment is not defaulted, if the employer didnt made a milestone payment, we couldn't care less, we wont give you back the initial 10% fee (even if both agree to cancel), and you'll have a permanent "Work in Progress" job in your profile (until you decide to constantly harass the support team and wait few weeks)

--The website is a hassle:

- Everything is dynamically processed, slow loading, excessively simplified, and most pages cant be bookmarked

- Forced facebook-like communication!! seriously!!

- Using game mechanism to motivate workers is interesting(levels, badges, XP points ...), but most of it is actually useless/funny (Exp: 78000 credit point to have a 20min call with the CEO)