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ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

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Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#101

Post by mjhea0 »

mekarpeles wrote: post #57
mjhea0 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Skills mean very little to me. There's a lot of great developers out there. The top workers finish projects and can communicate. I opt for the niche job boards such has http://www.gun.io or http://www.djangojobs.net as I can find good talent and it's much easier to screen people when I can hope on the phone. There's a real problem finding devs with softskills and so far it's a pain point that no one has gone…

I agree and finding great developers is a big part of the challenge. However, there's more to arranging a project then finding the right talent, especially for clients who have expectations for security, domain expertise, and quality assurance. Most platforms simply solve the matchmaking component (eharmony style). The solution is a platform which supports engineers' workflows (git, hg, etc) -- or at least this conti…

so you are creating an elite set of hackers at hackerlist? how are you finding and assessing them? how do you ensure that they will stay?

i hope to see a cross between a dev shop and a job board in the future.

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#102

Post by TheCoelacanth »

mekarpeles wrote: post #97
elbear wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just tried to sign up for your service and it restricts certain characters from the password. Why is that?

elbear, no, there's no specific reason. We're using an arbitrary regex, 4-32 chars, alphanumerics and a set of specials including: !@#$%^&+=_ Let me know which characters you feel are appropriate and we'll happily consider implementing your recommendation. If you have any additional feedback, feel free to reach out to me personally, m hackerlist.net, tel: 415.690.8033. Ultimately, we're building hackerlist for hacker…

I think that unless you have a specific reason for restricting them, you simply shouldn't restrict them, since any restrictions on the character set makes all passwords weaker. Personally, I expect all printable ASCII characters to be acceptable as part of a password and get irritated when some of them aren't accepted.

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#103

Post by auctiontheory »

carlosrt wrote: post #52
wildmXranat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long time freelancer with a few purchased gigs as well: Quality of the workers or the turned in work is directly linked to the budget of a project. I've had many conversations on both sides of the table, where there was a miss-match and an eventual agreement to either bump up the budget or to lower the expectation. There's still risk in eventually receiving lame work, but I don't think that is the status quo. Th…

Elance could make it easier to find top providers if search results could be sorted by skills test results. For whatever reason they choose not enable that feature.

Elance could make it easier to find top providers if search results could be sorted by skills test results.

This would not solve the problem of (1) slacking off - poor work ethic, and (2) bait and switch - putting a less capable person on your job.

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#104

Post by khalidmbajwa »

jnbiche wrote: post #38
khalidmbajwa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, no not really. I charge around 60$/hr on oDesk.Have closed to 5000 hours and can easily pull in upwards of 5K USD a month, which is an extra ordinary sum for someone sitting in a country in Pakistan where the conversion rate i 104 PKR to a USD.You can easily get well paying clients if you spend a little time building up your history, and are really good at what you do.

An exchange rate will tell you absolutely zero about one currencies relative worth to another. By your logic, someone in Japan, whose currency trades about 100 to 1 USD, would have about the same buying power as you per USD, when in fact, assuming you're both earning the same in USD, you would almost certainly have much, much more purchasing power. To accurately compare purchasing power among currencies, you need to…

You are probably right but i was just trying to give a ballpark estimate of how good is a 5K USD income in pakistan.The conversion rate is a fair if not a perfect gauge.I can sustain a full family of 5 with an excellent lifestyle in about 2K here in Pakistan so its a very decent amount.

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#105

Post by khalidmbajwa »

e12e wrote: post #94
khalidmbajwa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, no not really. I charge around 60$/hr on oDesk.Have closed to 5000 hours and can easily pull in upwards of 5K USD a month, which is an extra ordinary sum for someone sitting in a country in Pakistan where the conversion rate i 104 PKR to a USD.You can easily get well paying clients if you spend a little time building up your history, and are really good at what you do.

First, it's great to hear that you're getting work; but are you only working part time? 5K at 60 an hour is only about two weeks worth of work (83 hours)?

Hey, Yeah for the past year i have been working on a startup so i only do about 20 hours per week. I turn down all projects that demand more. Thankfully i have a few very decent clients who have given me an extraordinary amount of runway on the project, in terms of the time they need , the hours i work,and the exact scope of work. Basically the conversation is mostly like, hey i think it would be cool if we put in this feature, and the client goes 'yeah sure' and i go ahead and do it, this frees me up to bootstrap a startup and at the same time make a very decent living out of it :) But the more i dive into my own projects the less appeal freelance work holds the the point that i barely do enough to get by in terms of money i can make and not an hour or penny more :)

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#106

Post by mekarpeles »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #102
mekarpeles wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

elbear, no, there's no specific reason. We're using an arbitrary regex, 4-32 chars, alphanumerics and a set of specials including: !@#$%^&+=_ Let me know which characters you feel are appropriate and we'll happily consider implementing your recommendation. If you have any additional feedback, feel free to reach out to me personally, m hackerlist.net, tel: 415.690.8033. Ultimately, we're building hackerlist for hacker…

I think that unless you have a specific reason for restricting them, you simply shouldn't restrict them, since any restrictions on the character set makes all passwords weaker. Personally, I expect all printable ASCII characters to be acceptable as part of a password and get irritated when some of them aren't accepted.

Understood, thank you. We're in the process of modifying this now.

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#107

Post by mudil »

sfjailbird wrote: post #78
mattbarrie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, I'm the Chief Executive of Freelancer.com. This is ridiculous. If you have a specific example and can send me your username to matt@freelancer.com, I can get someone to look into your case for you.

I have noticed that you guys tend to pop up when these thing surface. Perhaps you should dedicate your efforts to better customer service, so you wouldn't see these stories in the first place? As you can see I am far from the only one with a bad experience. Thanks for the offer to look into my case, but I have wasted enough time with it. Keep the 50 dollars. But the price is that I warn everyone that will listen. So,…

mattbarrie pops up here, but not available to his paying(!) customers at freelancer.

He was never able to explain to me how the project that I started and paid for in thousands of $$ was closed by the developer who did not deliver anything. And the kicker is that I couldn't even leave a feedback!

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#108

Post by mudil »

mattbarrie wrote: post #71
sfjailbird wrote: post #69

I personally recommend everyone to not use Freelancer.com. I learned in this thread that they also bought vWorker, and I am not surprised to read that it has turned for the worse after being acquired. In short, they steal from both the freelancers and the outsourcers - stories aplenty about this [1]. I only know about these stories because I started looking into them after being bamboozled myself, luckily for only a…

Hi there, I'm the Chief Executive of Freelancer.com. This is ridiculous. If you have a specific example and can send me your username to matt@freelancer.com, I can get someone to look into your case for you.

matt: you customer service and protections are ridiculous. That's why you will never have a single $ from me ever. You are lucky I have not filed a report with CA Attorney General against your company.

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#109

Post by csomar »

mattbarrie wrote: post #71
sfjailbird wrote: post #69

I personally recommend everyone to not use Freelancer.com. I learned in this thread that they also bought vWorker, and I am not surprised to read that it has turned for the worse after being acquired. In short, they steal from both the freelancers and the outsourcers - stories aplenty about this [1]. I only know about these stories because I started looking into them after being bamboozled myself, luckily for only a…

Hi there, I'm the Chief Executive of Freelancer.com. This is ridiculous. If you have a specific example and can send me your username to matt@freelancer.com, I can get someone to look into your case for you.

Hi there, I'm the Chief Executive of Freelancer.com. This is ridiculous.

I were to believe you if I wasn't in the same guy place. I was "scammed" in around $250 from freelancer.com. Basically, the website refused to give the money back.

Re: ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru

#110

Post by mekarpeles »

mjhea0 wrote: post #101
mekarpeles wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and finding great developers is a big part of the challenge. However, there's more to arranging a project then finding the right talent, especially for clients who have expectations for security, domain expertise, and quality assurance. Most platforms simply solve the matchmaking component (eharmony style). The solution is a platform which supports engineers' workflows (git, hg, etc) -- or at least this conti…

so you are creating an elite set of hackers at hackerlist? how are you finding and assessing them? how do you ensure that they will stay? i hope to see a cross between a dev shop and a job board in the future.

Thank you for your questions mjhea0. Long term, as you guessed, we're building something different from a job board -- we're architecting an ecosystem where talented engineers can make a living completing missions online, with version control, test cases, and continuous integration. We imagine this looking like a hybrid between github and odesk but it's ultimately the hackers we work with that will shape this experience.

One of our objectives is to bring the certainty and assurance that top companies enjoy with full time staff, to the talented, nomadic hackers of the world, while preserving hackers' needs for flexibility, getting paid what they deserve, and supporting best practices (unless you're a fan of submitting that .zip file on odesk -- nothing hurts me more).

To answer your question about retaining talent: One of the reasons I seek ephemeral opportunities (and I suspect there are others like me) is I appreciate flexibility; working on various projects which interest or challenge me, with different teams, on a schedule which works for me. I don't anticipate 'solving' the problem of attrition directly as much as I do finding creative, safe ways of working around hackers' preferences to achieve the most beneficial outcome for all parties involved. This includes experimenting with strategies like structuring missions around teams of hackers to mitigate risk.

That said, there are several things we're doing for our hackers to be deserving of their loyalty. First and foremost, we don't charge our hackers any fees -- all of our fees are client facing. Why? I complete missions on behalf of Hackerlist, I don't want fees and I don't think it's right to hold more talented technologists to a different standard. Second, we're giving equity in Hackerlist to the top 4 performing hackers in our first batch. Finally, we have a team of mentors available for advice and guidance.

In terms of finding and vetting experts: We have a board of mentors with specialties in different areas who are assisting in the screening process. I also bring my own expertise, being a 2-time founder, having a partial PhD in AI/NLP and having led technology (and a good deal of technical recruiting) efforts for two YC companies (Hyperink, Ark).

It's worth nothing, we're only accepting 2^4 applicants for our first official batch (so far there's 700+ applications) specifically so we can address and tackle these quality issues head-on and provide our hackers the best experience possible.

TL;DR - no fees to hackers, they keep all their earnings - high price points - we handle invoicing + vetting (clients & hackers) - we have a strong network of mentors to control quality - we're good to our hackers and aim to build a custom experience around their needs.

best wishes + happy hacking

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