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After working +1200 hours in oDesk

malditointer.net

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Re: After working +1200 hours in oDesk

#91

Post by malditojavi »

paulhauggis wrote: post #40

I tried oDesk last year. There are so many people that are only willing to pay After getting through all of this, the clients left over that are even willing to pay a decent wage expect way too much. Developer, designer, and product manager for one fee. I can't tell you how many potential clients I turned down because of this. I gave this up and found a decent part-time contracting gig on craigslist. Odesk should be…

btw 'Hire meat $4/h' is a killer add https://twitter.com/malditojavi/status/399545792114851842

Re: After working +1200 hours in oDesk

#92

Post by malditojavi »

csomar wrote: post #36

The hours logged in his graph (per my understanding) do not show the work spent on searching and applying for jobs. And also tweaking your CV. There is a lot of overhead in doing this. And then you have to log hours for: accounting, banking, and government papers. And then deduct banking and accountants fees. And then deduct your hardware fees (since you are paying for them yourself). No need for an office since you…

You are right, Abid. No info shared about how much time takes to complete all the 'certification exams' present also in other workforce-on-demand platforms, that I tell, they took some considerable part of your time.

2012, working +1200 hours, was not my working best year. I sacrified a lot of my (free?)time to apply for new jobs, get new contracts, make internal research on how to improve my opportunities of having more employers interested in me. Working stituation sometimes overexceed my capacity to manage it, and I experienced an anxiety attack mainly produced by having almost no disconnection time.

Future is now and working on remote is possible and a great opportunity. Nonetheless, working on remote should not imply to low insanely your rates just for the fact that you are working from other place (and you are not consuming office supplies, office space). It's just question of learning how to deal with a new situation of selling your services to someone that is just contacting you virtually.

And no, imho, it was not sustainable to work like this. At least, not with those rates.

I'm planning to talk about this widely in the newsletter, feel free to join it.

Re: After working +1200 hours in oDesk

#93

Post by malditojavi »

dethstar wrote: post #7

The fact that his response rate got higher after he photoshopped a beard on his face needs more explanation, was he applying to get those jobs more than pre-beard? If he was applying about the same that's really interesting, and makes me sad as a beardless guy.

Different job applications. I know for a real and accurate a/b test, those job applications should be the same, but it was not like that.

Re: After working +1200 hours in oDesk

#95

Post by e12e »

waps wrote: post #86
pessimizer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people's commutes make a lot of difference.

True, on the other hand 37.5 hours is a week's worth of toilet breaks plus maybe one lunch out of 5 ?

Or you could view it through the lens of working extra for a period, then taking some time off. Guessing you could remain productive at 9 hours of work each day, you'd save up a full 7.5 day off every five days (every week) -- and a full week off in 5 weeks of "crunch". If you work an additional 1.5 hours the numbers aren't that different for 8 hour work days, but that assumes you can maintain efficiency working 9.5 hour days for a week, and also doesn't translate to a full 8 hour day off for a week of "crunch".

YMMV etc.

Re: After working +1200 hours in oDesk

#96

Post by malditojavi »

chmars wrote: post #53
dangrossman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should make a tumblr of HN comments about not reading submissions. It's not helpful; people are on this page to discuss the story, not why chmars didn't read it.

I couldn't read it … there was no way for me to remove the pop-up layer without being forward to another URL. OK, technically, I could have gone all the way to access the original content. But why should I reward a website that does apparently not want to be read?

Thanks for your comment. In fact, you are not the first one complaining about that (another reader named it as 'user-hostile blog'), and I guess this is an invaluable insight for improving http://manycontacts.com
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