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oDesk to merge with Elance

odesk.com

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Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#3

Post by lingben »

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 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.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#5

Post by tannerc »

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…

I couldn't agree more. My experiences with oDesk have been overall phenomenal, while Elance has consistently been a pain.

I wonder what's fully fueling the merger, as oDesk seems to be doing pretty well as of late on its own.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#7

Post by davidjgraph »

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...

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#8

Post by zackmorris »

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.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#9

Post by maerF0x0 »

The only problem with odesk is the ridiculous fees for a contract to hire scenario . Their rules is something like 10% of their salary for 2yrs iirc. Head hunter industry standard is something like 10% for 6mos ?
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