I have been acting as a Client representative both in the Civil engineering industry as well as in other sectors like e-commerce/it and I must tell you that if a contractor/consultant has the chance to ripp you off they most likely will.

Monitoring is the only chance of us Clients, and this is not pleasent but this is life, isn’t it?

and all I can say is the most important thing in the end are results.

Feedback you make appears to be weighed by the amount of payment you make so that providers who abandon jobs and receive no payment for those jobs are then not penalized. Despite abandoning job after job they retain a high rating. This encourages providers to bid far lower than they can accomplish the job for and then abandon the job when they realize they can’t do it. It’s a tremendous time waste for the buyer. But that is not the worst of the feedback system. I even had a provider who hacked into my system to extort money from me when they failed to complete the project because despite their earnest efforts they simply were not qualified. Understandably I gave them very poor ratings and complained about them hacking my site, but despite the complaint having been verified by oDesk support, when I checked again any details of the incident were gone.

Looking over the online work history of other providers who have performed poorly for me, I have seen numerous cases where negative feedback from buyers other than myself appears to have been erased. I am extremely generous with praise when a provider even comes close to fulfilling specified requirements, and I generally pay a bonus when they do so. When I make a negative comment about a developer it is only done when they REALLY mess up. It is dishonest that my negative comments and those of others are erased when my positive comments are featured so prominently.

Overall the oDesk provider rating system is not credible and introduces too much risk into the IT process. I recognize the company’s need to have a rating system that doesn’t thin the ranks of developers too much, but that must be balanced with the need for a rating system that rewards providers when they pay attention to detail in reading specifications and when they exercise diligence in completing them. I fully support that a feedback system should provide an opportunity to improve on poor feedback when received, but feedback should be improved by the developer’s gaining technical knowledge and experience at completing projects, not by the oDesk administrator hitting the delete button on negative feedback.

http://www.freelancelens.com/marketplaces/updates/minimum-wage-coming-up-in-odesk

I’ve worked as a freelancer and a contractor for many year and enjoy a healthy working relationship with many clients built on trust and performance.
In this game repeat custom and word of mouth is vital so I treat every client like royalty and work hard to deliver great results every time.

So my client’s are happy and trust me to deliver and in return I enjoy the freedom to innovate and deliver great solutions. This freedom was the driving force behind leaving the full time office environment and getting into contracting in the first place.
So maybe I’ll take a break from the keyboard and stand outside to think over a design problem or maybe I’ll call a client or research some white papers online away from the keyboard.

I can’t help feeling that this software is missing the point of freelancing.
Freelancers generally aren’t code monkeys. Code monkeys have full time development jobs which give a reasonable level of freedom to brainstorm and develop solutions.
When someone decides they are ready to take the next step and take charge of complete solutions directly with clients they become freelancers.
So why would you agree to be monitored for the amount of code you churn out?

A good developer wouldn’t just churn out code. A good developer engineers solutions which involves thinking about the problems, researching and finally developing a solution.

No, I suspect this software is aimed at the bottom 20% of the freelancing market, those really struggling to get work because they haven’t delivered for clients in the past or those overseas who have lower expectations of what it means to be a freelancer.

Maybe use oDesk as a way of getting into freelancing but it’s no replacement to networking, pitching yourself to companies and straight forward bidding for tenders directly.

You are very off-target and full of misinformed self-congratulations. Incidences of caste-discrimination in India are as much prevalent in rural India as racism is prevalent in, say, the rural US. By that logic I too will claim India can liberate African-Americans because they won’t be hung from a tree here, or get bottles broken on their head for being Africans, unlike in the US.

Don’t assume that everyone that is hiring on oDesk is a “Slave Master.” We hire here because they have the best resources available to deal with the many projects we have. We are, and I think the vast majority of buyers are, very fair with our oDesk providers and have given many of them multiple repeat assignments or permanent part time work.

In the future you should stick to what you know which is clearly not global contract labor relations issues.

oDesk is no different than eLance, Rent-a-coder and Guru. It matches those with a need with those with a skill. The price is always negotiable and ranges from $2/hr to $100/hr depending on the skillset. There’s also the option to pay as a flat-fee for a particular project.

So for Allen to single out oDesk as eSlavery 2.0 without using the service (or any other service for that matter) is fruitless. The monitoring tools are optional to the provider.

As such, I think that most of us will be able to find common ground with a few simple ideas.

First I want to speak about the amount that people are getting away with paying for jobs. $1.50 an hour is slavery. Many many many people all around the world are taught not to buy products from china, because of the inhumane conditions that are enforced on workers. Part of the inhumane conditions is the amount that they are getting paid. I’m not saying that they are not able to live off of what they earn, I’m just saying that in comparison with a US worker, the person is being seriously mistreated.

ODesks’ shareholders or craters may not benefit from imposing a minimum hourly rate, but all of the suppliers would benefit from only accepting jobs that match the minimum wage of the US… And if you want to do your comrades in Russia a favour, make sure they get a good income as well, you are doing nothing but hurting your own pocket by allowing labour to be sourced from over seas for cheaper than you are able to provide it yourself.

Next I would like to offer some incite from a suppliers point of view on the monitoring software that is available.

Personally I like the monitoring software, if I can say that I have been working (all be it slowly), and I am able to back it up with the records from the monitoring software. Well, the buyer is going to be forced to cough up. I am able to make the monitoring software work for me…

secondly “Offline Time”
Why would you ever need to go offline when you are contemplating your next piece of code, or the exact wording you are going to use in a document?
Simply open Word, and write in large easily visible letters, “I am doing XYZ, I need to know ABC before I am able to continue work” then twenty minutes later, come back to your computer, and write down what thoughts and research you have done in your absence. for example “I discovered that I can use mysql_num_rows, to count the number of rows returned by a mysql_query(”SELECT * from X”);, This is going to solve XYZ problem I was having with ABC”

Now personally I don’t believe that ODesk is responsible for the slave style labour.. I believe that it is the providers that have accepted that kind of behaviour from buyers. And to go into a little history, when you had slavery in the US. one farm with 7 slavers, and 60 slaves. Who would win when the slaves finally revolted?? Ain’t we Lucky we abolished slavery before there was a revolt?

Now one final thing, Please Please Please make the system work for you. Accept nothing but the best from your employer, and provide nothing but the best to your employer.
If everyone worked under that code of ethos, none of us would have any problems.

Your argument about minimum wage is not relevant in a global marketplace, being from Ireland I know the minimum rate that I need to earn to get by, therefore I only work on Jobs that pay me that rate. However providers in other less well off Countries can afford to work at a lower rate as their money goes further. Minimum wage in some eastern countries is less then $1 per hour, so if you’re getting $1.50 then you’re doing pretty well!

Providers should only work on jobs where they are comfortable with the rate.

As for this webcam debate, I for one have never used it and no Employer on oDesk has ever suggested that I should. The screen snaps that are taken of your screen while you are logging time are there to protect both the provider and the buyer (He’s called a buyer, because he is buying your services, not because he owns you as previously suggested).

Take an example, where a buyer receives his employees time log to review at the end of the week as many employers do in bricks and mortar businesses. The provider has billed lets say 10 hours of work for a job that realistically should have taken a lot less. The buyer now has the option to check the screen shots and check if that full 10 hours was spent on his project or if perhaps the provider maybe forgot to log out of the oDesk team application, perhaps he’s encountered a dishonest provider who is logging time that he’s surfing on the net. NOW he is protected, he can file a dispute for the hours and show from these screen shots that the provider did not work all of these 10 hours on his project.

From the provider point of view, I am protected, because I know if I am legitimately working for the time that I have logged, then I WILL BE PAID, Odesk offer me this guarantee. No other site offers this and I’m sure that if oDesk did not have these tools then they would also not be able to offer me this guarantee.

oDesk is a great marketplace, regardless of your background or nationality, there are opportunities there for everyone.

In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a global economy/marketplace.

Why shouldn’t workers from countries with lower living expenses be able to compete?