oDesk Archive

Assembla is easiest to describe as a project management service. I haven’t heard much from Assembla since I interviewed their President Andy Singleton last year. Today Assembla is announcing a new partnership with outsourcing marketplace oDesk. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

The partnership will bring Assembla’s tools to the oDesk workers. Assembla’s tools include subversion and git code repositories, ticketing, collaboration, multi-project portfolios, and project management.

Assembla’s community of users will also be able to directly connect with the workforce on oDesk. Today’s partnership should give Assembla a new level of visibility into their target market.

Social networking service Vois is announcing this morning their launch of a "social sourcing" marketplace. The services will include IT, freelance and professional services along with on-demand manufacturing. They will also offer tools for collaboration once a transaction has completed. Certainly is a bold move for a social network.

The question with this social sourcing launch is whether the users of Vois are interested in these types of services. Are they looking to buy or sell these types of services. My guess is that they will have a lot of sellers but it will take a good deal of work to get buyers. Will people who are in the mode of sharing photos or posting notes be able to switch their mindset into a transactional business focus?

Other sites in this area include Elance and oDesk.

I first learned about oDesk when listening to Michael Arrington at the Future of Web Apps summit in September. I decided to take a more in-depth look a this web application. What I saw scared me. In fact, I wonder if oDesk is eSlavery 2.0?

Let’s start with the positive. Hiring workers (mostly offshore) is hard. oDesk, on the surface, does a good job of handling the finding of a professional to handle a need. They do testing and verification which is a good thing.

So I started to look deeper. And this is where the slavery aspect begins. When we think of slaves of the last 1000 years, there are several things in common. The most common is the fact that the “masters” would watch them to make sure they worked. And if they didn’t they got whipped or beaten or worse. Now while oDesk does not go that far, they certainly allow you to watch and monitor. So how do you watch?

The first way you can watch your worker is by monitoring his/her productivity on the keyboard and mouse. Don’t check your Yahoo! mail or check the latest Paris Hilton pic or you will be penalized. So those who type faster or click faster, are more productive and thereby get a better rating. Same thing masters did to their slaves.

The next way you can watch is by actually making the worker post images every 10 minutes of themselves in front of their pc. I mean ARE YOU KIDDING ME. So if you happen to have a stomach ache suddenly hit you within 3 minutes of photo time, you best get a bed pan. And make sure you get your lipstick and blush on first. Same thing masters did to their slaves.

From the oDesk site about watching:

Monitor Activity — oDesk Team creates filmstrips of the provider’s online activity (screenshots and webcam shots). You can literally see what your team members are working on. Buyers use this visibility to spot check code, see when the provider is working, and see if the provider is getting stuck on any tasks.

Could you imagine any web shop in the U.S. recording the activities of their employees so closely? I would love to see (insert web shop) setting up this type of system. What about a large corporation. Let’s see that happen. C’mon. I am quite sure that within a short period the employees would be gone. I have used several contractors over the years and about 15% of the time, it does not work out. But I have never even considered putting a web cam on them. One of my best friends does my design work. I could only imagine what it would be like if I (seriously) asked him to put a web cam and a click tracker on when he works on projects for me. I am sure I would no longer have a great designer or a friend.

In fact, oDesk has a video showing their office from behind the scenes. I don’t see any web cams taking pictures of the employees. Carol and Maureen? Ron and Josh from operations? Does anyone monitor their activities? When those employees look at the camera and talk, is their keyboard/mouse productivity going down? Does the CEO, Gary Swart, send his web cam shots to the investors every 10 minutes? What about mouseclicks? I can just imagine the fun the oDesk team has looking at all these bits of info and images.

So why do I believe we allow this? It’s simple… from the research I have done, the majority of workers on oDesk are from outside the U.S. and the majority of buyers are inside. So I assume the buyers feel it is ok. It is “ok” to take advantage of the Russians, the Indians, the others. All of the documentation is in English and Russian which makes me believe that there is a large percentage of Russian people on the site. Actually if you look in most categories, a Russian person shows up first for hours worked. Why are the Russians ok with this monitoring? Because my guess is that the money outweighs the monitoring. Furthermore, if you are paying someone $15/hr and assume they work 40-ish hours in a week, the maximum you would be out is $600. So for $600 you force someone to monitor their activities like a rat in a cage.

Here is the bottom line… oDesk has some good attributes, but the monitoring is absolutely absurd and really is sad that people buy into this model. If you don’t trust someone, don’t work with them. If you are worried, start with a small project with someone while you work out the trust factor. Clearly oDesk’s motto is “We don’t trust the people we represent”. Really shameful in my opinion. I welcome comments from those who have used the service as a buyer and would certainly be open to a discussion with oDesk management about my concerns.

Update 11/16: Some questions for oDesk:

• How do you handle work away from the computer? Meaning, while I get that “productivity in keyboard clicks and mouse clicks = payment” what about when I am working on thought?
• What does oDesk take as their fee?
• Stats on providers and buyers – send me some stats please