15 ms·

oDesk to merge with Elance

309 points by goblin89 13y ago

flavor8 13y ago
Ugh, let's hope Elance's CEO doesn't fuck up ODesk. Elance is kindergarten quality compared to ODesk's site.
lingben 13y ago
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/ 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.
- tannerc 13y ago
  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.
  - loceng 13y ago
    I imagine oDesk is fine as long as you don't have any problems. They don't see blackmail as breaking their rules though, e.g. a contractor blackmailing you for a good rating. That contractor gets to stay on the platform. I have had this experience.
    - lingben 13y ago
      out of curiosity, how exactly does the blackmailing on oDesk work?
      - alecsmart1 13y ago
        Something as simple as the contractor wont provide you with the full code until you leave a 5 star rating.
        loceng 13y ago
        Or just the final code or maybe have access to your servers or other assets - and without a full security check / wipe, you can't know if they created a way in - or they threaten to release your code publicly, or sell it, etc..
        bigiain 13y ago
        Wait - what? People actually accept executable, possibly backdoored code and/or assets from random-internet-site-freelancers – then install it on their production sites _without_ security auditing it? (I know - I _shouldn't_ be surprised, I suspect significant double-digit percentages of WordPress sites have themes installed which have some mysterious " <?php echo eval(base_64_decode('foobazbah')) ?> type thing in footer.php…)
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        andyjdavis 13y ago
        Most people I know who have used odesk/elance simply don't have the ability to perform an audit. They are mostly writers, photographers, non-technical entrepreneurs and so on who have outsourced some development tasks related to their online activities. They personally have no ability to assess the code apart from how it looks in the front end. They could hire a second person to do the audit for them but now they have two people to worry about getting screwed by...
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    I've had issues with both, but most with oDesk. Companies / people - saying they are from the US or EU but actually being from India, obviously lying about it to appear more credible, - starting a project with (1 or more) seniors to get the project and trust and then switching those for the random people dragged in from the street (the worst juniors you can imagine), - blackmailing withholding parts of deliverables, - working (with different accounts on different sites) on 10+ projects at a time, - disappearing without any recourse (yes this can happen in 'real life', but it's extremely rare; on oDesk it's not) - making up the most insane lies why they are late/more expensive; most common and very morbid; cancer of close family or themselves, but so badly researched that after 3 questions you already know it's not true and other types of scamming. Most of these things are preventable if you are really really paranoid and are on top of the 'workers' 24/7, checking everything they deliver with a fine comb, however, that's not really what I would want to do. And for all cases reported to oDesk they just said they couldn't do anything as the screenshot tool was used and the workers 'worked' according to that. There was an IDE open and code was typed in; random copy/paste code from the web, but that was not the point. I have very good experiences with both as well and a lot of successful projects, but yeah; this stuff delivered a lot of pain and energy and we seem completely unprotected as buyer. What we do these days is actually building a team at the outsourcing location, sitting there in the office, training etc; it takes more upfront effort and cost, but it's much more effective. So much more that I would never use these sites again. And we build value instead of work with and train people who will leave in a blink of an eye for a better paying client.
    - bluekite2000 13y ago
      where are you buiding your remote team? I m in saigon (ho chi minh) vietnam this month for that same reason.
      - tluyben2 13y ago
        i built sucessful teams in the Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, India, Spain and Portugal. I built a team in Vietnam two years ago together with another company, but i'm sorry to say we were badly scammed there with the most common scam; as soon as you are happy and the machine is well oiled, juniors replace the seniors for the work except in Skype calls where the guys you recruited and know still show up to play the part. We should've stayed on location maybe but I find it very uncomfortable to work with that level of distrust. Hope you fare better! I met great coders there. Almost all played along with the charade; one of them contacted my recently telling he was sorry and explaining that it is common practice because they make more money that way and clients usually don't notice. Had this over the years in all Asians countries we worked with, however except this one it never happened after actually being on location.
- aytekin 13y ago
  It is like Google merging with AltaVista and AltaVista CEO becoming the new CEO. We depend heavily on oDesk for our support team so this is a very scary news.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - adamzski 13y ago
    I completely agree, it seems like oDesk are throwing their business away.
- sixspeed 13y ago
  Would you mind elaborating on your experiences with elance? I had a family member who does freelance marketing/writing called me a few years ago and mentioned he was planning to sign up there and asking what I knew about it. I could only tell him about a comment I'd browsed on HN that referred to it as a "ghetto" of poor paying assignments. He went ahead with it and now seems to be doing quite well as one of the top 5 providers of marketing and writing services.
  - lingben 13y ago
    My experience is with hiring technical freelancers: design, network, security, development, etc. It is entirely possible that elance is great for non-technical jobs. The issues I ran into were providers who have great ratings but who can't do the job! Later I found out that elance has a loophole where buyers who disputed or cancelled projects are not able to leave feedback. So you're not getting the full story when you look at a provider's history. elance doesn't really care about this. So you have a huge portion of freelancers on elance who cosmetically pump up their ratings to get more jobs and then either farm them out to others or do a shoddy job themselves. when/if the job goes into dispute or is cancelled it disappears from their history. if the client is dumb enough to be happy with the crap work, they get a nice rating in exchange for turning over the final code.
    - maratd 13y ago
      > Later I found out that elance has a loophole where buyers who disputed or cancelled projects are not able to leave feedback. That is not correct. You can dispute a project and as long as the freelancer received a single dollar for any work, you can leave feedback. Why should you be allowed to leave feedback if there hasn't been any payment made? There are just as many clowns on the client side, as there are on the freelancer side. Many projects never get off the ground because the client has no money or is just an idiot. People like that should be allowed to leave feedback? If you're having trouble finding quality help on Elance, try creating a private project and invite only those in your geographic region. So if you're in the US, that means US freelancers. In the end, you get what you pay for. Don't expect miracles from India.
- benhebert 13y ago
  I too hate elance and have been using oDesk for years. The experience at oDesk was just phenomenally better than elance. You're right about ripe for disruption too. I wonder who will move into the space.
  - goostavos 13y ago
    Out of curiosity, are you using oDesk to hire contractors, or are you freelancing on oDesk? I ask because I recently started freelancing on the sight an it feels like fighting for scraps. I mean, half the posts I see have "Contact goes to the lowest bidder" at the top of the listing. Does it get better once you "establish" yourself on the site? Right now it feels pretty futile outside of making some pocket change.
    - wonderyak 13y ago
      I used oDesk exclusively for hiring developers for a number of years, here is my 2 cents: > it feels like fighting for scraps You are fighting for scraps. Generally speaking, until you've been really burnt by a contractor you feel great hiring people in India to work for pennies compared to what you're reselling the service for. IMO, this is the vast majority of people hiring on oDesk. In addition, there are SMB or Agency type businesses that are looking to form relationships; they don't want to have to constantly search for new developers. Often, they will find a group or business with a stable of developers even if the quality of the work is a little bit poorer. Many of the firms I worked with just had a project manager that communicated with the developers on their end (often because they did not speak english) and maintained a single point of contact for us. Those were our best experiences. > Does it get better once you "establish" yourself on the site? It should. By the end of the time I was using oDesk I had several filters set up when searching so if someone had not completed a test or rating they would never appear on my radar.
  - mike_herrera 13y ago
    I'd love to drink their milkshake. My friend and I are mid-redesign on a new service marketplace called reBaked. Our innovation is collaboration with many freelancers and paying them proportionally to what they actually deliver. There's also a negotiated minimum payment for freelancers so it's not overly risky for them. ...it's not quite ready for a Show HN, but the gist can be seen at (https://rbkd-staging.heroku.com https://rbkd-staging.heroku.com). I'd love to get your first reaction.
- dubcanada 13y ago
  As long as it's not Freelancer I'm fine.
- weland 13y ago
  > There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker. I really hope oDesk - Elance won't go the same way freelancer - vworker went. I used to have an account of RentACode, a long time ago. It was mostly a good experience, considering the state of freelancing back then. When my significant otter got fired, I dug the account and handed it over to her -- it had a bunch of good reviews and some of them were for tech writing jobs, so I though it would be useful to her (she's not a programmer, she does marketing). RAC had, in the meantime, become freelancer.com. The first thing it did was chew through the money I still had in my account -- two or three hundred dollars the withdrawal of which I had procrastinated for a long time, keeping them there in case I'd suddenly decide to take new jobs on RAC (then vWorker) again. I didn't get anything other than automated answers from their tech support, and eventually settled for that being dead money. Now freelancer.com is a scammer's heaven. It doesn't have escrows by default, the rounding of of fees is done quite liberally, there seems to be no mechanism to stop automatic bidding (with ridiculous sums that do nothing but bring the average bid price down, since it's obvious that whatever is behind those posts is never awarded a project), and their support for disputes is unhelpful at best. My gf is actually still unemployed and still gets projects on Freelancer every once in a while, but after being scammed twice -- with copious help through lack of reaction by Freelancer -- both her and her clients generally eschew its payment system altogether. She usually insists on a 100% milestone on Freelancer.com the first time she works with them, and then it's PayPal all the way. The eschewing of the payment system seems to be quite generalized, because their lack of reaction and real buyer and seller protection basically means people end up paying fees for something that is then little more than a glorified job advertising website, since it otherwise fails to offer anything for the (hefty) fees they take. Freelancer.com is a pretty sore sight nowadays. I browse its range of contract offers every once in a while; there's generally nothing for me (I do systems programming and embedded stuff -- people don't usually hire freelancers to write operating systems or make gadgets, unsurprisingly), but most of the projects and most of the bids depress me. Ads along the lines of "looking for an app expert", looking for reasonably non-trivial applications that work on a gazillion of platforms, awarded to poor people for sums that seem small even to me.
  - adamzski 13y ago
negamax 13y ago
Really wish oDesk had carried on by itself.
fuddle 13y ago
I'm pretty happy with Elance. Currently Elance charge a 8.75% fee and oDesk charge 10%. Hopefully they won't jack up the price now that they own the market.
- bluedevil2k 13y ago
  Umm...I would expect the price to be jacked up big time now that they own the market.
davidjgraph 13y ago
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...
- leknarf 13y ago
  Our startup Lambda (http://getlambda.com http://getlambda.com) competes with both, but we're not the least bit concerned. I already thought of elance/odesk as being effectively the same, in the sense that they're both known as places to find cheap, off-shore labor. I don't know any devs in NYC who've seriously considered working through either site and don't expect that to change. Likewise, I don't know many hiring companies that have used their sites for anything more than throwaway projects. We have a few other competitors targeting the high-end of the freelancer market, but that's still open territory.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    I've been working through Freelancer/Elance for about 5 years now. I'm quite an experienced iOS dev and typically only apply to the higher priced jobs which then tend to lead on to repeat work. I just took a look at your site. Although I would consider myself quite experienced I'm not a 'rockstar'. What kind of devs do you accept to join Lambda? What do you consider an 'exceptional developer'?
    - leknarf 13y ago
      That's interesting. I love to talk with you sometime about your experience with those higher priced jobs. I'm particularly curious about what kinds of clients are mosting higher price jobs on elance, since our experience has been that it's mostly a race to the bottom. Could you send me an email: andrew at getlambda dotcom For the types of projects we work with, "exceptional developers" might be better described as "competent developers, great entrepreneurs". Of course, that wouldn't be ideal marketing copy :) In general, raw technical ability isn't a huge factor in commanding higher rates. There's definitely a minimum threshold someone needs to pass, but you'd probably clear that easily if you've been freelancing for 5+ years. Instead of learning to code faster, you'd be better served by learning to code less. Clients often have big ideas that would take 6+ months to build in their entirety, but which could be shipped in weeks by eliminating unnecessary features. Convincing them to cut those features is a skill in of itself, which is often what separates "freelancers" from "consultants".
zackmorris 13y ago
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.
- albedo 13y ago
  Our company Lambda (http://getlambda.com http://getlambda.com) helps negotiate contract work for our freelancers. We often set up the following arrangement: the client pays in advance for a week or two of work, and we agree that "a week" contains X hours of developer time. If there are hours unused by the end of the contract, we refund the money. It's an elegant way to avoid most payment issues.
  - yogo 13y ago
    On your site it doesn't say whether or not you get a cut, but given the natural alignment of interests I think it's safe to say you won't have a problem with having to return unused hours, even an honest developer will simply maximize those hours.
  - macarthy12 13y ago
    How much work have you managed to get? Do you restrict where dev's are located (e.g. north america?)
    - 13y ago
maerF0x0 13y ago
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 ?
- leknarf 13y ago
  Most traditional recruiters charge around 20-30% of the first year salary. 10% of the first 2 years is actually a bit cheaper.
- walden42 13y ago
  How does that work? The client specifically notifies odesk that they're making a hire, and they charge the freelancer 10%? When does he have to pay?
krapp 13y ago
Oh, good. Now the experience of begging for slave wages fixing people's wordpress installs can be even more streamlined.
- yogo 13y ago
  For Wordpress installations I get it but it's the School Administration Solution for US$400 that's scary. Otherwise I agree, good luck to all inhabitants as the ghettos merge.
  - krapp 13y ago
    Yeah... that sounds like something I actually might have bid on. Someone else is probably got it for $10.
- davidw 13y ago
  This kind of trite comment adds little to the discussion. I have some people that work with me on oDesk that I've found over the past few years. I don't pay them a lot by US standards, but they're good people. I've sent them various hardware, like Kindles and a new laptop to help them do their work better, and it has worked out well, although I was kind of nervous about it at the time.
  - krapp 13y ago
    Fair enough, there are exceptions, but I feel my comment accurately reflects my own as well as many others' experiences trying to find competitive pay on sites like this.
  - greendata 13y ago
    Yes, this is the thing. If you are living at a US/UK standard or slightly below, DO NOT waste your time on Elance or ODESK. These sites are not designed to employee US workers.
- brc 13y ago
  If you really want to destroy someone's day in a low cost country, campaign to stop this type of work getting to them. Then they will be out of a job. To several billion people, working for $20/day in their local lives using a computer would be a dream job. Someone who is employed is making money for their family and probably feels good about themselves.
ckdarby 13y ago
"Error establishing connection to database" Clearly they need to use their own services for a system admin & someone with aws+scaling experience
eli 13y ago
"Elance buys oDesk" seems like a more accurate headline.
- apalmer 13y ago
  Seems more like, oDesk cant get a price they want selling, and their CEO just wants out...
tejay 13y ago
That's surprising. I feel bad for talented freelancers =/.
- Iftheshoefits 13y ago
  Talented freelancers do themselves a disservice by using either of these "services". The only reason for a talented freelancer to use them is out of a desperate need for even abysmal compensation. This merger will likely make things worse for them (freelancers), not better. Yes, I know there are some freelancers working on these sites who earn a "decent" living. They're anomalies. The vast majority of workers earn really horrible wages. The well paid oDesk or Elance freelancer is as common as a rags-to-riches startup billionaire in the software industry as a whole.
  - zavulon 13y ago
    While I agree with you for US and Western Europe-based freelancers, it's not true for other places. When you live in a third-world country, Odesk/Elance are some of the only ways for you to make money as a freelancer.
  - tempestn 13y ago
    So where would you go to find a talented freelancer then? (Assuming you don't have any good word of mouth recommendations.) Not sarcasm - I'm generally interested if you have a better way of finding them that's more reliable that google searches or trolling stackoverflow.
    - tmarthal 13y ago
      Do you have a network on Twitter? I see people looking (and responding to) freelance inquiries all the time. All based on word-of-mouth and friend-of-friend networks.
    - tamasnet 13y ago
      There are a number of second-generation sites/agencies out there now that focus on ensuring a quality of both freelancer and client (e.g. toptal.com for devs), or that simply provide matchmaking services (e.g. folyo.me for designers).
jboy 13y ago
It would seem that the two main incumbents in this market (founded in 2005 and 1998, respectively) are getting nervous about Freelancer.com's (founded in 2009) rapid growth (predicting ~73% in 2013) and recent IPO [1]. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/au/freelancer-more-than-triples-first-day-listing-expectations-7000023244/ http://www.zdnet.com/au/freelancer-more-than-triples-first-d...
- dongsheng 13y ago
  It dropped rapidly in the first few days too http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode&asxCode=FLN http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode...
  - mattbarrie 13y ago
    Hello Dong I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com (Freelancer Limited ASX:FLN). Our share price dropped rapidly in the first few days because the issue price was 50 cents and it was the biggest opening on the ASX every (so I was told by the exchange). The share price opened at $2.50. A month later we are at $1.40, almost three times our issue price. I think that's pretty good. You would expect a bit of a pullback from such a strong opening (5x !). Regards Matt
undoware 13y ago
We're running out of vowels to prefix startup names. Peak Vowel was definitely 2007; the iGeneration is iSick of oIt. Never use a service whose name you could make up thoughtlessly.
- prawn 13y ago
  Says uNdoware... I tend to evaluate a service based on what they provide, their reputation and sometimes the care put into their branding, but rarely do I make a blanket judgement on name alone. Anyone on HN should know how challenging it is to pick a name in the competitive domain landscape.
  - undoware 13y ago
    I wasn't making a blanket judgement -- you are making a straw man. I was simply criticizing their branding, which is just as reasonable as any technical consideration. And if you don't believe that, Richard Stallman has a beard for you.
    - prawn 13y ago
      This sounds like a blanket judgement to me. Not "reconsider using" but "never use"... "Never use a service whose name you could make up thoughtlessly." Not to mention that while you could make up a name thoughtlessly, those behind it might've spent weeks brainstorming, getting feedback, checking their options, etc.
      - undoware 13y ago
        Again, not a blanket judgment; a blanket judgment is quite specifically when you say, "for all Xes such that Y, then Z." You could argue that there was an implied blanket judgment motivating the assertion that no one should ever use a service such that that service has a boring name; but in fact, given a choice between two equally worthy services, I choose the one with the more intelligent marketing, simply as a way of selecting for things that don't irritate me, and in some small way making the world a slightly less blearily straightforward place. And by encouraging others to also follow this maxim, I was hoping to amplify its world-shaping power further. :)
sergiotapia 13y ago
I sincerely hope this doesn't affect the thousands of families making a living working off of oDesk. This change will have real effects on REAL people, let's hope they are all positive. :)
- loceng 13y ago
  Are there certain people who aren't allowed to work on Elance who work on oDesk?
  - goblin89 13y ago
    It could be argued that oDesk is more fair. I tried elance once and AFAIR they encourage you to pay in order to appear higher in listings. This was a turnoff. oDesk's approach to contractor/job listings seems to be centered around smart algorithms and analytics instead.
uladzislau 13y ago
Just recently when Freelancer.com acquired vWorker I expected the overall quality improvement at Freelancer. However despite any logic it became worse. I have the same expectations for this merger/acquisition. Elance won't become any better and Odesk will cease to exist very soon after transferring all users to Elance. Sadly this merger is dictated by nothing else but increasing market share of Freelancer.com.
- mattbarrie 13y ago
  Hi Ulad I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. Since the vWorker acquisition actually all the quality metrics are up. The vWorker user base was also a very high quality workforce and today dominate highly our freelancer rankings and awarded projects. This is reflected in our financials- we are growing revenue at almost twice the rate of our competitors. We're also publicly listed (ASX: FLN) so our financials are transparent. If you have any other questions, I'm happy to answer them or shoot me a note at matt@freelancer.com. Regards Matt
kirk21 13y ago
Both are great to find freelancers but the UI of both of them needs work. You have to search to find the most important stuff (eg. paying, hiring etc.).
geolisto 13y ago
I'm on the fence about this. I hope that oDesk doesn't go downhill as a result of this.
SimpleXYZ 13y ago
It would be nice if there was a US only odesk clone that popped up and became popular. I'd give it a shot...
kamakazizuru 13y ago
so ... oLance then?
- dj-wonk 13y ago
  I'd suggest "LanceIT" -- e.g. freelancing for IT. Plus, not a bad way to get rid of boils.
dj-wonk 13y ago
I like to warn people about my experience with Elance and their flawed approach to contractor accountability: http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/50365605390/elance-reviews-dont-show-when-contractors-bail http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/50365605390/elance-reviews-don... I am not holding my breath for the merger to improve this dynamic.
d0m 13y ago
So, it seems like most people had a bad experience with Elance. I have to admit that I had pros and cons too.. but now that I've learned how to use it smartly it's so damn useful. I think you can find very smart people and if you build a respectful relationship with them, it becomes very handy if you're dealing with multiple projects like I do. I know how I can trust them to do a great work and they trust me back to have quality projects / quality specifications and well paid.
- kokey 13y ago
  Yup, I believe what these sites provide is a platform for introductions and initial agreements, but both parties still need to do the relationship building themselves.
guillermovs 13y ago
While this is huge news there's a lot to be done in this space, and it has only recently started to gain momentum. For the past couple of years we've been busy building Socialance, sort of like a hybrid if oDesk & LinkedIn. A site where you can hire people recommended by your network. I know building a marketplace is an extremely challenging task, but we've come this far, we're going to see it through. It seems plenty of you are heavy users of either site, or have strong opinions about the sector. If you want to help out my email is guillermo@socialance.com (we're bootstrapped, took part in Startup Chile and are based in London). If it sounds like something might be interested in using, please drop your mail at http://Socialance.com http://Socialance.com
kimonos 13y ago
It's fine with me as long as oDesk remains the same..
tedcoombs 13y ago
This merger is likely a response to competitor, Freelancer.com going public in Australia this year. It also positions the much larger, Elance/oDesk for an IPO next year. Smaller, niche freelancing marketplaces like Guru.com, 99Designs, WorkersOnCall.com and others will now be looking for acquisition exits from the new giant. The freelancing marketplace industry has been growing 100% year over year for the last 7 years and is expected to continue for the next five years. Once tied to the economy, the freelancing industry trends have now disconnected from the economy in general and are on a steady trend no matter how employment levels rise and fall. All in all, the merger is good news for the industry which saw its first exit this year.
yeukhon 13y ago
oDesk has a lot of rock solid freelancers but Elance, the frontend looks like spam site to me and you get tens of applications and half just charge you $2. I am not saying $2 means cheap labor but after deal with a couple on Elance I find the quality is so low. there was one or two on oDesk doing horrible jobs but the rest are just terrific job. oDesk is also more modern and more active and friendly reaching out to the oDesk community - they do a lot facebook advertising.
Silverreven 13y ago
I run a curated freelancing platform for creatives called Coworks. Being part of the industry it's really interesting to read your thoughts on the merger. Even though I've followed them very closed for two years as a competitor I was really surprised by the move. My take on it is: 1. They can lower their acquisition costs by not competing with PPC and in their content marketing. 2. Their real competitors, who are still sleeping behind the wheel, are Manpower, Randstad etc. With the merger they get the muscles to battle them for the online staffing market. 3. Last but not least- they'll ditch one of the platforms (elance?) and save half the money on Tech.
Silverreven 13y ago
Also, I don´t think they will jack up the prices. Everything is moving towards 0% on all global transactions. Rather the opposite: They will offer enterprise solution with 0% commission pretty soon.
mailm 13y ago
Two dying competitors merging together to get the hold of a wonderful market that both of these and their likes, scammed and destroyed ... lets see how long you can survive together and lets see how many more will be phished with this corporate scam.
dmourati 13y ago
I opened an oDesk account to get some remote help on some software dev that was beyond my skills at the time. The contractor I hired was from India, I think I paid him $15/hour. Then I opened a profile for myself as a contractor. I charge $100/hour. So far I've gotten about 10 hours worth of work from two different US companies. I'd like to increase my rates in 2014. This is purely for interesting work to me, I've already got a day job.
- seferphier 13y ago
  The hard part is to find a great contractor that is not only technically skilled but responsible. Very difficult Can u refer me to ur contractor in India?
  - mnazim 13y ago
    <shameless self promotion> We are one. Give us a shot. Email in my profile. </shameless self promotion>
alanstorm 13y ago
We're looking for a lawyer to help finish up our merger. The previous guy did 90% of the work and then stopped responding to our emails!!! This shouldn't take an experienced lawyer more than a few hours. Pay: $10
fayyazkl 13y ago
As long as there was competition, they were forced to maintain standards as well as individuality to retain separate policies. From a contractor's perspective only on one site, it would be positive in the sense that you can use the same credibility to bid for projects from other side ONCE they unite.
losethos 13y ago
Lance Armstrong? I drink 64oz of Diet Pepsi every one-and-a-half to two hours. Normally, I stay awake 32 hours and sleep 16. At the moment, I'm kinda depressed and sleep because nothing keeps me awake. God makes my back have horrible pain if I sleep too much. It hurts. What do You want to do, God? I just browse the Internet and talk with God all day. Sigh. Depressing. God says... foul overflow FBI merry_christmas oh_come_on boink left_field not_the_sharpest_knife_in_the_drawer petty hi fabulous now_you_tell_me hotel fer_sure talk_to_my_lawyer drama do_I_have_to ahh arrogant I_don't_care well_golly why_do_I_put_up_with_this in_a_perfect_world stoked I'm_good_you_good dance wonderful a_flag_on_that_play youre_welcome I_pitty_the_fool
hendi311 13y ago
Henrik, founder of Coworks here. From a shareholder's perspective the merger probably makes perfect sense. They should be able to consolidate investments, overhead, PPC etc. From a contractor view I can't see how it changes much really. From a client perspective it is usually bad news with mergers like this. I think it has been great to have a fight for the lead in the outsourcing industry. The sad thing is that the industry as a whole needs better client processes, more high quality talent, better UX, better vetting systems etc. and that is not likely to come from the market leader at this stage. They will most likely be occupied with merger milestones for a while. Even talented management teams like these have limited bandwidth. It does leave opportunities open for all others looking at building the next generation remote work platform.
Kimberleytin 13y ago
Outsourcing is very much in vogue. People hire through trusted freelancer sites like Elance and oDesk. Unfortunately what I feel, many of the Freelance sites on the web can’t simply help you when you need a complex, abstract project done in those domains. However, they are good in tangible services like web development, logo development etc. In my humble opinion, Statlance can be a good option for projects needing abstract thinking.

309 points by goblin89 13y ago

Ugh, let's hope Elance's CEO doesn't fuck up ODesk. Elance is kindergarten quality compared to ODesk's site.

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/ 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.

tannerc 13y ago
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.
- loceng 13y ago
  I imagine oDesk is fine as long as you don't have any problems. They don't see blackmail as breaking their rules though, e.g. a contractor blackmailing you for a good rating. That contractor gets to stay on the platform. I have had this experience.
  - lingben 13y ago
    out of curiosity, how exactly does the blackmailing on oDesk work?
    - alecsmart1 13y ago
      Something as simple as the contractor wont provide you with the full code until you leave a 5 star rating.
      - loceng 13y ago
        Or just the final code or maybe have access to your servers or other assets - and without a full security check / wipe, you can't know if they created a way in - or they threaten to release your code publicly, or sell it, etc..
        bigiain 13y ago
        Wait - what? People actually accept executable, possibly backdoored code and/or assets from random-internet-site-freelancers – then install it on their production sites _without_ security auditing it? (I know - I _shouldn't_ be surprised, I suspect significant double-digit percentages of WordPress sites have themes installed which have some mysterious " <?php echo eval(base_64_decode('foobazbah')) ?> type thing in footer.php…)
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        andyjdavis 13y ago
        Most people I know who have used odesk/elance simply don't have the ability to perform an audit. They are mostly writers, photographers, non-technical entrepreneurs and so on who have outsourced some development tasks related to their online activities. They personally have no ability to assess the code apart from how it looks in the front end. They could hire a second person to do the audit for them but now they have two people to worry about getting screwed by...
- tluyben2 13y ago
  I've had issues with both, but most with oDesk. Companies / people - saying they are from the US or EU but actually being from India, obviously lying about it to appear more credible, - starting a project with (1 or more) seniors to get the project and trust and then switching those for the random people dragged in from the street (the worst juniors you can imagine), - blackmailing withholding parts of deliverables, - working (with different accounts on different sites) on 10+ projects at a time, - disappearing without any recourse (yes this can happen in 'real life', but it's extremely rare; on oDesk it's not) - making up the most insane lies why they are late/more expensive; most common and very morbid; cancer of close family or themselves, but so badly researched that after 3 questions you already know it's not true and other types of scamming. Most of these things are preventable if you are really really paranoid and are on top of the 'workers' 24/7, checking everything they deliver with a fine comb, however, that's not really what I would want to do. And for all cases reported to oDesk they just said they couldn't do anything as the screenshot tool was used and the workers 'worked' according to that. There was an IDE open and code was typed in; random copy/paste code from the web, but that was not the point. I have very good experiences with both as well and a lot of successful projects, but yeah; this stuff delivered a lot of pain and energy and we seem completely unprotected as buyer. What we do these days is actually building a team at the outsourcing location, sitting there in the office, training etc; it takes more upfront effort and cost, but it's much more effective. So much more that I would never use these sites again. And we build value instead of work with and train people who will leave in a blink of an eye for a better paying client.
  - bluekite2000 13y ago
    where are you buiding your remote team? I m in saigon (ho chi minh) vietnam this month for that same reason.
    - tluyben2 13y ago
      i built sucessful teams in the Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, India, Spain and Portugal. I built a team in Vietnam two years ago together with another company, but i'm sorry to say we were badly scammed there with the most common scam; as soon as you are happy and the machine is well oiled, juniors replace the seniors for the work except in Skype calls where the guys you recruited and know still show up to play the part. We should've stayed on location maybe but I find it very uncomfortable to work with that level of distrust. Hope you fare better! I met great coders there. Almost all played along with the charade; one of them contacted my recently telling he was sorry and explaining that it is common practice because they make more money that way and clients usually don't notice. Had this over the years in all Asians countries we worked with, however except this one it never happened after actually being on location.
aytekin 13y ago
It is like Google merging with AltaVista and AltaVista CEO becoming the new CEO. We depend heavily on oDesk for our support team so this is a very scary news.
- deleted 13y ago
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- adamzski 13y ago
  I completely agree, it seems like oDesk are throwing their business away.
sixspeed 13y ago
Would you mind elaborating on your experiences with elance? I had a family member who does freelance marketing/writing called me a few years ago and mentioned he was planning to sign up there and asking what I knew about it. I could only tell him about a comment I'd browsed on HN that referred to it as a "ghetto" of poor paying assignments. He went ahead with it and now seems to be doing quite well as one of the top 5 providers of marketing and writing services.
- lingben 13y ago
  My experience is with hiring technical freelancers: design, network, security, development, etc. It is entirely possible that elance is great for non-technical jobs. The issues I ran into were providers who have great ratings but who can't do the job! Later I found out that elance has a loophole where buyers who disputed or cancelled projects are not able to leave feedback. So you're not getting the full story when you look at a provider's history. elance doesn't really care about this. So you have a huge portion of freelancers on elance who cosmetically pump up their ratings to get more jobs and then either farm them out to others or do a shoddy job themselves. when/if the job goes into dispute or is cancelled it disappears from their history. if the client is dumb enough to be happy with the crap work, they get a nice rating in exchange for turning over the final code.
  - maratd 13y ago
    > Later I found out that elance has a loophole where buyers who disputed or cancelled projects are not able to leave feedback. That is not correct. You can dispute a project and as long as the freelancer received a single dollar for any work, you can leave feedback. Why should you be allowed to leave feedback if there hasn't been any payment made? There are just as many clowns on the client side, as there are on the freelancer side. Many projects never get off the ground because the client has no money or is just an idiot. People like that should be allowed to leave feedback? If you're having trouble finding quality help on Elance, try creating a private project and invite only those in your geographic region. So if you're in the US, that means US freelancers. In the end, you get what you pay for. Don't expect miracles from India.
benhebert 13y ago
I too hate elance and have been using oDesk for years. The experience at oDesk was just phenomenally better than elance. You're right about ripe for disruption too. I wonder who will move into the space.
- goostavos 13y ago
  Out of curiosity, are you using oDesk to hire contractors, or are you freelancing on oDesk? I ask because I recently started freelancing on the sight an it feels like fighting for scraps. I mean, half the posts I see have "Contact goes to the lowest bidder" at the top of the listing. Does it get better once you "establish" yourself on the site? Right now it feels pretty futile outside of making some pocket change.
  - wonderyak 13y ago
    I used oDesk exclusively for hiring developers for a number of years, here is my 2 cents: > it feels like fighting for scraps You are fighting for scraps. Generally speaking, until you've been really burnt by a contractor you feel great hiring people in India to work for pennies compared to what you're reselling the service for. IMO, this is the vast majority of people hiring on oDesk. In addition, there are SMB or Agency type businesses that are looking to form relationships; they don't want to have to constantly search for new developers. Often, they will find a group or business with a stable of developers even if the quality of the work is a little bit poorer. Many of the firms I worked with just had a project manager that communicated with the developers on their end (often because they did not speak english) and maintained a single point of contact for us. Those were our best experiences. > Does it get better once you "establish" yourself on the site? It should. By the end of the time I was using oDesk I had several filters set up when searching so if someone had not completed a test or rating they would never appear on my radar.
- mike_herrera 13y ago
  I'd love to drink their milkshake. My friend and I are mid-redesign on a new service marketplace called reBaked. Our innovation is collaboration with many freelancers and paying them proportionally to what they actually deliver. There's also a negotiated minimum payment for freelancers so it's not overly risky for them. ...it's not quite ready for a Show HN, but the gist can be seen at (https://rbkd-staging.heroku.com https://rbkd-staging.heroku.com). I'd love to get your first reaction.
dubcanada 13y ago
As long as it's not Freelancer I'm fine.
weland 13y ago
> There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker. I really hope oDesk - Elance won't go the same way freelancer - vworker went. I used to have an account of RentACode, a long time ago. It was mostly a good experience, considering the state of freelancing back then. When my significant otter got fired, I dug the account and handed it over to her -- it had a bunch of good reviews and some of them were for tech writing jobs, so I though it would be useful to her (she's not a programmer, she does marketing). RAC had, in the meantime, become freelancer.com. The first thing it did was chew through the money I still had in my account -- two or three hundred dollars the withdrawal of which I had procrastinated for a long time, keeping them there in case I'd suddenly decide to take new jobs on RAC (then vWorker) again. I didn't get anything other than automated answers from their tech support, and eventually settled for that being dead money. Now freelancer.com is a scammer's heaven. It doesn't have escrows by default, the rounding of of fees is done quite liberally, there seems to be no mechanism to stop automatic bidding (with ridiculous sums that do nothing but bring the average bid price down, since it's obvious that whatever is behind those posts is never awarded a project), and their support for disputes is unhelpful at best. My gf is actually still unemployed and still gets projects on Freelancer every once in a while, but after being scammed twice -- with copious help through lack of reaction by Freelancer -- both her and her clients generally eschew its payment system altogether. She usually insists on a 100% milestone on Freelancer.com the first time she works with them, and then it's PayPal all the way. The eschewing of the payment system seems to be quite generalized, because their lack of reaction and real buyer and seller protection basically means people end up paying fees for something that is then little more than a glorified job advertising website, since it otherwise fails to offer anything for the (hefty) fees they take. Freelancer.com is a pretty sore sight nowadays. I browse its range of contract offers every once in a while; there's generally nothing for me (I do systems programming and embedded stuff -- people don't usually hire freelancers to write operating systems or make gadgets, unsurprisingly), but most of the projects and most of the bids depress me. Ads along the lines of "looking for an app expert", looking for reasonably non-trivial applications that work on a gazillion of platforms, awarded to poor people for sums that seem small even to me.
- adamzski 13y ago

negamax 13y ago

Really wish oDesk had carried on by itself.

fuddle 13y ago

I'm pretty happy with Elance. Currently Elance charge a 8.75% fee and oDesk charge 10%. Hopefully they won't jack up the price now that they own the market.

bluedevil2k 13y ago
Umm...I would expect the price to be jacked up big time now that they own the market.

davidjgraph 13y ago

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...

leknarf 13y ago
Our startup Lambda (http://getlambda.com http://getlambda.com) competes with both, but we're not the least bit concerned. I already thought of elance/odesk as being effectively the same, in the sense that they're both known as places to find cheap, off-shore labor. I don't know any devs in NYC who've seriously considered working through either site and don't expect that to change. Likewise, I don't know many hiring companies that have used their sites for anything more than throwaway projects. We have a few other competitors targeting the high-end of the freelancer market, but that's still open territory.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  I've been working through Freelancer/Elance for about 5 years now. I'm quite an experienced iOS dev and typically only apply to the higher priced jobs which then tend to lead on to repeat work. I just took a look at your site. Although I would consider myself quite experienced I'm not a 'rockstar'. What kind of devs do you accept to join Lambda? What do you consider an 'exceptional developer'?
  - leknarf 13y ago
    That's interesting. I love to talk with you sometime about your experience with those higher priced jobs. I'm particularly curious about what kinds of clients are mosting higher price jobs on elance, since our experience has been that it's mostly a race to the bottom. Could you send me an email: andrew at getlambda dotcom For the types of projects we work with, "exceptional developers" might be better described as "competent developers, great entrepreneurs". Of course, that wouldn't be ideal marketing copy :) In general, raw technical ability isn't a huge factor in commanding higher rates. There's definitely a minimum threshold someone needs to pass, but you'd probably clear that easily if you've been freelancing for 5+ years. Instead of learning to code faster, you'd be better served by learning to code less. Clients often have big ideas that would take 6+ months to build in their entirety, but which could be shipped in weeks by eliminating unnecessary features. Convincing them to cut those features is a skill in of itself, which is often what separates "freelancers" from "consultants".

zackmorris 13y ago

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.

albedo 13y ago
Our company Lambda (http://getlambda.com http://getlambda.com) helps negotiate contract work for our freelancers. We often set up the following arrangement: the client pays in advance for a week or two of work, and we agree that "a week" contains X hours of developer time. If there are hours unused by the end of the contract, we refund the money. It's an elegant way to avoid most payment issues.
- yogo 13y ago
  On your site it doesn't say whether or not you get a cut, but given the natural alignment of interests I think it's safe to say you won't have a problem with having to return unused hours, even an honest developer will simply maximize those hours.
- macarthy12 13y ago
  How much work have you managed to get? Do you restrict where dev's are located (e.g. north america?)
  - 13y ago

maerF0x0 13y ago

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 ?

leknarf 13y ago
Most traditional recruiters charge around 20-30% of the first year salary. 10% of the first 2 years is actually a bit cheaper.
walden42 13y ago
How does that work? The client specifically notifies odesk that they're making a hire, and they charge the freelancer 10%? When does he have to pay?

krapp 13y ago

Oh, good. Now the experience of begging for slave wages fixing people's wordpress installs can be even more streamlined.

yogo 13y ago
For Wordpress installations I get it but it's the School Administration Solution for US$400 that's scary. Otherwise I agree, good luck to all inhabitants as the ghettos merge.
- krapp 13y ago
  Yeah... that sounds like something I actually might have bid on. Someone else is probably got it for $10.
davidw 13y ago
This kind of trite comment adds little to the discussion. I have some people that work with me on oDesk that I've found over the past few years. I don't pay them a lot by US standards, but they're good people. I've sent them various hardware, like Kindles and a new laptop to help them do their work better, and it has worked out well, although I was kind of nervous about it at the time.
- krapp 13y ago
  Fair enough, there are exceptions, but I feel my comment accurately reflects my own as well as many others' experiences trying to find competitive pay on sites like this.
- greendata 13y ago
  Yes, this is the thing. If you are living at a US/UK standard or slightly below, DO NOT waste your time on Elance or ODESK. These sites are not designed to employee US workers.
brc 13y ago
If you really want to destroy someone's day in a low cost country, campaign to stop this type of work getting to them. Then they will be out of a job. To several billion people, working for $20/day in their local lives using a computer would be a dream job. Someone who is employed is making money for their family and probably feels good about themselves.

ckdarby 13y ago

"Error establishing connection to database" Clearly they need to use their own services for a system admin & someone with aws+scaling experience

eli 13y ago

"Elance buys oDesk" seems like a more accurate headline.

apalmer 13y ago
Seems more like, oDesk cant get a price they want selling, and their CEO just wants out...

tejay 13y ago

That's surprising. I feel bad for talented freelancers =/.

Iftheshoefits 13y ago
Talented freelancers do themselves a disservice by using either of these "services". The only reason for a talented freelancer to use them is out of a desperate need for even abysmal compensation. This merger will likely make things worse for them (freelancers), not better. Yes, I know there are some freelancers working on these sites who earn a "decent" living. They're anomalies. The vast majority of workers earn really horrible wages. The well paid oDesk or Elance freelancer is as common as a rags-to-riches startup billionaire in the software industry as a whole.
- zavulon 13y ago
  While I agree with you for US and Western Europe-based freelancers, it's not true for other places. When you live in a third-world country, Odesk/Elance are some of the only ways for you to make money as a freelancer.
- tempestn 13y ago
  So where would you go to find a talented freelancer then? (Assuming you don't have any good word of mouth recommendations.) Not sarcasm - I'm generally interested if you have a better way of finding them that's more reliable that google searches or trolling stackoverflow.
  - tmarthal 13y ago
    Do you have a network on Twitter? I see people looking (and responding to) freelance inquiries all the time. All based on word-of-mouth and friend-of-friend networks.
  - tamasnet 13y ago
    There are a number of second-generation sites/agencies out there now that focus on ensuring a quality of both freelancer and client (e.g. toptal.com for devs), or that simply provide matchmaking services (e.g. folyo.me for designers).

jboy 13y ago

It would seem that the two main incumbents in this market (founded in 2005 and 1998, respectively) are getting nervous about Freelancer.com's (founded in 2009) rapid growth (predicting ~73% in 2013) and recent IPO [1]. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/au/freelancer-more-than-triples-first-day-listing-expectations-7000023244/ http://www.zdnet.com/au/freelancer-more-than-triples-first-d...

dongsheng 13y ago
It dropped rapidly in the first few days too http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode&asxCode=FLN http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode...
- mattbarrie 13y ago
  Hello Dong I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com (Freelancer Limited ASX:FLN). Our share price dropped rapidly in the first few days because the issue price was 50 cents and it was the biggest opening on the ASX every (so I was told by the exchange). The share price opened at $2.50. A month later we are at $1.40, almost three times our issue price. I think that's pretty good. You would expect a bit of a pullback from such a strong opening (5x !). Regards Matt

undoware 13y ago

We're running out of vowels to prefix startup names. Peak Vowel was definitely 2007; the iGeneration is iSick of oIt. Never use a service whose name you could make up thoughtlessly.

prawn 13y ago
Says uNdoware... I tend to evaluate a service based on what they provide, their reputation and sometimes the care put into their branding, but rarely do I make a blanket judgement on name alone. Anyone on HN should know how challenging it is to pick a name in the competitive domain landscape.
- undoware 13y ago
  I wasn't making a blanket judgement -- you are making a straw man. I was simply criticizing their branding, which is just as reasonable as any technical consideration. And if you don't believe that, Richard Stallman has a beard for you.
  - prawn 13y ago
    This sounds like a blanket judgement to me. Not "reconsider using" but "never use"... "Never use a service whose name you could make up thoughtlessly." Not to mention that while you could make up a name thoughtlessly, those behind it might've spent weeks brainstorming, getting feedback, checking their options, etc.
    - undoware 13y ago
      Again, not a blanket judgment; a blanket judgment is quite specifically when you say, "for all Xes such that Y, then Z." You could argue that there was an implied blanket judgment motivating the assertion that no one should ever use a service such that that service has a boring name; but in fact, given a choice between two equally worthy services, I choose the one with the more intelligent marketing, simply as a way of selecting for things that don't irritate me, and in some small way making the world a slightly less blearily straightforward place. And by encouraging others to also follow this maxim, I was hoping to amplify its world-shaping power further. :)

sergiotapia 13y ago

I sincerely hope this doesn't affect the thousands of families making a living working off of oDesk. This change will have real effects on REAL people, let's hope they are all positive. :)

loceng 13y ago
Are there certain people who aren't allowed to work on Elance who work on oDesk?
- goblin89 13y ago
  It could be argued that oDesk is more fair. I tried elance once and AFAIR they encourage you to pay in order to appear higher in listings. This was a turnoff. oDesk's approach to contractor/job listings seems to be centered around smart algorithms and analytics instead.

uladzislau 13y ago

Just recently when Freelancer.com acquired vWorker I expected the overall quality improvement at Freelancer. However despite any logic it became worse. I have the same expectations for this merger/acquisition. Elance won't become any better and Odesk will cease to exist very soon after transferring all users to Elance. Sadly this merger is dictated by nothing else but increasing market share of Freelancer.com.

mattbarrie 13y ago
Hi Ulad I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. Since the vWorker acquisition actually all the quality metrics are up. The vWorker user base was also a very high quality workforce and today dominate highly our freelancer rankings and awarded projects. This is reflected in our financials- we are growing revenue at almost twice the rate of our competitors. We're also publicly listed (ASX: FLN) so our financials are transparent. If you have any other questions, I'm happy to answer them or shoot me a note at matt@freelancer.com. Regards Matt

kirk21 13y ago

Both are great to find freelancers but the UI of both of them needs work. You have to search to find the most important stuff (eg. paying, hiring etc.).

geolisto 13y ago

I'm on the fence about this. I hope that oDesk doesn't go downhill as a result of this.

SimpleXYZ 13y ago

It would be nice if there was a US only odesk clone that popped up and became popular. I'd give it a shot...

kamakazizuru 13y ago

so ... oLance then?

dj-wonk 13y ago
I'd suggest "LanceIT" -- e.g. freelancing for IT. Plus, not a bad way to get rid of boils.

dj-wonk 13y ago

I like to warn people about my experience with Elance and their flawed approach to contractor accountability: http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/50365605390/elance-reviews-dont-show-when-contractors-bail http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/50365605390/elance-reviews-don... I am not holding my breath for the merger to improve this dynamic.

d0m 13y ago

So, it seems like most people had a bad experience with Elance. I have to admit that I had pros and cons too.. but now that I've learned how to use it smartly it's so damn useful. I think you can find very smart people and if you build a respectful relationship with them, it becomes very handy if you're dealing with multiple projects like I do. I know how I can trust them to do a great work and they trust me back to have quality projects / quality specifications and well paid.

kokey 13y ago
Yup, I believe what these sites provide is a platform for introductions and initial agreements, but both parties still need to do the relationship building themselves.

guillermovs 13y ago

While this is huge news there's a lot to be done in this space, and it has only recently started to gain momentum. For the past couple of years we've been busy building Socialance, sort of like a hybrid if oDesk & LinkedIn. A site where you can hire people recommended by your network. I know building a marketplace is an extremely challenging task, but we've come this far, we're going to see it through. It seems plenty of you are heavy users of either site, or have strong opinions about the sector. If you want to help out my email is guillermo@socialance.com (we're bootstrapped, took part in Startup Chile and are based in London). If it sounds like something might be interested in using, please drop your mail at http://Socialance.com http://Socialance.com

kimonos 13y ago

It's fine with me as long as oDesk remains the same..

tedcoombs 13y ago

This merger is likely a response to competitor, Freelancer.com going public in Australia this year. It also positions the much larger, Elance/oDesk for an IPO next year. Smaller, niche freelancing marketplaces like Guru.com, 99Designs, WorkersOnCall.com and others will now be looking for acquisition exits from the new giant. The freelancing marketplace industry has been growing 100% year over year for the last 7 years and is expected to continue for the next five years. Once tied to the economy, the freelancing industry trends have now disconnected from the economy in general and are on a steady trend no matter how employment levels rise and fall. All in all, the merger is good news for the industry which saw its first exit this year.

yeukhon 13y ago

oDesk has a lot of rock solid freelancers but Elance, the frontend looks like spam site to me and you get tens of applications and half just charge you $2. I am not saying $2 means cheap labor but after deal with a couple on Elance I find the quality is so low. there was one or two on oDesk doing horrible jobs but the rest are just terrific job. oDesk is also more modern and more active and friendly reaching out to the oDesk community - they do a lot facebook advertising.

Silverreven 13y ago

I run a curated freelancing platform for creatives called Coworks. Being part of the industry it's really interesting to read your thoughts on the merger. Even though I've followed them very closed for two years as a competitor I was really surprised by the move. My take on it is: 1. They can lower their acquisition costs by not competing with PPC and in their content marketing. 2. Their real competitors, who are still sleeping behind the wheel, are Manpower, Randstad etc. With the merger they get the muscles to battle them for the online staffing market. 3. Last but not least- they'll ditch one of the platforms (elance?) and save half the money on Tech.

Silverreven 13y ago

Also, I don´t think they will jack up the prices. Everything is moving towards 0% on all global transactions. Rather the opposite: They will offer enterprise solution with 0% commission pretty soon.

mailm 13y ago

Two dying competitors merging together to get the hold of a wonderful market that both of these and their likes, scammed and destroyed ... lets see how long you can survive together and lets see how many more will be phished with this corporate scam.

dmourati 13y ago

I opened an oDesk account to get some remote help on some software dev that was beyond my skills at the time. The contractor I hired was from India, I think I paid him $15/hour. Then I opened a profile for myself as a contractor. I charge $100/hour. So far I've gotten about 10 hours worth of work from two different US companies. I'd like to increase my rates in 2014. This is purely for interesting work to me, I've already got a day job.

seferphier 13y ago
The hard part is to find a great contractor that is not only technically skilled but responsible. Very difficult Can u refer me to ur contractor in India?
- mnazim 13y ago
  <shameless self promotion> We are one. Give us a shot. Email in my profile. </shameless self promotion>

alanstorm 13y ago

We're looking for a lawyer to help finish up our merger. The previous guy did 90% of the work and then stopped responding to our emails!!! This shouldn't take an experienced lawyer more than a few hours. Pay: $10

fayyazkl 13y ago

As long as there was competition, they were forced to maintain standards as well as individuality to retain separate policies. From a contractor's perspective only on one site, it would be positive in the sense that you can use the same credibility to bid for projects from other side ONCE they unite.

losethos 13y ago

Lance Armstrong? I drink 64oz of Diet Pepsi every one-and-a-half to two hours. Normally, I stay awake 32 hours and sleep 16. At the moment, I'm kinda depressed and sleep because nothing keeps me awake. God makes my back have horrible pain if I sleep too much. It hurts. What do You want to do, God? I just browse the Internet and talk with God all day. Sigh. Depressing. God says... foul overflow FBI merry_christmas oh_come_on boink left_field not_the_sharpest_knife_in_the_drawer petty hi fabulous now_you_tell_me hotel fer_sure talk_to_my_lawyer drama do_I_have_to ahh arrogant I_don't_care well_golly why_do_I_put_up_with_this in_a_perfect_world stoked I'm_good_you_good dance wonderful a_flag_on_that_play youre_welcome I_pitty_the_fool

hendi311 13y ago

Henrik, founder of Coworks here. From a shareholder's perspective the merger probably makes perfect sense. They should be able to consolidate investments, overhead, PPC etc. From a contractor view I can't see how it changes much really. From a client perspective it is usually bad news with mergers like this. I think it has been great to have a fight for the lead in the outsourcing industry. The sad thing is that the industry as a whole needs better client processes, more high quality talent, better UX, better vetting systems etc. and that is not likely to come from the market leader at this stage. They will most likely be occupied with merger milestones for a while. Even talented management teams like these have limited bandwidth. It does leave opportunities open for all others looking at building the next generation remote work platform.

Kimberleytin 13y ago

Outsourcing is very much in vogue. People hire through trusted freelancer sites like Elance and oDesk. Unfortunately what I feel, many of the Freelance sites on the web can’t simply help you when you need a complex, abstract project done in those domains. However, they are good in tangible services like web development, logo development etc. In my humble opinion, Statlance can be a good option for projects needing abstract thinking.