
oDesk to merge with Elance - goblin89
https://www.odesk.com/blog/2013/12/odeskelancemerge/
======
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/](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.

~~~
weland
> 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.

~~~
mattbarrie
Hi Weland, I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. I thought I would reply to your
comment, and I'm also happy to get someone to look into your account if you
get send me your username.

A few comments- we do have escrows by default- called Milestone Payments. We
don't however force people to use them if the two parties decide to come to an
arrangement where they don't want to use them. The vast majority of projects
do. Also you have a chance to not accept the project as a freelancer if
Milestone payments have not been created after you've been awarded. So I can't
see the issue here.

Rounding of fees? I have no idea what you are talking about here. We round
project commissions to the cent, like everyone else.

Automated bidding- we changed our system some time ago to dramatically stop
bid spam. I'm not sure how recently you have used the site. We have removed
"public" bids entirely. Now you can only leave one private bid, this has got
rid of the problem you talk about.

I would have to disagree with you for disputes and support. We have the
largest support team in the entire industry with 250 people in our own
facility that operate 24x7x365 and speak 10 languages. We have a paralegal
team doing disputes that I believe is the most sophisticated in the industry
as well in terms of how it resolves issues.

Our business is going from strength to strength and we are the only company
that is publicly listed, so our financials are transparent. Our revenue is
growing at almost double the growth rate of our nearest competitors, so I
would have also disagree about your comments about the state of the site.

Happy to answer any other questions you may have or you can email me directly
at matt@freelancer.com. Also if you shoot me your account username I will have
someone take a look at it.

Regards Matt

~~~
weland
Frankly, I don't have too much to offer with regard to the support issues. I
only helped my GF with it, and it was a while ago. If it improved in the
meantime and my comments are no longer representative, I'm really sorry. I
should have made that clearer.

However, as for the other matters:

> we do have escrows by default- called Milestone Payments.

Actually, you don't have them by default :-). By your own admitting:

> We don't however force people to use them if the two parties decide to come
> to an arrangement where they don't want to use them.

My (admittedly foggy, please correct me if I'm wrong) memory tells me that RAC
had escrows _by default_ , i.e. the buyer had to place the money in RAC's
escrow before the coder could start work. I distinctly remember that RAC's
seller instructions clearly said you _should not start coding_ before the
project is awarded to you, because there is no way to be sure the buyer
actually has the money to pay you. When the project was awarded, the money was
placed in escrow. I actually had a dispute settled over this matter: my client
had simply vanished. I waited for two weeks before telling him I'd get the
project into arbitration if I don't receive feedback, and waited another three
before getting it into arbitration. The RAC arbitrator decided that if he
failed to respond within some reasonable period (a couple of weeks, again),
I'd get the money, because the deliverable I had submitted was indeed in
accordance with what had been agreed.

Freelancer.com doesn't force buyers to do that, giving rise to the following
phenomenon: a scammer opens an account -- with zero reviews _but_ a verified
payment method -- and posts a job ad. It's well-paid for something otherwise
reasonably simple, like some content writing, but the job has to be done
quickly and the buyer claims he can't offer a milestone payment that quickly
-- he doesn't have the money on hand, bank transfer takes time (he usually
lists his country to be something like Zambia or Congo, where it's probably
fairly safe to assume that banks don't go too smoothly with all the firing in
the street and whatnot). Since the pay is higher than average, a lot of
freelancers are happy to do it. Needless to say, they never get their money.

I'm sorry to say, but when this happened, your large support team did
absolutely nothing. They simply reminded her that she should ask for a
milestone payment, which a lot of buyers actually don't want to do for
credible, or at the very least legitimate reasons. If you don't want to force
people into escrowing, you should be able to deal with cases like these.

This wasn't an isolated incident because the same type of job ad appeared
several times in the following weeks. We actually tried to warn other
freelancers about it and we found at least another dozen people got the same
treatment, quite possibly from the same guy who was opening different
accounts, and from the same support team.

Edit: Oh yes, rounding of fees.

This page:
[http://www.freelancer.com/feesandcharges/](http://www.freelancer.com/feesandcharges/)
claims that, for a free membership plan, Freelancer.com gets 10% of what gets
paid to a freelancer, or 5 USD, whichever is greater. Fair enough.

But if I try to bid for 100 USD that gets paid to me, the bid now gets to
111.11 USD, which looks an awful lot closer to 11%.

I initially assumed this had something to do with including the 3% amount that
the employer is charged for the posting, too, but it doesn't add up. I never
really bothered understanding how it goes; as I mentioned in my other post, I
haven't done freelance work on what is today Freelancer.com since the days it
was still called Rent a Coder. But in the best case, this is poorly
documented. I, for one, can't make sense of it, and I'm probably better at
doing math than most freelancers who do content "writing" or social media
promotion on your website.

Even later edit: just to be clear, I'm not trying to scold your business
model, nor your efforts as a company. If your current model works for you,
then it's awesome. Matters of finance and corporate politics are beyond either
my possibilities and my wish to comprehend. Freelancer.com isn't doing bad
financially (though, since I'm not living off its dividends, that's irrelevant
to me) so I presume there are people for whom it makes world a better place.
For me, it doesn't.

------
alanstorm
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

------
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.

~~~
albedo
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.

~~~
macarthy12
How much work have you managed to get? Do you restrict where dev's are located
(e.g. north america?)

~~~
albedo
We get about 15 qualified leads a month (on average, each project is worth
about $25k). We're focused on the US and Canada only for the moment.

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

~~~
davidw
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.

~~~
greendata
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.

------
sergiotapia
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
Are there certain people who aren't allowed to work on Elance who work on
oDesk?

~~~
goblin89
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.

------
flavor8
Ugh, let's hope Elance's CEO doesn't fuck up ODesk. Elance is kindergarten
quality compared to ODesk's site.

------
jboy
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-d...](http://www.zdnet.com/au/freelancer-more-than-triples-first-day-
listing-expectations-7000023244/)

~~~
dongsheng
It dropped rapidly in the first few days too
[http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode...](http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode&asxCode=FLN)

~~~
mattbarrie
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
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
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
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
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
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. :)

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

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

------
tedcoombs
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.

------
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...

~~~
leknarf
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
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
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".

~~~
k-mcgrady
Cheers, sent you an email.

------
uladzislau
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
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

------
ckdarby
"Error establishing connection to database"

Clearly they need to use their own services for a system admin & someone with
aws+scaling experience

------
hendi311
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.

------
guillermovs
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)

------
Silverreven
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.

------
d0m
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
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.

------
dmourati
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
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
<shameless self promotion> We are one. Give us a shot. Email in my profile.
</shameless self promotion>

------
fuddle
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
Umm...I would expect the price to be jacked up big time now that they own the
market.

------
Kimberleytin
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.

------
dj-wonk
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-
don...](http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/50365605390/elance-reviews-dont-show-
when-contractors-bail)

I am not holding my breath for the merger to improve this dynamic.

------
negamax
Really wish oDesk had carried on by itself.

------
fayyazkl
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.

------
mailm
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.

------
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 ?

~~~
walden42
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?

------
Silverreven
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.

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

~~~
Iftheshoefits
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.

~~~
tempestn
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.

~~~
tamasnet
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).

------
yeukhon
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.

------
kirk21
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.).

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

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

------
kamakazizuru
so ... oLance then?

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

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

