
ODesk vs Elance vs Freelancer vs Guru - weavorateam
http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/33608/Working-with-Talent-markets-oDesk-Elance-Freelancer-Guru-vWorker.aspx
======
RafiqM
This is my experience of oDesk, from someone who has spent 6 figures with
them.

A few years ago I contracted a developer from the largest agency on oDesk at
the time, based in India.

This developer had a masters degree, tons of experience, and had a daily rate
significantly higher than the average. Things worked out so well that I
increased the team to 7 people total from this same company.

After about 8 months, the quality of work fell dramatically.

I ended up cancelling the contracts a few months after that, and found out
something shocking from the ex project manager:

The developers I had hired had been switched out for junior level devs. Some
of the developers I hired didn't even work for that company anymore. I had
none of my original hires, and didn't know it.

They had been communicating with me under the previous names and email
addresses. I had wondered why they so often "forgot" things that I had told
them 6 months ago.

I was told this was a common practice in large agencies.

The problem: Inadequate accountability, even with screenshots or videos.

Is this problem specific to oDesk? No, not at all. But it's turned me off
"per-hour" contracts altogether, and now I only outsource very small, highly
scoped, pay-on-delivery projects.

~~~
rwhitman
Yikes, thats an alarming story. The fact that they were deliberately asking
junior developers to impersonate senior developers using the same email
addresses etc is a really worrisome practice. I had a situation managing a
team for a client a while back where developers suddenly turned awful, and I'm
now suspicious this could have been the case. Do you know if this is
widespread with other companies?

~~~
mtrimpe
From my experience working with a major Indian outsourcing company at a
previous employer this seems common practice across the board.

In fact the more tolerant managers experienced this transition very quickly
and managers that stayed constantly vigilant managed to stave it off for a bit
longer; but also not indefinitely.

From my perspective it seemed to be that this extended bait-and-switch was
what their business model was built on.

------
auctiontheory
Speaking as an employer:

All of these sites have good workers, and all of them have workers who will
turn in shoddy work, hoping you won't notice. I've hired for more than a dozen
projects and in no case did the contractor do the job right the first time -
because they didn't care enough, not because they were incompetent. I've hired
workers in the US, in India, in the UK, and elsewhere. Same sorts of issues
crop up. (I was eventually very pleased with the results - it just wasn't as
smooth as presented by Tim Ferriss or whoever.)

Poor communication and missed deadlines are the rule. Also watch out for bait
and switch: for graphics, for instance, the individual who produces a firm's
portfolio may not be the same one who will work on your project.

Identifying talent, and managing remote workers, is a skill that can only be
developed with time and practice. It's much more than a question of picking
the right marketplace. The reviews are not trustworthy. If possible, try to
get recommendations for specific workers from people you personally know.
Because the great workers are out there, among the masses.

~~~
why-el
I am about to join oDesk as a freelancer. Coming out of college, I have
basically limited experience behind me (internships, personal projects). Any
advice you have for me about how to grow in the platform?

~~~
auctiontheory
_Any advice you have for me about how to grow in the platform?_

One piece of advice, and just not about oDesk. Do reasonable work, don't
silently miss deadlines, and always set expectation and communicate (never
hide).

I've worked for some big-name Valley companies. If you just follow the advice
above, you will be far ahead of the pack. (And that's even more true in the
freelance world.) Good luck.

~~~
troels
I'll second that.

If - nay _when_ \- you screw up, admit it right away and figure out how to fix
it. It really will make a huge difference in how useful you are. Goes for
other parts of life too.

------
leknarf
I thought this was a great comparison of the popular talent marketplaces, but
it skipped over the most important trait: the typical hourly or project rate.

All of the services have good workers, but they've also all been participating
in a race to the bottom. As a developer, it's hard to ask for more than
$100/hr on a site where you're listed alongside those asking for $10/hr. Even
if you are 10 times more productive, it's simply hard to explain why or how
that's possible in a marketplace setting.

After spending some time working as a consultant, I just launched a new
marketplace for high-end contract work:
[http://getlambda.com/](http://getlambda.com/). We have a clear minimum
($100/hr) and personally interview everyone looking to participate (both
clients and consultants).

~~~
braum
We are currently looking for a front-end developer. Do you offer only
programmers or would we be able to find a quality front-end developer?

~~~
leknarf
We do have quite a few front-end developers. In fact, I've been surprised at
how many designer/developers (that is, designers who can implement their own
designs) have signed up. That combination of skills was always in short supply
when I've tried to hire for in-house teams. I guess they tend to prefer
freelancing :)

Please send me an email at andrew [at] getlambda.com and we'll see what we can
do!

~~~
troels
__I guess they tend to prefer freelancing __That 's my experience as well.

FYI: Your "Get started" form looks botched to me (Chrome, Mac OS)

------
mudil
I used both Odesk and Freelancer to hire developers, and I urge everyone to
look at my previous submission
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177951))
about deplorable protections at Freelancer.com.

In summary, my $2500 project was closed by the developer at his will, with no
money returned and no way to even leave a feedback! Multiple attempts asking
the company to allow me to even leave a feedback came to nothing.

Freelancer is not to be trusted.

~~~
xerophtye
Well i took a look into the matter and as you mention "we are not developers.
we are med people", isn't there a possibility you misunderstood the devs? They
did explain in their replies that the reason the site crashed for two weeks
because of conflicts with the previous site which took a long time to resolve.
And from what i understand, you "stopped trusting them" after this incident. I
assume you figured it only worked on their servers by some scam and isn't
gonna work on your servers. So i hope you see that this suspicion was very
baseless.

As for your paying of 75% of the payment, i assume that was AFTER you approved
of the site on their servers. So they must have said "see? it's complete. now
all we have to do is deploy to your servers" so it made sense to pay them. And
so i am not going to blame you for paying them. What i do blame you for is not
trusting them.

But yes, generally it is best advised not to pay in advance (but i assume you
only paid after seeing a working site).

Either way, blaming this on freelancer.com doens't make any sense what so
ever.

~~~
mudil
xerophtye:

Our blog is one of the oldest and most linked to and trafficked medical blogs.
We have ~15K posts, since 2004. We have custom WP plugins and widgets, etc
etc. We had many developers over time. So we are not idiots when it comes to
understanding what we need from developers.

I started the project and paid for it (partially with some remaining in
escrow). Wouldn't you expect that only I can close the project? Or at least be
able to leave a feedback?

For full back and forth, see link that I left above.

------
sfjailbird
I personally recommend everyone to not use Freelancer.com. I learned in this
thread that they also bought vWorker, and I am not surprised to read that it
has turned for the worse after being acquired.

In short, they steal from both the freelancers and the outsourcers - stories
aplenty about this [1]. I only know about these stories because I started
looking into them after being bamboozled myself, luckily for only a small
amount, which would have been larger had I not managed to cancel the
additional payments Freelancer.com had booked against my credit card without
permission. This was my experience as an outsourcer, apparently the
freelancers have it far worse.

Elance on the other hand has seen more than $20k of my business and will
continue to in the foreseeable future. Have not had experience with the other
services (there's a strong lock-in effect in this market because your job
history itself becomes a valuable thing).

[1]
[http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.freelancer.com](http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.freelancer.com)

~~~
mattbarrie
Hi there, I'm the Chief Executive of Freelancer.com. This is ridiculous. If
you have a specific example and can send me your username to
matt@freelancer.com, I can get someone to look into your case for you.

~~~
sfjailbird
I have noticed that you guys tend to pop up when these thing surface. Perhaps
you should dedicate your efforts to better customer service, so you wouldn't
see these stories in the first place? As you can see I am far from the only
one with a bad experience.

Thanks for the offer to look into my case, but I have wasted enough time with
it. Keep the 50 dollars. But the price is that I warn everyone that will
listen. So, in the long run, better customer service would probably be worth
it for you.

~~~
mattbarrie
We have more customer support agents than any of our competitors- we have over
220 people in our support centre. We also provide support in 10 languages,
which no-one else does. If you have a specific issue I will be happy to look
into it.

~~~
SlavD
and none of them cares about your customers - LOL! maybe you should get 20
that do care...

~~~
Diamons
The guy is going out of his way in his free time to lend you an ear. I think
it's unfair to continue to air your grievances.

~~~
SlavD
I don't think I said anything that was unfair. I think they're not really
trying to solve the actual problem - instead of accepting the responsibility
and trying to fix the issues they're being defensive - who cares about how
many support people they have - obviously they're not doing a good job if
people are voicing their issues here...

------
SlavD
Freelancer.com is a massive SCAM - IMHO

1\. you can only withdraw if you have more than $x in funds - I have had $7
left on the site and can't get it back!

2\. their conflict resolution is non-existent or biased - a person clearly
didn't deliver what I asked for in my job and they simply refused to help me
deal with it

3\. after I left honest but negative feedback the freelance worker contacted
me and tried to bully me into changing it. after I refused he proposed that I
withdraw my feedback and he will refund me for the job

4\. after I have withdrawn my feedback and he didn't refund me - I tried to
bring it back - but hey what do you know - freelancer.com doesn't allow you to
bring back my original feedback unless both parties agree!

5\. I contacted their support to try to resolve it - again no help there

fortunately for me the job was only small $50 project, but I learned my lesson
and will NEVER use this website again!

after that I used both Elance and oDesk and I think both are good and
professional

~~~
mattbarrie
Hello Slav

In answer to your questions.

1) You can get a refund for any amount in your account. Just contact support.

2) This is incorrect. We have a full dispute resolution team of paralegals.

3-5) Please let me know who this freelancer is by emailing me at
matt@freelancer.com. This is a clear violation by them of our Terms of
Service.

Regards Matt

~~~
SlavD
I feel like I shouldn't have to 'jump through hoops' to get my money back - if
it's such a non problem why do you even have minimum amounts for withdrawals?

talking to your support / dispute resolution team is a waste of time - I felt
like they're one of those $1/hr people who just don't care

now it's a violation of your ToS but at the time when I described the
situation to one of your support guys it was OK...

I even told him that I'm not happy and that I'm being brushed off - I even
mentioned that I'll write about it somewhere - but he didn't care about any of
that - he ended our conversation with:

"Thank you for contacting Freelancer.com, please don't hesitate to contact us
again if you have any other questions or concerns."

That's just a customer service FAIL at it's best!

I'm glad that the time came and all of that gets described here

It's time for you guys to wake up and stop treating your customers like
cattle!

~~~
mattbarrie
Hi SlavD

There's no jumping through hoops, but a few things to be aware of. You can't
deposit funds through one payment method e.g. credit card, and withdraw funds
through another e.g. wire transfer. This is money exchange and we are not
allowed to provide this. Refunds are different from withdrawals. Refunds can
be for any amount at any time. Withdrawals have a minimum because we have
people trying to withdraw $10 via an International Wire Transfer and they then
complain either why the wire was not sent (because it costs $25 to send) or
because no funds turned up at the other end after intermediary bank charges.

The support team and dispute resolution are well trained. If you would like to
email me the ticket IDs I will be happy to send them to quality assurance to
review.

~~~
SlavD
well - you guys have all the answers - how good. interestingly enough none of
the other websites requires you to file a support case to get their own money
back! anyway I did follow your process too and guess what? - nothing - you
still have my $7 - but hey don't loose sleep over it - you can keep it (I
spend more for breakfast) - there is no chance u're getting any more of my
money or anyone I know

------
re1ser
Bad side is that there are alot of scams and poor programmers, looking to
snipe the job and squeeze money from employer in any way possible. From my
personal opinion, atleast 80% of bidders do this (I'm working over
Freelancer).

Good side is that with little hassle, employers can find really great
freelancers that know to do their job. Personally, as a programmer from 3rd
world country, these sites provide alternative, and a great way of earning
money. Here where I live, starting salaries for programmers are around 500$,
and peak at 1800$, if you get job in Microsoft, both 8-10h/day fulltime jobs.
The IT market here is practically non-existant, except few high profile
companies that offer decent working conditions. With these sites, I have
freedom to apply my working conditions, rules and price.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Where are you from?

~~~
re1ser
from Serbia

------
throwmeaway2525
Is there any service that doesn't require installing spyware on your system?

AFAIK they all force developers to install monitoring software, and then boast
about this on their marketing pages targeting employers.

~~~
weavorateam
Unless I am mistaken, it is not obligatory (at least on oDesk) to track time
using their "spy" software. Instead you can report offline hours if you have
previously agreed with the client.

~~~
john_horton
That's correct - when the client makes a hire, she can decide whether or not
to allow offline hours.

------
gesman
I used and loved rentacoder back then. The rule is to avoid Indians and
Pakistanis as they were usually middlemen between really poor developers. I
hired north american or european workers and it worked well and predictable.

------
mattbarrie
Hi there. I'm the Chief Executive of Freelancer.com. This article is two years
old but I'm happy to answer any questions any of you might have.

------
uladzislau
I tried all the sites except Guru as a hiring manager. From my experience,
Odesk is the best option so far in terms of value - if you prefer to pay per
hour.

Freelancer is the cheapest per project option but full of low quality spammer
applicants. You can find a good quality provider on Elance but be prepared to
pay premium for that.

------
maerF0x0
<rant> Something being missed by this discussion (and many offshoring
discussions) is that many consulting firms design maintenance costs into their
business model. They undercut everyone with low prices for a poorly engineered
product, knowing they can churn additional hours/sales in "upgrades",
"maintenance" etc.

When you pay me $60 an hour (or more) to design you a component of your
system, it will be SOLID OO designs, quite reusable, DRY, tested (unit tested)
and better in many other ways. Where as most of the code I've seen come from
bad agencies basically do "class Main { function doItAll() { /* Here is the
entire program */ } };"

Which is why it will cost more in the long run. If you want something added or
made similar, they'll copy and paste instead of inheriting or using traits or
other language constructs to keep it DRY. If you want to know if the system
has regression, they'll shrug, because they either do not test, or they just
write the tests to pass the way the code currently works, not testing the
component in general. If you're planning on closing business in 12 months,
then maybe its not worth it to invest in a scalable, changeable
infrastructure. If you're planning on being in business for a long time, then
invest the capital to develop your business :D .

ok </rant>

------
latortuga
Longtime oDesker here, I've made mid 5 figures total. I recently received a
notification from oDesk that I'm part of the top 5% of "successful
freelancers" on oDesk which I interpreted to mean top 5% of earners. It
honestly astounded me because my account has been basically inactive for the
last 8 months and I've only worked on oDesk projects since a few months after
I quit my job, roughly late 2011.

I started working oDesk mostly to stave off having to dip too deeply into
savings. In fact, I read a lot of helpful information on HN related to getting
your foot in the door for freelancing online and it ended up working very well
for me. If you're looking to get an established profile, the short version is:

1\. Build things (i.e. small projects, clones, browse project listings for
things that would take a few hours and just implement them)

2\. Tell people (learn to write proposals well, show the employers that you
know your stuff and can produce)

Over time I slowly raised my rate and, surprise surprise, everyone who every
wrote anything about raising your rate is right! The more the client is
paying, the better they are. I ended up firing the client with the lowest rate
because he was so bad and have done repeat work for my highest paying client.

As far as the tracking software, it has been buggy at times (I'm on Linux, I
imagine they spend more time on other platforms) but I don't really see the
big deal about having it take a screenshot. If the client is micromanaging to
the point where he's having you remove 10 minutes because facebook showed up
in your screenshot, it's not worth the time. I do notice that it tends to take
screenshots when switching apps. On oDesk, I get hired hourly, I provide work
hourly.

Just like any in-person project, online projects require you to have good
communication skills - letting the client know when you're working, what
you'll be doing, when you expect things to be done, technical tradeoffs, etc.
None of this is unique to remote projects.

Additionally, just like the real world, there are endless people posting jobs
expecting the moon in exchange for peanuts. I used to regularly receive
"invitations to interview" from people who posted projects and almost always
they were someone with an idea, looking for a coder, willing to pay $1k to get
their facebook clone off the ground. While my girlfriend was impressed that my
skills were in such high demand, it's can be a bit of a game of roulette
trying to find serious projects and employers willing to invest real money. In
my experience, setting a high hourly rate on your profile mitigates this
situation quite a bit.

I also experimented with vworker and elance back in 2011, but neither of them
ended up being a good fit. It turns out that when you're building your profile
on a freelancing site, sticking to one site is pretty useful because you get
feedback and projects to post about at the same time and alongside each other.
Glowing feedback next to a completed project with 5 figures invested does good
things for your profile.

If you're looking to get started with oDesk or have any other questions about
how it works, I'm always free for a chat. Email is in my profile.

~~~
victorhn
If i were a generalist programmer, eager to learn a technology for good pay on
Odesk, what would you say are the technologies more well paid and that at the
same time adjust better to the remote freelance model on that site?

~~~
latortuga
In general, my advice would be to not approach freelancing as an exchange of
expertise in a certain technology for currency. Usually people are looking for
their problems to be solved - build me an app, fix my slow site, make me more
money - so my advice would be to market yourself as a problem-fixer instead.

That said, web development is obviously hot at the moment (Django, Rails,
Node, etc) and I have marketed myself as an expert Ruby on Rails developer
successfully. Now, I don't do this for in-person gigs but on oDesk I think
that it helps with my credibility for those tech-savvy employers with lists of
skills they need. There are certainly a plethora of jobs posted for various
stacks. I believe oDesk lists their projects in public and if not, you can
create a free account and peruse the listings for a better idea.

I still would advise you to address other risks in your pitch to employers
though, because generally speaking you'll be talking to people who are nervous
about hiring and spending money on someone they've never met (and may never
meet in person). A business owner or entrepreneur posting on oDesk is
disproportionately worried about things like:

1\. Is this guy for real/a flake?

2\. When is he going to work on my site?

3\. Is he just browsing facebook since I can't look over his shoulder?

4\. What was he doing for 4 hours yesterday and nothing got deployed to the
staging site?

Communication is really the thing that is going to set you apart, much moreso
than your technical expertise.

To give you an idea, I opened my profile on oDesk with about 2.5 years of
professional Rails development experience and started out around $25/hour for
my first gig (gulp, a bit nervous admitting that I worked as a developer for
$25/hour) - I was new to this freelancing thing and if I could go back, I
would run screaming from that $25/hour client, feedback be damned. I raised my
rate rather quickly however - I have since taken projects at hourly rates of
$35, $50, $65, and $75.

Please note that this places me in the top 5% of successful freelancers on
oDesk, and that I never worked for a client more than 20 hours per week. Yes,
you're competing against folks who bid $2/hour and no, I have never spent a
moment worrying about them. Nobody, and I mean __nobody __wants a client who
values developer time at $2 /hour.

------
khalidmbajwa
I am a long time contractor on oDesk and owe a great deal to this site.I
wanted to talk a little about the hate the hourly model with screenshots is
getting. Here's the primary reason the video thing won't work. Most of the
providers are from third world countries where internet while decent is rarely
good enough to support uploads in such massive volume. I have a 4 Mbps DSL
connection and while i get great downstream, the upstream maxes out at 20
KB/s. So yeah, that's out of the window. However, screenshots work extremely
effectively. I have close to 5000 hours logged on oDesk and barring a one off
incident where i forgot to shut the logging software down and ended up logging
extra hours( I refunded the client) i have never had a buyer dispute my hours.
Here's the thing, as an employer you have to be smart about it. When you post
a job, only interview candidates with a good oDesk history,look at their past
jobs, the buyer's feedback, their portfolio etc. Then talk to them over Skype,
ask for code samples etc. If you reach out for the bottom of the pool ofcourse
you will get burned, but a contractor with a good history (who might be
charging higher)will never ever endanger his feedback history in such a cut
throat marketplace where even a single 4.99 out of 5 can knock you off the
first page of search results and costing you big time, all for a few extra
bucks. This alone will weed out 99% of the dishonest providers. But you can
still go and initially, for a week or so, monitor the contractor's work logs
closely, you will know instantly if they are padding their hours since oDesk
uploads around 5 to 6 screenshots per hour, along with mouse and keyboard
activity reports. Just monitor them closely initially and then semi regularly
afterwards and you will know what type of contractor you are dealing with.
Once you have built trust and seen the contractor's work you can ease up.
Finally,set tight milestones and demand regular daily updates and you will
know what's going on. So yeah, don' be lazy, be a little more vigilant and you
can find some really good contractors at great prices .All the top contractors
i know only work hourly and IMHO Its a great model for the employer and for
the contractor, a simple win win.

~~~
pests
I became really embarrassed about the screenshots sometimes. If I looked up
something online or accidentally left something visible with personal
information on it I would sometimes delete those 10 minutes of work just to
avoid it being seen.

------
helen842000
On that article they suggest it costs $10 to post a job on elance, however
I've never paid to post a job!

~~~
vmialik
same here, I was trying to figure out why the figure is $10 there?

------
dubcanada
This article is over 2 years old, not only is most of the "chart" out of date,
it also cites facts which are no longer true.

Why did this get posted?

------
bravura
vworker (formerly: rentacoder) was great while it lasted. Honest, talented
engineers.

When they got bought by freelancer, everything became way more scammy. It also
became much more difficult to interview potential hires. Lame.

~~~
mattbarrie
Hi there, if you have any specific feedback, I would be interested to hear it.
Email me at matt@freelancer.com.

------
xerophtye
Ok the article seems to pretty outdated. 2011!! it woudln't have mattered if
the facts were still valid but a lot of things changed, including policies and
features of these sites. Not to mention vlancer got taken over by
freelancer.com

So i'd advice people to keep this fact in mind when going through this, and
not use this as the final word on the matter when comparing.

------
mamcx
I have accounts on odesk/freelancer and think that is necessary to have a pre-
screening of jobs descriptions.

For example, somebody ask for build a "search engine" and have a big budget...
but still not clarify enough what mean to him "search engine".

So the only option is apply to the job, and wait for the customer to talk
about it.

Then you wait days, weeks and nothing is answered back. Probably the user get
scared?

I think that give to potential customers somebody to talk about the project
first, to properly describe it (understanding not a full spec, but enough to
clarify things in a broad sense) will help a lot.

Also, I wonder why this kind of sites not use their own developers to give
this. So when a new customer wanna submit a project it pay, for example, US 50
for talk about it before submit or something like that..

(Like a community-driven-facebook-style-lets-talk-before-submit thing)

------
loceng
Re: ODesk - Screenshots count as video? That is completely irrational.My most
recent experience was a contractor on there who was padding his hours hugely.
Literally a 5 minute job he tried to spread across 5 hours.

~~~
ninjac0der
... and here is why I would never use odesk or these services as a coder.

------
bdcravens
I've done some work on these in the past, dating back to 2000. They've always
been challenging if you're not in a market where you can lowball, so I presume
most "senior" developers in premium markets avoid these sites.

I'd love to hear thoughts about using these marketplaces to build up
experience in languages you're not yet using in production.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
It isn't worth the time or effort to do so. I tried it out (elance) a couple
of years ago as a worker.

My impression of it is that basically it's a place for two kinds of employer:
1) the "I have this idea, code it up for me for equity in my 'company'"
employers who either don't actually have an idea of what they want (and will
needle you to flesh out their idea more fully) or have a generic "let's build
the next X" (where "X" is usually "Facebook") idea; 2) the lowballer who wants
to pay $500 for a job that would take a proficient team weeks or months to do.

As a "senior" level developer, I absolutely avoid these places. And I
absolutely do not recommend anybody use them for work. There are far better
ways to 'practice' with new languages that involve better compensation and
better actual experience.

~~~
khalidmbajwa
Umm, no not really. I charge around 60$/hr on oDesk.Have closed to 5000 hours
and can easily pull in upwards of 5K USD a month, which is an extra ordinary
sum for someone sitting in a country in Pakistan where the conversion rate i
104 PKR to a USD.You can easily get well paying clients if you spend a little
time building up your history, and are really good at what you do.

~~~
jnbiche
An exchange rate will tell you absolutely zero about one currencies relative
worth to another. By your logic, someone in Japan, whose currency trades about
100 to 1 USD, would have about the same buying power as you per USD, when in
fact, assuming you're both earning the same in USD, you would almost certainly
have much, much more purchasing power.

To accurately compare purchasing power among currencies, you need to use a
metric like Purchase Power Parity (PPP):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity)

~~~
khalidmbajwa
You are probably right but i was just trying to give a ballpark estimate of
how good is a 5K USD income in pakistan.The conversion rate is a fair if not a
perfect gauge.I can sustain a full family of 5 with an excellent lifestyle in
about 2K here in Pakistan so its a very decent amount.

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yawniek
i got a diverse set of projects done through elance contractors in the last
years. over all a good experience so far.

usually i do a general chat through skype with those providing a useful
application. since i am a programmer myself, this helps me to quickly figure
out someones skill set. Agencies are usually complicated and a lot of
information gets lost between workers there. I did a iOS app with an agency,
the design, ux and code were horrible. Rebuilt the App with a single
contractor from Lisbon for half the price. He quickly understood the
application, provided clean code and simple but elegant design. So evaluation
of the contractor is something you need to do with care.

i prefer elance because it allows you to search for people based on their
location easily. a feature which odesk is bad at. But still the main reason to
use any such service is the legal frame, payment and escrow.

ps. i'm currently hiring for a golang job

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aptwebapps
Maybe a 2011 in the title? Some of the stuff in the table is out-of-date. For
example, oDesk no longer sends 1099s.

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guillermovs
I've tried most of the freelance marketplaces out there and IMHO there's a lot
more that could be done.

That's why we're developing
[http://www.socialance.com](http://www.socialance.com) If you have any
suggestions or want to help, let me know: guillermo@socialance.com

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yesplorer
This article is from 2011 and I believe the convention is that the submitter
should have indicated that in the title.

This is relevant because since that time, freelance.com has acquired
vWorker(formerly rentacoder) and hence a lot of things might have changed as
well over 2 years period

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tocomment
Is rentacoder still around? I had good experiences there.

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kawsper
Vworker bought it, and added gamification such as achievements and XP.

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SwaroopH
Nope, read the other comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6350600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6350600)

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bambax
freelancer.com doesn't work with Ghostery turned on. Not a good sign.

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mattbarrie
Hi there, I'm the Chief Executive of Freelancer.com. I've never heard of
Ghostery, why is it an issue?

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bambax
It's an issue because I have Ghostery turned on at all times
(www.ghostery.com) and when I visit Freelancer.com and click on either "Hire"
or "Work", nothing happens -- the site appears to be broken.

I have no idea, of course, of how many people use Ghostery and attempt to
visit Freelancer.com, but I would guess the freelancer demography is over-
represented in the total population of Ghostery users.

~~~
mattbarrie
Hi there. I will forward this onto engineering to take a look at.

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dharma1
can anyone recommend any good android/iOS devs on these sites?

