Ask HN: Turing.com and Toptal. Legit?

[OulaX]

I always hear very good things about remote work sites such as Turing.com and Toptal.com, and I wonder, are they real? Do people from developing countries really work there for such good salaries?

I know that they are useless for people who live in tech hubs, but for people who live in a place with very few tech jobs are they worthy the time?

[muzani]

Toptal are some of the best people I've worked with, both as an applicant and someone hiring. They're expensive, and a few low quality people slip between the cracks, but overall good.

Turing however has been dodgy. I've applied when they first started. The application test was something ridiculous like build a full stack app, with very precise requirements like using MySQL for certain parts. It was a full scope project at no pay and no verification they exist. And they seemed more architecture focused than user focused, which was a turn off. So I ignored it.

Later I get this email:

"Congrats on scoring 100% in Turing's basic JavaScript programming test on May 05, 2019! You completed Step 1 towards being matched with top Silicon Valley companies that want to work full-time with remote Back End engineers."

I don't know how I completed a test I didn't do. That is as much a red flag as some Nigerian prince wanting to give me his inheritance money.

[OulaX → muzani]

Your reply really helped. Thank you.

[kop316]

From what I can tell, Turing.com scrapes emails from open source contributions.

Turing.com has been sending automated emails to the address I use for contributing to Open Source, but uses the name of the maintainer of the repo I contributed to.

I would stay away from them for that reason alone.

[mikeodds]

FWIW, worked with multiple people through Toptal from all over the world from US to North Africa to Central Asia.

I’m not sure of the commission Toptal takes their min hourly rate we’ve been quoted is now approx $80 p/h for PHP dev.

Edit: the minimum rate is $80 p/h, seen up to $140 but wouldn’t assume that’s the ceiling.

[OulaX → mikeodds]

I see, and were you pleased with the quality of the final work produced by them?

[mikeodds → OulaX]

In short, yes. As with any remote teamwork, things can go a little awry without good communication.

Toptal run their own technical screening process (can’t attest to if that’s painful or not) and we’ve never done any on our side. “Interviews” from us have always been a quick check that people are interested in working on the problems and then code quality is reviewed during first commits in the trial period.

[jupp0r]

Lots of companies are hiring remote staff currently if consulting is not your thing.

[OulaX → jupp0r]

Most companies are being turned off when mentioning my country.

[version_five → OulaX]

In a sense that's the problem with this kind of site, it turns you into a commodity, and so people end up painting large groups of contractors with the same brush because they don't have enough information to do otherwise. In my mind, being a contractor, and hiring contractors is about networking. If you go on a commercial site where you're part of a big pool that appears homogeneous, expect to get treated as such.

[muzani → OulaX]

Which country is that? Many places outside the US hire remotely. Even Canada. The US doesn't because of legal restrictions.

Most prefer to hire within their own time zone, though. People tend to quit if forced to work outside their usual hours, and nobody wants to do stand up meetings at 3 PM.

[OulaX → muzani]

Iraq.