oDesk: How to find an employer without being employed

oDesk is an online marketplace where people who need custom software development can find developers. There are several other marketplaces, the most known being Rent A Coder, Elance, Guru, which work on a per-project basis. The buyer posts his project request, and developers bid on his project - the buyer then chooses a developer, basing on his own parameters (price, experience, professionalism, and so on). Developers always bid for the development of the entire project.

What is new at oDesk is that instead of bidding on a per-project basis developers are virtually hired and paid for the hours they actually work on the project. So, the bid is expressed in terms of hourly cost for the buyer. This allows buyers to work with developers on an on-going basis, and it's perfect for maintenance tasks, projects which don't have an estimation and so on.

Since this model is open to unscrupulous developers which could declare more work than they really did, oDesk provides a tool which monitors user activity and also provides screenshots of what the developer is currently doing to the buyer – this requires of course that the developer installs and activates a web cam. The oDesk Team (this is the name of the application) keeps track of the activity performed on the developer’s PC (keyboard clicks, opened applications, webcam snapshots, user notes) and allows the buyer to view these activity logs. Also, it takes care of reporting to the buyer the number of hours the developer has effectively worked on his project. It sounds like having your boss behind you while you’re working at the office, but without leaving your home.

Of course this is not free, and oDesk must have a reward for usage of the service it provides. Its fee is 30% of your hourly fee, meaning that they add 30% to your hourly fee when they invoice the buyer. So if you work for 10$/hour, they’ll charge the buyer at 13$/hour, keeping 3$/hour for themselves and giving you the rest.

Developers are paid using Moneybookers, an online payment gateway similar to Paypal, but available in almost every country (whilst Paypal can be used to withdraw money only on a limited list of countries). Payments occur every month, and include (approximately) all hours worked in the previous month.

As for every custom software development marketplace, there is a lot of competition, especially from Eastern Europe and India, with excellent developers working for less than 15$/hour. This makes hard for people living in countries where 15$ wouldn’t be enough because of higher life’s cost to find a job. But I strongly believe (and I can prove it, since I regularly use Rent A Coder) that buyers don’t look for the lowest price, at least not always and not all buyers. I’ve won several projects with my bid being the highest one. The trick, if we can consider it so, is to write good proposals. If you show the buyer why he should choose you by providing real interest in his project, describing how you’re going to develop it, you have good chances to get the project. There are really a lot of developers who bid on a project with an anonymous “I can do it, choose me” comment.

But with oDesk this is harder – working on an hourly basis, it happens that buyers don’t consider developers with high hourly cost. Bidding on a whole project is different, since each developer has his quality standards (for example, some can deliver technical documentation), can provide a better software architecture, and so on. On an hourly model, this flexibility doesn’t exist, and the buyer needs to choose a developer basing on the developer’s skills and experience and his hourly cost.

PRO:

•  Paid on an hourly basis rather than on a project basis

CONS:

•  Hard to find jobs if your hourly rates are higher than 15$
•  30% commission is a bit high, if compared to other marketplaces