I think in general the experience on oDesk/elance type sites is pretty bad. I don't include it in my search at all because I have close to zero tolerance for being on webcam as a form of logging hours (Pretty much every contract I do has a bunch of work away from the computer). In order for me to put up with that you'd need to pay me a large premium. You also either need to not assign me any work complicated enough to want to do pen and paper/whiteboard work on or pay an additional premium to make up for the unbilled hours (similarly if I have to start a webcam every time I reply to off hours e-mail or it's free (especially if my off-hours e-mail responses are unbilled if I answer on a phone). I imagine a lot of senior contractors feel similarly, oDesk type sites seems to have a lot of bad experiences for contract work and a lot of joke employers enough so that it doesn't become a part of your get work strategy if you have other good ways of sourcing work.
With regards to recruiting and the 20% good recruiters charge, most companies are set up to expect recruiting fees and don't convert the extra cash into rates or wages when they don't have to pay them -- in theory a company that spends $0 on recruiting fees should have 20% more to pay, in practice it almost never works that way so avoiding recruiting fees seems to be a one-sided benefit. If you're good enough to get quality contracts through a good recruiter, you're not going to make more money on oDesk and you'll lose billable hours to managing site profile, and going through entire bid/negotiation and in some cases estimation processes without getting paid. Assuming that most contract developers feel the same way, the site is likely to cater to the bottom of the market, which makes finding talent extremely hard.
Remote work has it's own challenges, the things that I've found essential is:
- Great communication
- Great documentation
- Smart lightweight processes
- At certain stages of company avoid outright remote (even 9 days remote + 1 day in office every 2 weeks is a very different animal from outright remote -- you actually meet everyone in the company in person in one of these two cases)
- Personality and culture fit as well as general empathy are important: negotiation and responsibility under pressure with people you've never met in person is difficult.
- Great management
- Manage time zone differential if the product is subject to lots of change: (12 hour cycles for back and forth Q&A on something that's unclear is extremely expensive).
Note that by great in the above requirements, I mean higher quality than most early stage start-ups achieve.
With regards to recruiting and the 20% good recruiters charge, most companies are set up to expect recruiting fees and don't convert the extra cash into rates or wages when they don't have to pay them -- in theory a company that spends $0 on recruiting fees should have 20% more to pay, in practice it almost never works that way so avoiding recruiting fees seems to be a one-sided benefit. If you're good enough to get quality contracts through a good recruiter, you're not going to make more money on oDesk and you'll lose billable hours to managing site profile, and going through entire bid/negotiation and in some cases estimation processes without getting paid. Assuming that most contract developers feel the same way, the site is likely to cater to the bottom of the market, which makes finding talent extremely hard.
Remote work has it's own challenges, the things that I've found essential is:
- Great communication - Great documentation - Smart lightweight processes - At certain stages of company avoid outright remote (even 9 days remote + 1 day in office every 2 weeks is a very different animal from outright remote -- you actually meet everyone in the company in person in one of these two cases) - Personality and culture fit as well as general empathy are important: negotiation and responsibility under pressure with people you've never met in person is difficult. - Great management - Manage time zone differential if the product is subject to lots of change: (12 hour cycles for back and forth Q&A on something that's unclear is extremely expensive).
Note that by great in the above requirements, I mean higher quality than most early stage start-ups achieve.