One of my major complaints; Buyers who post an assignment listed under Administrative VAA (virtual administrative assistant) only to offer the position and you find yourself in a position for a telemarketing assignment! These types of incorrect category assignments are nothing more than a waste of time.

Don’t even get me started on the so called ‘teams’! It’s right up there will the union!

Even the $30/hour rate quoted by Bhagad Jal Park above is significantly lower than can support a true full-time freelancer, if you work in the overhead, your desired wage, and any kind of profit margin. On top of that, there were many buyers that included a ‘work on my project only’ clause – they don’t want freelancers that do this on the side and they don’t want other projects competing for their time. This is ludicrous. A living cannot be made on one project at a time for the rates buyers are willing to pay.

However, I do agree that many on oDesk don’t have the correct skills or talents required for projects that they apply for, and are also bidding too low for jobs that should receive much higher pay for. But buyers should always properly check profiles of people they are considering hiring, and should also place great importance on the quality of application letters during the interview process. I’ve read many buyers comments on other profiles that weren’t positive about the work provided, then have gone on to look through the person’s profile, portfolio (or lack of it), and test results, and come to the conclusion that the buyer obviously didn’t do that thoroughly, or wouldn’t have hired the provider in the first place.

Thus said, if a job requirement is small, I see many buyers give newcomers to oDesk a chance to prove themselves, and this is greatly admired, as there are many talented people out there, struggling for an income, and doing their best to find work, and do it well and honestly.

I avoid the hourly work on oDesk, and apply for fixed work only, even while knowing these jobs don’t guarantee payment, but have had absolutely no problems so far.

But go ahead and create another freelance site as there are far too few really excellent ones out there.

I feel it's unfair to say that no one will do their best under hourly systems. oDesk shows a remarkable degree of faith in freelancers by guaranteeing them payment, and trusting them not to abuse the system.

Also, I've never met any buyer who cribs about a screenshot or two taken at the wrong time. If I'm a buyer, I will crib only if ALL the screenshots show that the freelancer was clearly doing something else at the time. I'm a buyer on oDesk as well as a freelancer, and only once have I had to demand an explanation from a provider because his screenshots were ALL irrelevant.

I don't think that oDesk takes me back to my work days in the office because I can still set my own hours and my own pace. I work on eLance too, and they have recently instituted a tracker that is much the same as oDesk which can be sent with the invoice. It's not obligatory though.

In short (maybe too late for that!), oDesk is another business model which works out very well for some people. The fact that there are providers on oDesk charging over $30 an hour and doing very well is proof that oDesk buyers don't hire only cheapos.

I use oDesk and eLance for multiple sources of income, and I've never had reason to regret either

When you are hiring a freelancer for talent, you don’t do this kind of crap, and freelancers who have talent don’t put up with it.

There will always be jobs to be done by people with skills and no talent. Those people are not craftsmen in their trade, and usually need more strict guidelines. Certain people will always hire this type of worker. (Assembly lines and Amazon Mechanical Turk are examples). Certain companies will want to hire these people, drawn to them by their low prices. It will happen.

That is the real problem to me. Programming (and often Design, and less often Writing) is treated as something that can be tossed to the masses (well hey, a million monkeys banging on a million keyboards will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare, right?). I hate working on code from these sources.

The more someone can see the effects of the craftsmanship, the more important it is to them. This is why writing is hardly outsourced to people who don’t speak English, because it’s a BIG deal. Programming is a BIG deal as well. It’s easily on equal footing with the design and wording of your site.

Hire talent.