[consulting] oDesk

[Victor Kane]

I too have been lurking here, but I think as the list goes on, it really is
necessary to place things in the proper context.

Perhaps the most telling phrase in your whole post is that which includes
"buyer" and "my workers".

The only control any self respecting contractor needs before making final
payment are code reviews and acceptance (functional) tests. The "buyer" has
to be professional also and specify the acceptance criteria.

The attempt by you of posting here in order to normalize and pass off as
perfectly acceptable a power "master"/"slave" relationship between those
selling and purchasing labor power needs to be denounced, as several here on
this thread already have.

I believe personally that it is brazen of you to defend sweat shop
conditions, where you as a purchaser of labor power get to pry into the
private screen of someone selling their labor power to you!

The whole aim here is to lower salaries and worsen working conditions, not
to mention the anti-worker (and class rascist) assumptions of dishonesty on
the part of workers.

If someone is padding the bill or shirking their responsibility, a simple
code review and functional test will show that up. Delegating work to others
involves responsibility.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: what we need here is a union!

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Matt Chapman <Matt at ninjitsuweb.com> wrote:

> Brian Vuyk wrote:
>
>> You are all right in probably not worth it. I may just try with a small
>> job and see how it goes. Like I've said, I don't like the monitoring system,
>> though!
>>
>
> As someone who often hires people to do things I could do myself, but lack
> the time for, I dare say that many Drupal developers are worse than lawyers
> when it comes to billing practices. I've seen a 10 hour bill for two lines
> of code changed to upgrade a module from D5 to D6 from a developer who was
> supposedly experienced in such work. Perhaps he got hung up on researching
> writing the jQuery he used to check *every* checkbox on the page for the
> requirement that one checkbox should be checked & disabled default.
>
> And the lower the hourly rate, the more likely they are to pad the bill.
> I'll gladly pay 4-5 times the minimal rate for someone who works as
> efficiently as I do. I'm not going to pay that kind of money to have someone
> learn on the job. $8/hr is about right if you're making it up as you go
> along, and you live in a country where the housing costs a third of mine.
>
> So, as a buyer, I'm a big fan of being able monitor my workers and make
> sure they've been truthful about their time and their skills.
>
> I get that research is part of the job; I'm not going to balk at
> screenshots of api.drupal.org... but if some dev is surfing youtube on the
> clock, I'm going to exercise my right to withhold payment. As for me, I
> don't bill my clients for research time unless they want to do something
> that really never has been done before. I spend about 10 hours per week on
> researching on my own time so I can stay up to date on the latest progress
> in Drupal & related technologies.
>
> Also, part of what the freelancers get from oDesk is an insurance policy
> that they will be paid for their time if the end client balks unjustly; as
> someone who spends way too much time trying to collect from delinquent
> employers, I know how valuable that is.
>
> Best,
>
> Matt
>
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