Digital Marketplace oDesk – Interview With Tim Lytle

There are several places on the internet where companies can publish a project and put together a team on a project per project base. Examples I am aware of are oDesk, vWorker, eLance and Guru.

These marketplaces range from pure “finding resources” like a traditional job site, to a complete integrated project life cycle, including payments, arbitration, reporting, progress tracking and general communication.

I want to discuss online marketplaces because they can show us a working mechanism to get two elements together: a pool of flexible talent on one side and facilitating organizations with a purpose on the other side.

In this post an interview with Tim Lyte about how he uses oDesk. oDesk is a marketplace for online workteams. Tim Lytle is a Technology Consultant & oDesk Contract Web Developer. Owner of timlytle.net ltd since 2003, his oDesk adventures have been mentioned on the BBC’s Click, in Forbes Magazine and at CIO.com.

Why did you start using oDesk?

TL: “I ran across oDesk in the fall of 2006. I’m not really sure what search or site or ad let me to oDesk. At the time I’d been self employed for a few years. My work involved (and still does) consulting/technology management for local businesses and contract web development.

At that point I had used Rent-A-Coder and SoloGig. oDesk’s hourly billing system was very attractive. I had started viewing the ‘flat rate’ model as potentially unfair for both parties. Most web development projects have ambiguous specifications and goals – it’s just the nature of this kind of programming. Because of that I had to over bid flat rate jobs, hoping that I covered any change the client would make, without having to step into the quagmire of change orders and – if things got ugly – arbitration.

That creates a situation where the client is paying too much if they actually know what they want, and don’t press for changes. If they don’t really know what they want – or if their expectation is somehow different from what they communicate – then I’m making less than I expected.

Billing hourly was a good solution for that situation. oDesk gave me a way to do that, while still addressing the client’s need for assurance that I’m actually working.”

What kind of services are you offering? Did this change over time?

TL: “Most of my work is contract web development. I’ve written eCommerce web apps from scratch for clients, and I’ve also modified existing applications/sites (with codebases ranging from custom, commercial, and open source). My services on oDesk were never focused on a specific sector of web development – for example, WordPress or Magento – so they haven’t really changed or expanded.

From time to time I’ve browsed through some of jobs outside web development – I dabble in a bit of audio/video production – but I haven’t tried to expand my offering there yet.”

How do you find your projects?

TL: “Now that I’m established on oDesk, a good share of the projects I get come from interview invitations. But I still go through the job postings on the oDesk site. I use RSS feeds based off keyword searches to limit the results to languages I program in, and also to highlight technologies I enjoy or am interested in using.

I gave an overview of my job bid philosophy in a guest post on the oDesk blog. Essentially I’ve identified the kind of clients and projects that fit me well. Not just projects I’d like to work with, but the kinds of projects that I tend to be hired for. I then focus on those projects.

For me there are generally two kinds of projects I tend to get. There are projects where the client has a high level understanding of what needs to be done, but will rely on the developer to translate that into what needs to be done technically. There are also projects where a consulting/development company needs a developer to supplement the work load, or provide expert info. My projects also tend to be long term, involving many varied tasks (clients tend to keep me on once the initial project is completed, to do other work as it is available).

Those are the kinds of jobs I focus on, and I bid a subset of them. I ignore jobs that are obviously focused on getting the lowest hourly possible. I usually ignore jobs where the buyer demonstrates they’re not familiar with how oDesk works. I also ignore jobs where the buyer makes unreasonable demands.

The results that I filter the job postings, bid on those that seem to be likely or good projects, and get a few of them. I certainly don’t bit on every web development job that comes across.”

How do you make sure you understand what the client wants?

TL: “One benefit – and perhaps the greatest – of hourly billing is that the client doesn’t have to communicate everything to start the project. I can (and have) told a client that I’ll take a few hours, work up part of what I think they’re looking for, then they can test and determine if what I did was what they wanted, and if what they wanted was really what they needed.

That said, I’ve had long and detailed email threads with clients, going back and forth over the detailed specifications of their projects. At times a phone call is needed to clarify things. All that is time billed through oDesk, so the client has the ability to see what changing or clarifying their request costs.

As mentioned, most of my clients have a high-level understanding of what needs to be done, and leave the details to me. Being a US based developer working with (all but one) US based clients means communication problems that sometimes happen crossing language and culture barriers are not really a problem. However, as I also mentioned, web development requests can be ambiguous, so I ask for clarification when needed, and as much as possible combat misunderstanding using the ability to work a little and then have the client test.”

What are the main differences with how you worked before using oDesk?

TL: “I still do work outside of oDesk, however, all my contract web development is done through them. I’ve touched on the main difference in explaining why I started with oDesk. While oDesk offers flat rate jobs, I rarely take them (only under special circumstances for clients I know). The big difference with oDesk is I don’t spending a large amount of time trying to make sure I correctly estimated exactly how much time it will take to finish a project – something that borders in intangible. Instead I just start the log into oDesk and get to work. I give my clients a rough idea of how much time a project should take, and they know that they’re only going to pay for the actual time, not the high side of an estimate regardless of how quickly I may end up completing it.

In addition, with oDesk handling all reporting and billing, I have more time to actually work on projects. And I never have to worry about holding back some deliverables, or halting a project until I recieve a check. oDesk guarantees my payments.”

Does a customer have some way in knowing that you actually worked the hours you bill?

“Hourly billing can be a risk on both parties. oDesk minimizes the risk for both by guaranteeing payment, but only for time tracked using the ‘oDesk Team’ application. The application allows you to note what work is being done. It also takes random screen shots and monitors the amount of keyboard and mouse activity. Every week the client has the ability to review the hours worked. Time can be billed ‘offline’ – without oDesk monitoring the work – however that time does not fall under oDesk’s payment guarantee.

There are some who are bothered (or even offended) by that kind of time tracking. I take a different perspective. I trust oDesk, the client trusts oDesk, and that’s good enough to start. Once we’ve worked together for a while, we learn to trust each other. While I’ve not done a formal survey, I’m fairly certain most of my long term clients don’t even look at the time logs anymore.

In this way oDesk acts like a work orientated version of the many online payment systems (PayPal, Google, etc) or online markets (eBay, Amazon, etc) that are now considered commonplace. oDesk is a trusted 3rd party, making it easy for both parties to safely complete a transaction.”

What are your biggest lessons learned?

TL: “One thing I learned early on was to make sure a client knows the difference between an employee and a contractor. As a side effect of paying hourly, some clients think that you should have almost instantaneous turn around, or be able to drop everything as soon as they ask for something to be done. That’s just not the case with contracting, and I’ve had to explain that a few times to clients. I do my best to respond to critical issues in a timely manner; however, when a client starts sending small non-critical ‘one minute’ tasks, they need to understand that the task – while simple – may be pushed to the end of the list. They have the benefit of not having to pay me a full time salary, and with that comes the downside of non-instantaneous results on non-critical tasks.

Of course, I don’t have full-time contracts – that’s a different story (in that case the contractor is more like a temporary employee).

I learned another lesson the time I responded to a job request where the client had no idea (or so they said, I’m not so sure anymore) about how oDesk worked. They assumed they were just posting to an open job market, and were expecting to handle time reports and payment internally. In fact, they were acting as a kind of job broker themselves. oDesk was kind enough to permit me to work for the client outside oDesk (since the oDesk site was how I found the client, not asking for oDesk’s permission seemed unfair, and perhaps even a violation of my agreement with them).

The short version of a long story is that I found (or so it seemed to me) they wanted me to respond to *all* the job requests with bids and answer *all* questions monitoring all the requests daily. Then only billing when their clients accepted the (at times small) job. In the end I terminated the relationship, and their checks bounced (but they eventually made good on the payments). Perhaps it was just a bad situation where we all misunderstood each other. What I learned is that if a client hasn’t taken the time to understand how oDesk works, it’s not worth the risk.”

Tim Lytle is a Technology Consultant & oDesk Contract Web Developer. Owner of timlytle.net ltd since 2003, his oDesk adventures have been mentioned on the BBC’s Click, in Forbes Magazine and at CIO.com.

Image by TimWilson.