Minimum Rates on Job Posts and Candidate List
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Minimum Rates on Job Posts:
Starting today, we will no longer accept fixed price job posts with a budget less than $5. For hourly jobs, the maximum rate preference must now be at least $3 per hour. These changes only affect the job posting, so that candidacies and assignments may still occur at whatever rates and amounts are agreed upon by the buyer and providers.
We’ve noticed that job posts with budgets or rate preferences below these thresholds tend not to fill and when they do fill, it is often at greater amounts. By introducing these limits we are hoping to dissuade non-serious buyers and set more accurate expectations from the start.
Candidate List:
Users have been telling us that the candidate list in the Job Facts page is disconcerting and very few people found true value in it — we are therefore removing the candidate list from job opening pages. We will continue displaying the total number of candidates and interviewees at the top of the page in the Job Facts so that providers can gain an idea of the competition for a job before applying. The name of the provider who was hired will also continue to be displayed.
We’re committed to providing a high quality experience for all of our users. If you have ideas (or would like to vote on ideas) that you think will contribute to a quality experience, please share them with us at http://feedback.odesk.com.
Trend Spotlight: Microsoft Silverlight
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Silverlight on oDesk
There are currently 520 programmers on oDesk with Silverlight experience. oDesk’s data on the trends for Silverlight developers shows a significant increase in demand over the past six months. While this isn’t as impressive as oDesk’s data on recent Flash developers trends, Silverlight 3 offers some fantastic new features that should keep the demand for talented Silverlight developers on the rise.
Highlighted below are some of the key features that Silverlight offers. See Scott Gu’s article on Silverlight 3 for more in depth reading.
GPU accelration – Processing of video and graphics can be offloaded to the client’s graphics card, making streaming of 1080p and rendering of 2D and 3d graphics less CPU intensive.
Smooth Streaming – Microsoft’s IIS Media Services Server can vary video streaming bit rates on the fly to insure smooth playback, regardless of client’s CPU load or network congestion.
Codec Support – H.264, MPEG-4, and AAC formats are now supported, as well as the ability to write custom decoders.
Offline Support – Silverlight applications can be configured for local installation and offline use.
Expression Blend 3 – A developer’s tool for Expression Studio that offers a whole other blog post’s worth of tools, including: importing photoshop layers, Sketchflow application prototyping, support for behavior components that encapsulate complex design interactions, and much more.
How To Get Started Developing
Microsoft is offering all of the tools needed to get started for free. Download Microsoft’s Web Platform, which includes Visual Web Developer, SQL Server Express, Silverlight Tools and IIS and ASP.NET Extensions.
Silverlight.net is a great place to read tutorials, and view example projects, and Shawn Wildermuth’s Blog has some great examples and screencasts as well.
Considerations
When choosing to use a new technology, it can be tough to justify being one of the early adopters. Some statistics are showing that Silverlight 3 is currently installed on nearly 20% of all computers. While this is great – especially considering it has only been available for just under 3 months – it is no where near Flash’s 80-90% installation representation. However, Silverlight does tackle some media applications, particularly streaming video, that Flash and Java just can’t handle as well.
Provider Voices – the oDesk Manifesto
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We received responses from across the globe, from providers proud to lend their voices, faces and home towns to bring the oDesk Manifesto to life.
The response:
We really can’t say it any better than they have!
oDesk. Changing How the World Works.
Stay Employed Q4 2009 – Jobs with the Least Competition and Greatest Opportunity
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In looking at the table below, there are three columns: one with the skill or technology, the second with the total jobs posted and the last with the Fill Ratio, which shows the competition for these postings – a low percentage in this column indicates great job opportunities, whereas a higher percentage score indicates that jobs requiring those skills get filled at or above our usual rate. Anything not on this list is getting filled at a higher rate, which indicates high competition for the skill or technology.
| Skill | Average # Jobs Per Month | Fill Ratio |
| C++ | 168 | 17.31% |
| Java | 263 | 20.00% |
| Facebook | 116 | 22.41% |
| XML | 172 | 24.20 |
| C#/.NET | 169 | 25.15% |
| .NET | 141 | 25.27% |
| Drupal | 205 | 25.85% |
| AJAX | 424 | 25.94% |
| iPhone | 216 | 26.91% |
| PHP/IIS/MS SQL | 366 | 27.22% |
| Linux | 120 | 27.62% |
| SQL | 200 | 28.00% |
| Blogger | 162 | 28.40% |
| MySQL | 1,013 | 28.54% |
| Writing | 166 | 28.61% |
| Javascript | 594 | 28.64% |
| JQuery | 117 | 28.76% |
| ASP | 125 | 28.80% |
| ASP.NET | 114 | 28.95% |
| Flash | 686 | 29.66% |
| Data Entry | 355 | 29.86% |
| SEM | 169 | 30.27% |
| SEO | 752 | 30.52% |
Java developers are growing in demand with 263 jobs posted per month and a 20% fill rate – moving Java skills up our list from #4 last quarter to #2 this time aroung. iPhone developers, the previous leaders in our opportunity rankings, have fallen completely from the list. Not because the demand for skilled iPhone development has decreased (it has actually risen by almost 40% over the last 6 months), but because the number of skilled developers filling those jobs has pushed the fill ratio beyond the realm to be considered an area for current opportunity. As demand seems to be on a rising arc for iPhone development, you may see it reappear here in future months.
Continuing the ever-present PostgreSQL vs. MySQL debate, MySQL programmers have another quarter of strong showing on our chart, with by far the highest average number of jobs posted per month and a respectable fill rate at 28.54%. With the second highest number of available jobs, SEO consultants made a big leap in available opportunity by more than tripling the number of available jobs while maintaining a roughly 30% fill rate.
Bloggers make their first appearance on the opportunity scale, joining freelance writers in enjoying an average of over 160 job opportunities per month with a combined average fill rate of 28%.
This information derived from the thousands of jobs posted on oDesk every day. More information can be found on the skills and languages above, as well as many other desirable skills, on the oDesk Trends page.
Congratulations to Thumbtack & the rest of the JuicePitcher finalists!
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It was a pleasure to attend last Tuesday’s JuicePitcher event and see the finalist’s pitches. These startups are creating some impressive offerings. We’re also excited to announce we’ve extended our oDesk Challenge to all of them. We’re going to roll up our sleeves to help them find the very best talent oDesk has to offer.
Our sincere congratulations goes out to the winner, Thumbtack.com, a marketplace for local work. Not only do we think Thumbtack offers an innovative service, but we were pleasantly surprised to learn that they are already a happy oDesk buyer! Thumbtack uses oDesk providers to review all of the job posts on their site, to make sure they meet the community standards. According to Marco Zappacosta, CEO of Thumbtack, “the quality and timeliness of the work has impressed [him] every step of the way.”
The ten finalists (and latest oDesk Challenge takers) are:
Our sincere congratulations goes out to the winner, Thumbtack.com, a marketplace for local work. Not only do we think Thumbtack offers an innovative service, but we were pleasantly surprised to learn that they are already a happy oDesk buyer! Thumbtack uses oDesk providers to review all of the job posts on their site, to make sure they meet the community standards. According to Marco Zappacosta, CEO of Thumbtack, “the quality and timeliness of the work has impressed [him] every step of the way.”
The ten finalists (and latest oDesk Challenge takers) are:
Thumbtack is a free way to find new clients and manage the ones you already have. Just post your service once, and we’ll take care of the rest.
Viralogy is the Social Media Rank that measures how influential everyone is on the internet based on a variety of social media metrics. You can think of them as Analytics for people, not websites.
Cloudmach’s disruptive technology renders the 3D world in a cloud and delivers immersive 3D graphics to Web browsers using AJAX. That allows the technology to ubiquitously integrate into social networks, leveraging existing social graphs.
IDNTITI is a social rating tool that allows you to add questions and parameters to the questionnaire or feedback form, thus allowing you to get precise and objective feedback from the entire community.
A team of professionals with a passion for innovative businesses that improve communities. In their ranks are car sharing veterans who founded the first car sharing company in the United States; experienced technologists responsible for novel ways to leverage data; and sharp business minds from the top schools and premier companies around the globe. All coming together to make a difference for the community and the environment. Join them as they Reinvent the Wheels.
TribeVibe aggregates social media publishing tools, traffic tools, URL shorteners and real-time search into what founders are describing as a “social media mixing deck”.
Waiting in line wastes your customers’ time and costs you money. QLess is a patent-pending, interactive service that lets your customers use their cell phones to hold their spots in line. The average American spends over 2 waking years of his life waiting in line. Wouldn’t your customers love it if you could help them get some of that time back? Set them free from the line and get them spending, not standing.
HearPlanet delivers location information that really speaks to you. It’s like having a professional tour guide always by your side. Leave those bulky tour books behind and let HearPlanet show you the way. They make it easy to find what you’re looking for – fast!
Spreezio is a free location-based consumer service designed to bring local shoppers,
merchants, and sales reps together through on-demand personalized deals where everyone wins.
All you need is an Apple iPhone or a PC. Signup is quick and requires no download to your PC.
Their advance rental software allows business to track inventory and manage
reservations from anywhere. Plus, consumers can book items straight from your site.
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