Anyone ever had success with Elance or Odesk?

I'm a techie and I've had success hiring from both. You need to put effort into it though.

First you might need to "waste" a few hundred bucks by giving small projects to a handful of applicants. That way you can immediately tell if someone is not cutting it before having them build your whole app.

Then you need to provide very detailed specs including mockups and what those mockups do. A vague requirement guarantees that the result will be a disappointment.

I've got good results from Eastern European, Russian and Western Programmers (US programmers can actually be affordable if they don't live in the major cities). India/China/Vietnamese programmers seem to be more of a mixed bag IMHO and have more trouble understanding requirements.

Previous post is very close to my recipe for using odesk.

Find a small project and break it in to 2 segments, 1st (less than a day), 2nd 2-3 days. For the 1st part of the project 4-6 people working on the same code, get it back and do a code review with them to see how working with them is. Short list the next 2 and give them both the rest of the project and then you have a decent baseline and talk with them about the larger project. I tend to budget about $750 to get the right people for project and if one of them flakes you have a fallback and don't have to go through the process from the start.

I to only send the request out in the US and Eastern Europe as I've had nothing but headaches from Asia.

If you're not technical enough to spend the time writing fairly detailed technical requirements and doing the code reviews it's rarely worth it. Pay the $50/hr to someone in the US that you can just lob shit over to.

Over the years I've spent close to $50k on odesk for various projects and idea which I needed additional help with or didn't have the time to do myself. I would spend 80% of my time coding and 20% managing freelancers.

Fast, Good, and Cheap, pick any two, regardless of where you are sourcing talent from.

Have found good people on peopleperhour. Have been some not so good but easy to tell within first day. Clear objectives and expectations required.

Eastern Europe will probably work best. You still have to manage them very carefully.

India I've had very bad experiences with, though of course exceptions can happen.

Do it Only If you know what they are doing!

Hey there, I've used elance and never been let down. I've worked with eastern europeans, british, american, indian and pakistani freelancers through elance. I agree with the first poster that not just indian freelancers are affordable.

So here are my tips for getting legit people.

1) always have a specific reply action on your job description. This weeds out those who havent ACTUALLY read your job description. If its a more complicated project, make a google form for them to fill up and only consider those applicants.

For example: "I need to make a wordpress site, to be considered for the job, please send me atleast 2 portfolio sites with flat design"

2) after you post a job, elance lets you go search for freelancers to bid on your job. I find this useful as it suggests to me, well reviewed and quality freelancers.

3) Price does NOT equal quality. Dont fall into that trap. Understand that some freelancers charge cheaply not because they suck but because your money is worth alot in their country. Decide by reviews not price.

4) When working with freelancers in non-english speaking countries, try not to have complicated lengthy descriptions of your job. Get straight onto Skitch and annotate screenshots where possible, to make everything clear to them. Some people are great at what they do but not at english.

Hope this helps! :)

I have hired off craigslist and required them to prove themselves before sending a down payment via paypal.

They can prove themselves by making a static page. Specifically, I want to see that they can follow what I asked of them.

I had a guy one time who did the entire site for free before I paid him.

some rules to know... http://www.texasovertimeattorney.com/practice_areas/texas-computer-it-professionals.cfm

Exotic dancers at a midtown Manhattan strip club were awarded nearly $10.9 million by a U.S. judge who found they were employees unfairly classified by the club as independent contractors.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/14/us-rci-hospitality-lawsuit-strippers-idUSKCN0IY28K20141114

USA companies like to play with fire. At the end of the day, USA is the country of opportunities for ALL.

Have used elance to source our web development team from India. Not disappointed at all. Takes some work on your end as they may not be the most "sophisticated" and you'd have to deal with some communication issues, but our guys at least had an amazing work ethic and never complained when we had them re-do a bunch of things several times. Probably saved 50-70% versus going direct to a professional services firm in the U.S.