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I know a gentleman who swears by oDesk, mostly as a billing/mediation platform for custom Twilio apps. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but he charges enough to make it viable.

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I was at the Twilio conference this year and there was a talk from Tim Lytle who only uses oDesk for his clients. He claims to have a pretty good client base and is busy from the work.

Twilio also endorses oDesk as a platform for people to find qualified programmers http://www.twilio.com/blog/2011/06/twilio-partners-with-odes..., maybe the answer is to specialize and differentiate to become more successful when competing against $10 per hour international outsourcers.

Why won't you deal with it? Bad experience? On the customer or developer side?

Short version: it adds nothing I need, positioning myself against the competition there would be certifiably insane, and the type of clients I most successfully work with would avoid me like the plague if I proposed working through oDesk.

Thanks, Patio. I gather you were on the workforce side, correct?

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