I own a company and have been using ODESK for the last six years. I have spent nearly 35,000 on above average programmers, their normal rate of pay is anywhere between 15 and 65.00 an hour. At first, i selected this site because it was a good source of low paid talent, but then I realized there were some really solid developers/programmers using the service.

I only really had problem with 2-3 guys who said they were good, but you know during the job they were Googling answers to the problems I had and had no real experience, but for the most part, some great programmers there.

I recommend ODESK, as a buyer, I am super protected from people not following through, so i have some confidence, aside from hiring locally for temp/programming work, I always use Odesk.