Very recently, one of oDesk’s product architects based here in Menlo Park posted a job opening on our site to find an additional engineer to add to our growing team. He received a number of candidates and then had to screen and interview to find the top provider to join the team.

He found all of the profile information helpful, and reviewed feedback scores, requested oDesk tests, and looked for personalized cover letters of individuals that seemed truly motivated to do the job.

Once he had narrowed the list down to just a couple candidates. He researched their work history in more detail. He ultimately chose a particular candidate in India largely based on an example of his work. Now, this wasn’t a web developer, so he couldn’t review a portfolio of websites. He also wasn’t able to review prior code because much of it is proprietary for other clients. So, it came down to reviewing prior work on open-source projects.

Why should you care about open-source work?

1) It’s completely open. You can review the exact code, revisions, and comments made by the individual contributor.
2) It shows motivation. Open-source work doesn’t pay, so if a provider has dedicated some of their personal time to contribute to an open-source project, it demonstrates a high-level of personal motivation.
3) It demonstrates knowledge of relevant technology. For oDesk, and for almost any small tech company these days, open-source technology is critical to business operations. It’s important for any engineers to be familiar with a good number of open-source tools.

So, if you are a provider and looking to build out a robust online profile, consider finding an interesting open-source project and contributing however you can. You will always be able to share this work with anyone and demonstrate your performance. Head on over to SourceForge and figure out how you can contribute.

On the flip-side, check out what John Resiq from Mozilla has to say about Interviewing for Open-Source.

With tonight’s Oscars only hours away, we’re delighted to know that oDesk hasn’t been left out this awards season.  The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) has named oDesk a finalist for the 2008 CODiE award in the Best Human Resources Solution category!

From the SIIA’s press release announcing the finalists - "Established in 1986, the Codie Awards celebrate outstanding achievement and vision in the software, digital information and education technology industries."

There were over 1,000 products nominated this year, so we’re thrilled to be on the CODiE’s shortlist.

CODiE winners are announced in late May after a vote by the SIIA membership.

Nowadays, many engineering managers are already building highly distributed teams. Many are doing it for the first time. Many are getting cost-cutting pressure, but are scared to take the leap into an uncertain world of remote work.

Let these books be your guide. All these authors have helped blaze the path for others to get the most out of a distributed development team. oDesk recommends:

Happy Reading!

While the US economy might be going into recession, I’m bullish on the oConomy.

We’re excited to announce the launch of the “oConomy”, a feature that publicly shares data from the oDesk network on hourly wages, feedback, jobs, and certification tests. We scoured through our internal database in order to offer a valuable resource for both buyers and providers to understand global trends and lead to more successful remote work relationships.

The oConomy summarizes trends based on record $22.5 million (and counting!) of work completed on oDesk. The oConomy data covers more than 1,600,000 hours of work completed by over 47,000 providers from over 90 countries.

One of the first things we wanted to do when analyzing all of the data was to provide a helpful world map with details on service providers by country. For buyers - it can be intimidating to select candidates for their job and we hope the Google Maps mashup helps shed some light on the hiring situation. For providers - we hope this map can help set expectations and serve as a helpful comparison point for their individual rates and skills against their peers.

Among some of the other insights offered in the oConomy:

• Indonesian Providers Earn Highest Average Feedback Scores (for countries with over 100 feedbacks)
• The Average oDesk Pay Rate Is $14/Hour
• Experience Is A Strong Predictor Of Job Performance

Here are just some of the many things you can see in the new oConomy:

Top ranked provider companies on oDesk. The current top 10 are:

ISS Art
Impinge Solutions
SoftProdigy
SOFTREACTOR LLC
InterLink
Aarthika
UshaTech
Waverley Software
DevelopmentMill
Galindo Consulting Group

And lots of charts on every subject…

- Global hourly rate trends by week.

- Global distribution of provider rates.

- Feedback trends by Years of Experience.

- Number of Jobs posted by Type.

- Certification Test Statistics.

- Rankings of Individual Providers.

- Country List including Feedback Scores.

See all of the oConomy.

And even more data on oDesk’s growth trends. A few previews:

We’re hopeful that sharing this data will help everyone out there learn more about the global economy by garnering insights from the slightly smaller oConomy. We look forward to continued growth fueled by our dedicated users and encourage all to comment on the data and maps that you see here to foster meaningful discussion about these global trends.

We’re a little late in adding this news to the blog, but those of you who visited the “Subversion” link in your oDesk Team Rooms or who read TechCrunch would have noticed that oDesk and CVSDude have teamed up to bring you more options for source-code management. For those of you that don’t already know CVSdude, the company is a leading provider of hosted open-source development tools including Subversion (SVN) with nearly 40,000 active users and over 34,000 projects. We think oDesk and CVSDude are a natural fit since many of the projects they host are managed by distributed teams. This partnership will bring CVSDude users to oDesk via a co-branded search box on CVSDude.com and it gives oDesk users a free month to trial one of their paid subscriptions. Of course, oDesk will continue to offer our existing SVN solution which remains a free option and one that is integrated with your oDesk team room. CVSDude provides more fine-grained management of repository permissions and other goodies, though, if you desire a greater level of control.

Here’s the full press release:

CVSDude and oDesk Team Up to Drive Software Development Success

CVSDude to integrate oDesk Provider and Job Search; oDesk to offer CVSDude’s Advanced Source Code Management Tools

January 31, 2008 – MENLO PARK, Calif. and BRISBANE, QLD, Australia – CVSDude, a leading provider of hosted open-source development tools including Subversion (SVN), has teamed up with oDesk, a leading online staffing marketplace and work platform, to offer fast-growing software companies access to talented technical professionals and tools that enable faster delivery and higher-quality software products at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. With this partnership, distributed development teams built and managed on oDesk will gain access to CVSDude’s secure storage infrastructure, advanced source-code management, and popular collaboration and job tracking software, for a low monthly fee. CVSDude customers seeking a solution for hiring, managing, and paying on-demand talent, can now tap directly into oDesk’s community of nearly 40,000 tested and rated professionals available on a pay-by-the-hour basis.

“With oDesk, we can offer over 38,500 active CVSDude users from several thousand companies an easy and cost-effective way to augment their development teams no matter where the talent is located,” said CVSDude CEO, Mark Bathie. CVSDude’s core customer base includes many VC-funded US technology startups, as well as industry leaders like Intel, Accenture, BBC Worldwide, and Harvard Business Online. Using oDesk web-based collaboration tools, these employers will be able to visually track and verify work performed, both historically and in real-time, by oDesk professionals.

“As our thousands of customers build larger and larger teams and manage projects of increasing complexity, the demand for source-code and project management tools is rapidly rising,” said oDesk CEO, Gary Swart. He added, “CVSDude’s advanced source-code management tools are an excellent complement to oDesk’s management platform.” A recent CVSDude survey found that customers save in excess of $160,000 and 2,500 hours of staffing time each year by outsourcing to CVSDude.

About CVSDude
Since 2002, CVSDude has provided a simple, safe, and fully-managed online development environment for thousands of software companies and over 45,000 developers worldwide. CVSDude (www.cvsdude.com) helps developer teams work together in real-time by hosting popular collaboration and management tools for tracking and communicating project changes. Using CVSDude, customers enjoy high-end security, a thriving developer community, “always upgraded” software, and expert, friendly customer support, for a fraction of the cost of in-house solutions. CVSDude was awarded the 2007 “Young Exporter of the Year” award by the Premier of Queensland, Australia.

With over 1,000 jobs posted each week, it’s becoming more difficult for providers to find the perfect jobs. And with increasing provider competition in the marketplace, it’s more important than ever for providers to focus their job search efforts and apply to the best jobs available.

A few weeks ago, we launched fully customizable RSS feeds for jobs posted on oDesk. Our intent is to give providers a way to setup a few custom feeds to save time and energy in searching for the jobs that are the best fit. I put together a few sample feeds below that you can use in your RSS reader to view high value oDesk jobs as they’re posted.

For starters, I wanted to narrow the search by a particular skill. Then, I wanted hourly jobs only because they tend to be higher value and longer term jobs. I further filtered out all jobs that were less than 4 weeks in estimated duration, so I’m left with the highest value jobs available in each skill set.

If you want further customization for your job feed - go to the Job Search, enter any parameters you want, and then use the RSS icon when you have exactly what you want. Good luck!

oDesk - PHP Jobs | oDesk - Drupal Jobs | oDesk - Joomla Jobs

oDesk - Design Jobs | oDesk - Writing Jobs | oDesk - SEO Jobs

oDesk - C++ Jobs | oDesk - .NET Jobs | oDesk - Visual Basic Jobs