If you’re working with others online, as a small business owner or freelancer, then your computer is the conduit to your work. Your computer’s efficiency correlates directly to the your work productivity. Below are some tips to optimize performance and make the most out of the computer you already own.

Disclaimer: Changes of this type may have the potential to cause loss of data. Before making any alterations to your system, backing up your data is strongly recommended. Proceed at your own risk!

OS and Memory
Memory (RAM) is where programs live while your computer is turned on. Your operating system(OS) is the first program loaded in to memory. You or your OS can then load more programs. However, if your OS has been instructed to load spyware, viruses, worms, or non-essential software in to memory, this can cause your computer’s processing speed  to grind to a halt.

This particular article is aimed at users running Windows XP. However, if you are running a Mac, check out Onyx. In my experience most Mac problems stem from Disk Permissions issues. Onyx is great at fixing these issues.

Malware Cleaning and Prevention
PC Tools Spyware Doctor and PC Tools Anti-Virus, are both available as free downloads. They can help you identify and remove malware from your system.  Once they’re installed they will auto-update unobtrusively and let you know if there are any more problems.

If the above doesn’t work, then the offending piece of software is brand new and really evil. Check out the forums on MajorGeeks.com. Chances are someone else has had the same problem and the solution is there, or they are in the process of figuring it out.

Unwanted Legit Applications
Now, if your machine is still running slow there are probably some programs running that just aren’t necessary.

If you truly do not use the application, then remove the application using “Add/Remove Programs” (Located by click “Start” and then “Control Panel”).

Net Squirrel has a great article on “How to use MSCONFIG” a windows systems tool that can help  you make sure that only necessary programs are running at startup.

Clean Slate
If your problems originate with the “blue screen of death” (windows goes to a blue screen, and there will be a lot of text that you don’t understand), or if none of the tips above have yielded performance on par with your computer’s original state (from the manufacturer), then reformatting and reinstalling may be a good option. This is a sure fire way to get back to a good performing system. Consult your computer’s user manual, or see below. Re-installing windows will cause data loss. Backup.

Microsoft’s Instructions on How to Install/Upgrade/Reinstall Windows XP.

Final Thoughts
Keeping your system in a healthy state isn’t too tough if you do regular maintenance. However, keep in mind that some of the programs above have the potential to cause permanent data loss. Backing up your data is highly recommended before undertaking any of the above. If you are hesitant to delve this deep in to your system, then consider consulting a professional computer technician in your area.

As sales of smartphones rises so does the demand for talented developers to exploit these new platforms. The two most popular mobile platforms in the oDesk marketplace are Apple’s iPhone OS, and Google’s Android OS. Below is a run down of how the demand for these skills has fared over the last 12 months, and where developers can get started developing on these platforms.

iPhone
The Apple iTunes App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch has been open for just over 15 months, with Apple reporting over 2 billion App downloads. The gold rush to develop iPhone apps, fueled by Apple’s marketing efforts and ambitious entrepreneurs, has led many buyers to the expert developers in the oDesk marketplace and fueled steady growth in demand for skilled iPhone developers. The iPhone’s addictive multi-touch screen and sleek design offer an attractive platform for potentially viral Apps.

iPhone and iPod Touch development requires that you have an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X Leopard, X-code, the iPhone SDK, and some knowledge of Objective-C language. Owning an iPhone or iPod touch would be necessary for proper testing, but isn’t required for writing and running programs in the included iPhone Simulator. Apple also offers a $99 iPhone Developer Program, but this is only necessary if you plan on releasing an app to the app store directly.

Android
Google’s Android mobile phone OS, without the fuel of Apple’s App Store has not garnered the same popularity on oDesk, but still employs a significant number of Android developers, outpacing demand for developers of any other mobile OS on oDesk aside from the iPhone.

Android is an Open Source, Linux-based OS running on phones from HTC, Motorola, Samsung and LG, with rumored devices appearing soon on devices from Sony Ericsson, BenQ, and Dell. The number of Android devices on the horizon makes it poised to be a dominant mobile OS. The Android Market also offers a free service for developers to sell their apps.

The Android SDK will run on Mac, Windows, or Linux, and requires Java JDK 5 or 6. Eclipse 3.5 is the recommended IDE for development. Android’s Developers site has everything you need to get started, except for a handset which can be any Android Device, or the official Android Dev Phone 1, a special unlocked HTC Dream.

The Market
While programming for the iPhone and Android OS are the most in demand mobile phone development skills on oDesk, they aren’t the only mobile operating systems. Admob’s August 2009 Mobile Metrics report shows that of phones using their ad network globally, iPhone OS claiming the majority, and Nokia’s Symbian OS, and RIM’s Blackberry OS both beating out Android. However, Android is rising from last year, and Symbian and Blackberry are both falling. This breakdown speaks volumes for the confidence in Android’s future, and to the brilliantly standardized outlet that the Apple App Store and Android Market provide as both a service to end users and developers.

Microsoft Silverlight is a browser plugin that allows the delivery of rich media experiences over the web. If you’ve ever watched a movie on Netflix using “Watch Instantly” then you are familiar with the power of Silverlight’s video streaming capabilities when coupled with Microsoft’s IIS Media Services Server. While streaming video was Silverlight 1.0’s main focus, iteration 2.0 expanded upon that, offering the ability to run programs written using any .NET language. Version 3.0 has been out since July (notice the spike on the trend chart for Silverlight developers below) and boasts the ability to stream 1080p HD video, as well as a slew of upgrades that speed up performance and improve the development process.

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.

Key Features
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.

Due to the popularity of our Stay Employed – Jobs with the Least Competition and Greatest Opportunity post (and the ongoing requests we’ve received for updated information), we thought we would follow up with recent information from the oDesk Trends vaults to help you develop your resume and determine what skills to focus on to stay employed or forge a new career path. We will take an updated look at various skills and technologies and the competition – or lack thereof – for positions needing those skills.

In viewing these numbers, keep in mind this is for oDesk, which is primarily concerned with placements for freelance and contract positions. This may vary with respect to full time placement numbers, though the data can be a useful indicator of overall trends.

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.

First up, C++ programmers are recently experiencing the lowest fill rate – which means competition for jobs with this skill is fairly low. Additional good news: after an early summer slump, the field is growing again, as the number of positions requiring C++ programming skills are steadily climbing.

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 halfway down 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.

The speed of innovation means new technologies are being introduced every day. What you may not realize is that some of the “older” tech knowledge is still in demand today, and with an abundance of new-generation programmers flooding the digital realm, programmers with some old-school knowledge can be worth a pretty penny.  Here are five savvy skills from yesteryear that can still prove themselves valuable, even if they don’t pop up in every day conversation.

LOTUS NOTES

Lotus Notes has a history spanning more than 20 years, causing some industry analysts and mainstream business press writers to make predictions of its impending demise, but the numbers don’t lie: IBM reported an increase of 100 million seats over the last decade. While the market for jobs requiring Lotus Notes skills has been up and down, there are a few folks out there consistently looking for those with the knowledge to handle any Lotus-related curveball that may come their way.

UNIX SHELL

The Unix shell was unusual when it was first created in 1977. On systems using a windowing system (as many do these days) some users may never use the shell directly. On Unix systems, the shell is still the implementation language of system startup scripts, including the program that starts the windowing system, the programs that facilitate access to the Internet, and many other essential functions. Due to the recent movement in favor of open source software, most Unix shells have at least one version that is distributed under an open source license, which may further explain why this “old school” technology is still a desirable job skill.

COLDFUSION

ColdFusion was anything but cold when it hit the digital realm in the mid 1990s. As the internet exploded in popularity, CF and its legions of programmers rode the dot-com wave to great success thanks to a winning combination of functionality and simplicity. Stiff competition over the years has left  ColdFusion overshadowed by other offerings such as Rails and PHP, though the language does maintain a devout following that actively seeks out other CF aficionados.

COBOL

No, we’re not talking about the ancient planet that served as the cradle of humanity in SyFy Channel’s Battlestar Galactica (besides, that’s spelled with a K), but it is nearly as old. With roots dating back to the late 1950s, COBOL is one of the industry’s oldest programming languages, and according to Stephen Kelly of Micro Focus, still “equates to 80% of the world’s actively used code.” It may not be cutting edge, but there’s no denying the benefits of being able to work with, modify, and update a language that remains so prevalent in modern society. It may not lead to an exclusive contract, but in a world where few institutions even teach COBOL, knowing this language can be a valuable asset indeed.

FORTRAN

If COBOL is ancient, FORTRAN is prehistoric, at least in the technological timeline. 1953 marks the birth of this particular programming language, and what it lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in speed and simplicity. Versions of FORTRAN code still serve front line duty in numerous applications, especially in the engineering and scientific realm, where FORTRAN’s ability to efficiently crunch numbers with little fanfare make it an ideal language for complex calculations.

The hot jobs aren’t necessarily the “hip” programming gigs. Rather, they exist at the point where demand outweighs supply, and that’s not always at the crest of the wave. Programmers know just how fast this industry moves. Today’s in-demand language could well be tomorrow’s history lesson, but having a diverse background can easily mean the difference between scrapping for work with millions of fresh programmers, or showcasing yourself to an under-served niche segment where knowledge of older languages reign supreme—and gets you the job.

The past year has been a roller coaster ride for the economy, but tracking open source e-commerce programs over that same time period shows that online sales are still serious business. Here, we take a look at how programmers with skills for two popular choices in open source e-commerce have been faring on oDesk.

osCommerce

osCommerce has been around a while and  there is a very well established and responsive community to offer support. There are also innumerable ‘modules’ to be found on the OS site, which allow for increased customization and osCommerce’s simplicity and flexibility means these can be easy to add.

But the appeal of osCommerce is in its ability to be translated and localized into any language. The structure of the site, written in php and using clear definitions, means all the text seen on an osCommerce store is handily stored in reference files which contain only plain text for translation – minimizing the risk of file corruption by a web page translator.

osCommerce has been around a while, but those versed in this area have seen a dramatic increase in job availability over the last year. The number of jobs posted each month requesting knowledge of the platform has risen to over 5 times the number of osCommerce jobs available in July of 2008.

Magento

This newer store scores highly for its look and overall features. The backend is well organized and most items of concern are thoroughly covered from the get-go, including re-writable URLs (a must for a well optimized online store).

Magento also has ‘Store View’ which allows online shop keepers the ability to set up multiple stores – with the same products, at different prices, and even in different languages – from a single admin area.

This also means that translating a Magento store is facilitated from within – many language packs are already available, so all the hard-coded static content and navigation (add to basket, subscribe to newsletter, invoices, checkout, etc.) are ready at the click of a button, while keeping the admin area in your native language.

Magento is newer, so it isn’t surprising that this area started with fewer jobs posted per month than osCommerce, but has maintained a more steady rate of increase over the past year. The number of jobs posted each month that request a knowledge of Magento has skyrocketed during that time – there are 13 times more jobs available for Magento programmers than there were in July 2008!

Specific Features

For those curious about the specific features of each platform, the folks over at DCKAP have put together a handy chart. But either way you go, online commerce is a rising trend – and serious business!

Had experience with either Magento or osCommerce? Share your perspective in the comments!

With the rise of Twitter, business executives are under pressure to maximize this instant (and mass) social networking medium to leverage their influence for the good of their companies. Many, like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh (@zappos), use Twitter both to build community within their corporations and to market their businesses (and, let’s face it, their own names and personalities while they are at it).

However, with this trend, another phenomenon was birthed and now flourishes: the Ghost Tweeter. For those not familiar with the term, here’s a quick explanation. You’re a very busy CEO. You don’t have time to tell your followers what you are doing 15 times a day. Or, perhaps, you simply suck at one-liners. You can’t “micro-blog” via Twitter, because you didn’t get to where you are chatting or learning texting lingo, you got to where you are by being a financial wiz with ideas and leadership skills — among them, the gift of delegating. So, when you feel the pressure to tweet, you hire a ghostwriter to do it for you.

Ghost-tweeting is, by most accounts, about as respected as seducing an intern. Some call it smart, others call it lying, but don’t ever put ghost, Twitter and a CEO’s name in the same sentence unless you mean it. (See the comments about AOL founder Steve Case here. And, one more time, for the record, we didn’t mean to imply the rumor was true.)

One alternative to ghost-tweeting is having various employees tweet openly under the company name — which works for Jet Blue airlines (@JetBlue) CEO David Barger. The brand is promoted, the business gets a personality, and the CEO doesn’t have to bother tweeting himself or using a ghost-tweeter.

Youth Specialties CEO Mark Oestreicher once dabbled in Twitter, but gave it up when he realized how much time social networking was taking out of his work days. “I loved Twitter while I was using it,” he recently told oDesk, ”and did feel there was some benefit to my organization.  But, ultimately, I found that Twitter (along with Facebook and my blog) were stealing too much of my time, focus, presence and creativity.”

Oestreicher went on to explain that since he pulled the plug on social networking, those four important elements have returned to his daily life as a CEO. Like Jet Blue, Youth Specialties currently relies on the company tweets (@YS_Scoop) to build the brand and communicate.

Is it the same thing, for followers, as getting tweets from the CEO herself or himself? Maybe not. But the average CEO may not be able to juggle active tweeting without taking away from her valuable time and energy.

So, is ghost-tweeting — provided no one ever knows it isn’t you — the way to go? After all, in the publishing world, ghostwriting has put many an autobiography on the best seller shelf at your local bookstore and no one seems to mind.

The answer, it seems, is that for now some form of tweeting on behalf of the company is an important part of marketing in today’s world. But the pros and cons of actual CEO tweeting might depend on who you ask.

Note: For more CEOs to follow on Twitter, see our 25 Entrepreneurs and Businesses You Should Be Following on Twitter.

How is your company using Twitter? Interested in learning more about companies leveraging the power of social media? Let me know in the comments!

- Tamara

Many lately have been predicting the fall of Hi5, the third largest social netowrking site (after MySpace & Facebook)  Does Hi5 have what it takes to co-exist with the big boys?  Lets take a closer look…

The Market Share

As you can see from the graph below, Hi5 may be in the top three, but it’s a distant third.  In fact, in recent months their unique visotor counts seem to have been in a downward trend while MySpace and Facebook have been gaining market share at a rapid pace.

The Demographics

The one thing that has historically kept Hi5 from being more popular in the United States may be it’s one saving grace.  Lets take a look at the user demographics for the top three sites…see anything unusual about Hi5?

Thats right, Hi5 has the dominant position in every category except “Caucasian”.   The one that especially stands out is “Hispanic”.  Hi5 has over 10 times the market share in the Hispanic community than Facebook, and nearly 5 times that of MySpace!  Right now Facebook and MySpace might be hot in the USA and UK, but eventually their growth will slow in those areas.  If Hi5 can leverage their current user base to expand further into non-english speaking markets, they could quickly become a formidable contender to MySpace and Facebook.
 

The Conclusion: Is There Room For All Three?

Some things are hot in one area of the world and don’t catch on quite as well in others.  Look at the game “Lineage”.  One of the hottest Multiplayer MMO games in the world, with a subscriber base of over 1 million, but almost all of them in Korea.  Even the American juggernaut “World of Warcraft”, isn’t able to penetrate the Korean market with the same success they had in the USA.

Just like there is room for a McDonalds, Wendys, Taco Bell, etc. on every corner, there is room for multiple “flavors” of Social Networking sites.  The one that fails will most likely be the one that tries to be all things to all people.

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Due to the popularity of our Stay Employed – Jobs with the Least Competition and Greatest Opportunity post last December (and the number of requests we’ve received for updated information), we thought we would follow up with more interesting information from the oDesk Trends vaults to help you develop your resume and determine what skills to focus on to stay employed in these challenging economic times. We will take an updated look at various skills and technologies and the competition – or lack thereof – for positions needing those skills.

In viewing these numbers, keep in mind this is for oDesk which is primarily concerned with placement for freelance and contract positions. This may vary with respect to full time placement numbers, though we think the data is useful to all.

In looking at the table below we give you three columns, one with the skill or technology, the second with the total jobs posted and the last with the Fill ratio. The Fill Ratio  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 high rate indicating high competition for the skill or technology.

First up, iPhone Programmer positions have the lowest fill rate which means the competition is lowest in this particular field. Addition good news: the field is growing, as the number of positions requiring iPhone development skills is growing at a rapid rate as witnessed on our iPhone Developer Trends page.

.Moving down the table we see that AJAX developers are still in demand with 315 jobs posted per month and a 27% fill rate. PHP is still very popular and competitive on oDesk, but developing some additional skills in an area with a lower fill rate might help you keep up a steady work flow.

.The .NET languages that showed so promisingly last December have fallen from our chart, as the positions are in high demand and are often-filled.

.Adding fuel to the ongoing PostgreSQL vs. MySQL debate, MySQL programmers have a strong showing on our chart, with the highest average number of jobs posted per month and a respectable fill rate at 30%. At 658 jobs/month, this is almost double the skill needed for those working with the second highest number of jobs per month, Javascript programmers.

On the less technical front, freelance writers and those with English skills are each enjoying an average of over 100 job opportunities per month with a combined average fill rate of 35%.

Hopefully you’ll find this information useful in guiding your career path. More information can be found on the skills and languages above, as well as many other desirable skills, on the oDesk Trends page.

Trademark and copyright is an important topic to many freelance writers, developers, and graphic designers (among many others). Below is a collection of various and interesting trademark controversies – remember to educate yourself and tread carefully when uncertain of ownership rights!

Burning Man

This case is particularly interesting in that the entity of “Burning Man” is open source, for lack of a better expression, in that it is near impossible to determine or prove who, if anyone, really “owns” it. The danger of no one owning it is that it now becomes open to outside interests adopting this orphan since no one is really parenting it. When there is money to be made, this is an immediate danger. Burning man sponsored by “Taco Bell” anyone?

Chris Messina over at FactoryJoe does an excellent write-up on the topic , saying:

“What’s so interesting and didactic about this controversy is that it embodies, on a grand scale, the kind of micro-controversies that open source communities have faced for a long time around intellectual property and trademark matters.”

(Photo credit: Original uploaded by Sterling Ely and shared under a Creative Commons License.)

Podcasting

A few years ago, Apple tried to flex their muscles to own the term “podcasting”.  In fact they seemed to be after anything with the word “pod” in it. This, of course, is interesting in that we are now getting into the contentious “common terms” area. What if Coke wanted to trademark the term “Cola”?

Adwords

Google has tried to dump its responsibility for ensuring that a competitor of a company cannot advertise using Google Adwords the trademarked terms of another company. In other words Coke cannot have Adwords advertising on the term “Pepsi” since it is not their trademark. Google has gotten sued for this and may continue to get such unwanted attention.

Amazon Kindle

This case is curious in that Amazon clearly owns the term “Kindle” but that it would go to the trouble to try and stop Kindle news and fan sites. You would think that a web company would embrace these sites and any other user generated content to do with their product for the value of free advertising and support. If anything this act would seem to scare the web citizens who generally are wary of companies trying to supress information on the internet.

Pwnage

Make what you will of this one but Futuremark had made attempts to trademark the term “pwnage”. A full definition for pwnage can be gotten here. Futuremark’s argument was that:

Fellow gamers,

Our purpose in filing for trademark on the name “Pwnage” is not to charge money or stop people from using the expression. That’s not what a trademark is for. Instead, we want to protect ourselves from squatters (or what I call campers) – people looking to trademark the name on false pretenses, just to make a claim against Futuremark Games Studio for its use.

Jukka Mäkinen, Executive Producer, Futuremark Games Studio

This alone would be interesting to see how that would be enforced. How many staffers on XBox Live would be needed for full enforcement on that trademark alone?

(Photo credit: unknown)

It’s a statement of our times. I almost hesitate to mention I’m qualified to write this piece because I’ve gone through a layoff. The experience is ubiquitous, hardly unique. I’ll mention it only because the following isn’t a compilation of what others have written on the topic. There won’t be many links to well meaning lists of tips about LinkedIn usage; it is just my perspective having gone through it personally and vicariously through countless friends.

Thought 1

I like to start with the basics: what is a layoff? This is especially important if it’s your first one. Think of it this way:

A layoff is when your current employer is no longer a qualified buyer for your skills.

I prefer this simple definition because it reinforces the impersonal nature of the event as well as the market system driving our careers. Many times a subtle game of “but I was very good at my role,” will come into the conversation about layoffs. Don’t go down this road. Don’t even begin to look at a layoff as a measure of your worth. If you want insight into your performance, look at your performance reviews.

Now you’re thinking about the event as a market event. You are also focusing on your previous employer’s financial situation instead of your own self worth. Your emotional approach to this event is very important in the job market; nobody likes to buy even their favorite products if the packaging is badly beaten up and damaged. Your perspective is your packaging.

Thought 2

Hire yourself.

I’m a huge advocate of “working is its own reward”. I hate government statistics about unemployment. Maybe this term made sense in the early 20th century when factories and farms were the primary employers, but it certainly doesn’t in 2009. While you may have faced an immediate drop in your pay, you are now working for yourself, not unemployed.

When you were company employed, more of your task direction was dictated by your organization’s needs and inputs. Now that you are working for yourself, hour is just as precious as when you were on the clock, probably more so.

Realizing you are now the manager of your own day is my most important step in facing a layoff. Managers have goals, objectives, and tasks to monitor and metric. What are your management metrics for yourself?

Don’t try to boil the ocean. What are the three big areas where you can accomplish something related to your employable skills? Are you a writer? Keep writing. A coder? Keep coding. An executive? Write a business plan and study your market.

It’s important to have your own vision and understanding of what you are uniquely good at. If you don’t know, figure it out. Where have you had success in the past and why?

Don’t fall into the trap of accomplishing generic, perhaps household, tasks to feel better. It’s great if you finally have an opportunity to clean your pool, but will it contribute to rejuvenating your career?

Thought 3

Use your self-driven accomplishments to network meaningfully. Who can you collaborate with on your projects? How can you market and promote them? Big companies no longer have a strangle hold on our attention. The TV advertising era is over and this is the era of social media, Meetup, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and more.

The best way to get hired is to be a product someone wants to buy. How much easier is it for a friend to help promote something you have accomplished or created to a hiring manager vs. simply mentioning you are available?

Contract work is a great way to network and impress new contacts with your abilities. This is thinking like a marketer. Maybe the pay isn’t the same as your prior role, but what is the value of the new connections? Perhaps it’s better to take a lower offer with a company with a long-term future.

Meaningful networking is putting your highest value skills on display in front of qualified buyers and their recommending peers. Build your life around this metric – it’s your new job.

Use social media to build and support these networks. Not only will it help you in the present, but it will be a good investment the next time you may be looking for a new job.

Summary

Defiance for me is self-autonomy in work, growth, and accomplishment. It’s knowing your employer was only a buyer of your skills, not a parent evaluating your worth. It’s having the ability to relentlessly pursue qualified buyers with a “WOW must have” product demonstration.

If you are looking for a blog that will help to boost your spirits and give some good advice, you should look into Rajesh Setty’s blog “Life Beyond Code“.  It’s a high-tech way of looking at the world without focusing so much on the work.

Photo credits: pirano, Andrew Feinberg

Chris Stanton, a PhD candidate at Stanford Business School, is using oDesk data in his research. Below, he shares some basic economic insights about the oDesk market.

Introduction

In this post, I will concentrate on the role of feedback on provider wages. I hope these results, coupled with previous posts on the returns to tenure and training, help providers form expectations about long-run earnings trajectories. Overall, the results suggest that providers who receive good feedback and gain experience on oDesk can receive significantly higher wages over time.  I find that a change in feedback score from 2.5, the mean score in the data, to the maximum score of 5, results in wages that are about 5.4% higher.

Method

While oDesk users surely expect a positive relationship between feedback and provider quality, quantifying the economic effect of feedback on wages is statistically tricky. The difficulty arises because the best providers are likely to get the best feedback, but these same top-notch providers are also likely to have unobserved attributes like superior interviewing skills that simultaneously result in high wages. I use a statistical procedure to account for unobserved provider skills.

The data covers matched assignments on oDesk from the platform launch until May 2008. This includes observations on 7,123 providers matched to 28,321 assignments.  The description of my statistical strategy may be esoteric, so the casual reader may wish to skip to the results section. The basic idea is that I use fixed effects multivariate regressions to control for any time-invariant provider characteristics which may be correlated with a provider’s feedback. Because I am able to identify how changes within a single provider’s feedback influence his or her wages over time, this strategy addresses unobserved provider characteristics which otherwise hamper the measurement of the effect of feedback on wages. In my preferred specification, I regress the logarithm of hourly wages on a polynomial of the provider’s weighted feedback score, time using the platform, and overall platform time trend.  I also include controls for the number of tests a provider has taken.

Results

In this first graph, the overall effect of feedback on wage percentage changes is given in blue. Separate results for Indian and Russian providers are also provided.  Not surprisingly, the results show that relative to having zero feedback, providers with low scores do slightly worse. On the positive side, providers can expect 2.5%-5% more earnings from the best feedback scores.

The second graph breaks out the effect by job type. The graph is a bit difficult to interpret because the effect of feedback on wages for writing jobs appears huge. But be warned – the effect for writers looks large in the sample, but is not statistically significant. Web and software developers can expect to earn about 5.6% more with a feedback score of 5 versus 2.5, while providers of administrative support earn even larger percentage increases with good feedback.

We recently completed a study the analyzed the impact of worker tenure, training, and country of origin on hourly wages. Our initial hypotheses were that there are positive returns to tenure (length of employment) and training (number of tests taken, scoring of tests taken), and that the worker’s country of origin affects wages.

TENURE:
Based on the results of several regressions to test our hypotheses, we concluded that there are positive returns to tenure for certain job types, particularly those that require technical expertise.

Overall, it appears that managers have been willing to pay a premium for tenure but they do so selectively. For example, a manager may be willing to pay higher for a developer with a longer tenure on oDesk, but may not be willing pay more for a data entry worker for a longer tenure.

TRAINING:
Though oDesk does not provide formal training to workers, we defined “training” based on oDesk’s skill-specific tests.

We concluded that wages increase with the number of exams taken, higher exam scores yield higher wage returns, and some exams affect wages more than others.

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

Our analysis on country of origin led us to conclude that workers living outside North America earn wages higher than the mean in their home markets. The analysis also showed that North American workers earn higher wages than workers in other countries at a statistically significant level.

At a high level, it is clear that workers from the United States and Canada are earning wages that are higher than their counterparts from Eastern Europe and Asia. Upon closer inspection, however, the story is more subtle and complex than it first appears.

Much of the apparent country effect can be explained by observable differences in the labor forces. There may be something structural about the environment in each of these countries that prompts the differences in the makeup of the labor force, but it cannot be ignored that workers with similar characteristics around the world selling their services through oDesk are earning wages that are more similar than a simple analysis would imply. When the data is reweighted to take into account similarities in tenure and training, the mean wages in each country adjust to a more common level.

WHAT DOES THE DATA IMPLY?

Coming back to our initial hypotheses, the data reinforces that there are positive returns to tenure (length of employment) and training (number of tests taken, scoring of tests taken). Additionally, while a worker’s country of origin affects their potential wages, similiarly-skilled providers on oDesk command wages that are statistically more alike than not.

Our results were based on a study of providers over a three-year period. Are you seeing these results played out in the marketplace? Has your experience been different?

Special thanks to Ashley Carroll, Ruth Bryson, Jeremiah Dillon and Brandon Paulson – MBA 2010 candidates at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business – for their research efforts and contributing this guest blog post!

Today we’re going to look at open source databases. Ten years ago, corporate systems like Oracle and MS Access & SQL Server dominated the landscape. Since then, MySQL and (to a lesser extent) PostgreSQL have made serious inroads into the market. The PostgreSQL vs MySQL debate is a heated one, with passionate (sometimes fanatical) communities on either side.  These two camps position themselves differently – PostgreSQL, as the world’s “most advanced,” and MySQL as the world’s most “popular.”  When exploring this topic, it will come down to a few determining factors and – in some cases – it will come down to the preference of the developer. For our purposes, we will look at the currently recorded tangible factors and let personal opinion take over after that.

The center of the debate between these two open source databases revolves around three key issues: speed, data integrity, and popularity. We’ll quickly go over the basics before leaving the conversation open for your comments.

Speed

Many attest that MySQL is a much faster database than PostgreSQL, and hundreds of benchmarking websites and blogs further this notion. But as loads increase, PostgreSQL seems to win the race.  PostgreSQL has made vast improvements in recent releases, but the jury is still out….is MySQL still faster than PostgreSQL?

Data Integrity

Comparing the two on data integrity, we get PostgreSQL getting the overall nod.  Why, you ask?  PostgreSQL has always maintained a strict adherence to the academic principles of “data integrity,” placing it above all else in importance.  MySQL on the other hand, started off  with a more open attitude on the matter, instead focusing on easy acceptance, increased flexiblity, and a high level of forgiveness for the average user.

Popularity

MySQL is still the world’s most popular open source database, with over 50,000 downloads per day. Its accessible attitude fostered high popularity and rapid growth of the MySQL community, something its poor, nerdy brother was never able to compete with.

As the marketplace for online workteams, we can look at our own data (which happens to be stored in a PostgreSQL database) to get a sense for the two communities’ sizes. As of this week there were 18,317 freelance MySQL developers and 594 open jobs on oDesk, versus only 1,239 PostgreSQL developers and 18 open jobs.  Quite a big difference!

Growth, on the other hand, appeared somewhat flat in the past 12 months for both contenders as the charts below show:

Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think!  Please post your comments below…

With the current recession in a constant state of flux, today we are going to look at the various skills that have remained robust through these challenging economic times – and those that look to have an strong future. These statistics are based upon oDesk’s own trends pages. When viewing these trends, keep in mind, we are experiencing some overall growth ourselves – so the up-trending graphs will show more growth than average for the skill and the down-trending (or flat) graphs will exhibit more decline than we show.

Computerweekly has some telling statistics that would seem to back us up with respect to PHP and Dotnet (we did notice a drop in Dotnet developer demand in the early year but it has since picked up).

Anyway, on to the numbers!

iPhone Development

As you can see, iPhone development maintained strong growth through the whole of last year, with only a slight decline in the most recent months.

Twitter Application Development

Meteoric would be the only way to describe the growth of demand for those with skills to develop for this latest social networking craze, much like the growth of the service itself.

Writing

While not a development or design skill, writing has continued a steady strong growth through the last year.

.NET

.NET continues its growth and shows continuous steady increasing demand, after pulling out of its end of 2008 slump.

PHP

While not much growth, the quantity of demand shows PHP will be around for a long while – and the developers who provide it will remain employed for the foreseeable future.

Javascript

Showing decent range and stable upward trend, Javascript skills are reliably in-demand.

Photoshop

Photoshop skills also continue to grow nicely and maintain a nice range.

Wordpress

Ability to develop for Wordpress is a very nice expanding market and any PHP freelancer would do well to have it on his resume.

Facebook

Another specialist platform that a freelance developer would do well to have on his or her resume. Not a great range, but a healthy trend.

Interested in trends on oDesk? Visit www.odesk.com/trends to learn more!

Now, to be sure, this analysis is very simplistic and must be taken with a healthy grain of salt.  There are many factors to be taken into consideration when hiring contractors to your workteams, and the country where they reside is only one factor.

However, the analysis uncovered some interesting findings for our top 10 countries:

1. Outsourcing to Philippines and Bolivia may give buyers the “best value,” as those countries have high feedback scores and lower hourly rates.
2. You “get what you pay for” by Outsourcing to Russia, Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Moldova.  Providers from these countries are more expensive, but also have higher average feedback scores .
3. You also get what you pay for by Outsourcing to India and Pakistan, as these countries are cheaper but have lower feedback scores.
4. Finally, it seems that Outsourcing to Canada may be a slightly overpriced, as the provider rates there are higher than their feedback scores.

Again, this analysis is overly simplistic and done mostly just for fun.  But it does open up an interesting topic for discussion.  What does your experience tell you?  What countries do you like outsourcing to?  Let us know!

Recently oDesk’s own Henry Walker delved deeply into our wealth of rate trend data and discovered good news for American freelance software developers. America’s automobile industry may be flailing, but “Made in the USA” is not a dying dream in the software world.

It seems that while the UK and Bolivia have seen a dramatic decrease in the hourly fees software developers are able to charge, in the United States–despite the recession–software developers are now charging an average of 35% more than they did in 2008.

This phenomenon flies in the face of Softera Director Mikko Kontio’s predictions on IBM.com last September, when he stated that the future of software development was essentially going to involve a buyer’s demand for faster turnaround and lower cost.

Even earlier last year, in July of 2008, software developer Roy Lawson suggested on his PolkVoice blog that smaller, more skilled software development teams were a better bet in bad economic times. Thus, it could be that companies are simply willing to pay more for skills, as long as they are getting the work done by fewer individuals. In the long run, perhaps this is a savings for the buyer, despite the marked pay raise for the freelancer.

The exact reasons for the incredible rate increase in the face of America’s much-beleaguered economy may remain a mystery. However, it’s good news for those with software skills. As for the less tech-savvy freelancers among us, it’s a sign of hope. Doom and gloom predictions of meager future paychecks don’t always turn out to be true.

Last week we had somewhat of a coup with our “25 Writers You Should Follow on Twitter” Post. We got it out and it enjoyed over a week of twitter traffic based upon hundreds of retweets, some from the royalty of Twitter.

Analysis of the article and the manner in which it spread reveals the following:

1. It was a list post: Minimal search on the web finds plenty of evidence to back up the fact that lists posts are not only popular but highly “bookmarkable”. Problogger’s own Darren Rowse recently made the case for the list post and it held up here. One other point to note from experience is that naming a list with a number “Top 25 …” as opposed to “Top ….” Also seem to be more attractive.
2. It was about Twitter: Tweeps love Twitter and love to talk about Twitter. This is in itself an indicator of the health of this social network – the users promote and defend it. This is not to say that you can’t go viral on Twitter without talking about Twitter, but it helps. A look at Twitturls.com gives you a look at how much the topic of Twitter is a popular topic on Twitter.

The subject of Twitter is a topic common to all Tweeps so, as a topic, has a great chance of success on the platform.

3. It was a good article: Yes, self praise is no praise but Danalyn, who sculpted the piece, spent a lot of time actually finding good writers and really looking for quality. She spent the time and effort to find not only quality writers but make the case as the why these writers were on the list. Some of the comments on the article and on retweets showed that people were appreciative of the article for its quality. Content is indeed king.
4. We made friends: The article complimented a lot of good, popular people (and deservedly so). So we received either tweets from them or the followers who know, appreciate and respect them. Many, many tweets were congratulations from the followers of our top 25 thereby spreading the story further.
5. Some power tweeps found it: All of the above contributed to this happening but to not acknowledge the value of the tweets from @zaibatsu, @guykawasaki and other well connected and respected tweeps would be a sin. It would appear @zaibatsu found us via retweets and @guykawasaki found it by the alltop.com site.

That would seem to be it. Social media for the most part is based on getting what you give and it played out here. Danalyn wrote an article that was well researched, on a topic of interest to Twitter, in a popular format and the article made us lots of friends.

Thankfully, swine flu does not appear to be a repeat of the waves of influenza pandemics that swept across the world in the early parts of the 20th century. Still, as with other natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunami, and volcanic eruptions, there will eventually be another one. The businesses that thrive through the disaster will be those that are hardened against it. The easiest way to harden your business is to spread it out geographically.

With most natural disasters, simply not being there is enough. An earthquake in San Francisco, for instance, has little effect on an office in Chicago. Pandemics are different beasts entirely. They spread rapidly across continents and while they don’t hit everywhere at once, they do hit everywhere eventually. The infamous 1918 influenza pandemic killed between 20 and 40 million people world wide, making it even deadlier than the entirety of the first World War.

Dispersing your operations gives your organization a flexibility to roll with these sorts of punches. It also gives you a wider talent pool to draw from and makes you less susceptible to regional economic fluctuations. Even if you’re not facing down a plague more virulent than the Black Death, a dispersed organization is healthier, more flexible, and more robust.

The key to making this sort of thing work is communication. oDesk provides the tools to organize a scattered team and insure that everyone is working towards the same goal without wasting resources by duplicating the same effort in multiple places or working at cross purposes.

This opens up a wide array of options for companies. It means no longer being tied to the skills and labor pool of a single geographic location. It means having input from different regions and cultures. It means being able to organize and unify a far broader array of talents and aptitudes on the challenges facing your company.

And it means the next time the earth shakes or a visiting client sneezes, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world.

If this is the first reference to Twitter you’ve come across, surely you must have been living under a rock. Twitter is the new online phenom, the new killer app of Web 2.0.  Breathless gushing aside, Twitter is the real thing, a surprisingly useful and fun tool that has already proven to be extremely popular. And the Twitter wave hasn’t even crested yet. Tech journalist Michael S. Malone has said of Twitter:

The real social breakout – 100 million U.S. and 500 million world-wide users and all of the social transformations that will come in their train – has not yet occurred. Remember the frenzy surrounding eBay when just about everybody you know started buying and selling on it? It’s going to be like that for Twitter six months to a year from now.

Twitter’s not just for fun, but is also now making a splash in the world of big business. Dell recently announced that they’ve moved more than one million dollars worth of merchandise through their Twitter groups. And again, if Malone is correct, this has only really just begun, with bigger things still in store.

So it’s no surprise to find that Twitter is creating jobs. Like the rise of Twitter itself, the trend points towards meteoric rise.

There are 105 new twitter jobs posted on oDesk per month, and 282 twitter professionals.

Many of these jobs are traditional SEO services, simply adding Twitter to the battery of tools which can drive traffic and increase Google page rank. Others are programming jobs, creating automated services that create a tweet reporting activity elsewhere from the web. Twitter’s also becoming a part of other, more traditional services as well. Saying something useful in just 140 characters is a skill, and we’re beginning to see it mentioned in job postings for copywriters. Keeping up with a Twitter feed is also being listed among the duties of virtual assistants.

If you’re already a skilled hand at Twitter, these sorts of Twitter jobs are already available for you. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to add your Twitter skills to your profile so those looking for “tweeters” can find you. Today, mentioning Twitter in your skill set makes sense. Before long, like email before it, aptitude may simply be assumed.

With the economy as it is, one would assume that hourly rates would be declining across the board.  We’ve certainly seen a faster increase in the number of providers than buyers, leading to increased competition for jobs. Let’s look at some real numbers to see what’s happening to hourly rates.

This data for providers goes back over two years.  The top line on the graph, the average hourly rate for developers, is actually up from $13.17 to $15.59 over that time, an increase of 18%.  Network Administration is flat over this period.  Data entry work and technical writing, however, have seen steep declines of -39% and -53% each.

Thus, providers in skilled technical categories are seeing rising or flat rates, whereas technical writers seem to be taking a bath.  However, this next graph helps to complete the story for writers.

The number of writing jobs posted in the last year has seen an incredible explosion of over 500%.  There are 380 open writing jobs and 20,372 freelance writers on oDesk today.

How can demand for writers increase so dramatically while rates decrease? The number of lower hourly-rate writing jobs jobs has increased over time.

This chart shows the number of jobs at each hourly rate over the past calendar year. You can see that while the bulk of the jobs are clustered at the left end of the rate axis, there are still jobs on the far side, including jobs that pay as much as $110.00 per hour. The high paying jobs are still there.  Thus, even in the sector that showed the largest decrease in average hourly rates over the past two years, top performers are still commanding exceptional rates.  However, these jobs are fewer and far between.

We like Earth Day around here. We usually talk about how oDesk benefits small & medium sized businesses and remote contractors on this blog, but we feel like we’re offering something for the planet, too.  Remote workers do a lot of things, from software development to customer support, but one thing they don’t do is commute.

The average solo car commuter produces more than a thousand pounds of CO2 per month.  A lot of hot air, yes, and then add in all those disposable coffee cups, heating and cooling the cubicle farms, the reams of paper, the gallons of printer toner, the cleaning agents … on and on. The environmental impact of the average office of 100 workers adds up to more than 650 tons of CO2 annually, and a lot of landfill space.

Working from home doesn’t eliminate all that — you still need heat, and maybe the occasional printout. But you drink from a real mug. In general, working from home is much more efficient. You’re getting dual use out of your living space, and not sucking added resources for a sprawling office park surrounded by endless fields of obsessively striped asphalt.

If being green is important to your company, then start by buying recycled-content paper towels. But take it a step further: Encourage telecommuting. Since last Earth Day, oDesk has helped 10,693 software developers from around the world work from home. In that group, Americans alone accounted for nearly 2,000 individuals, saving an estimated 600,000 gallons of gasoline. That day you were running late and couldn’t believe how light the traffic was?  That was us.

Want to see what sort of impact your office can have on the environment? Use the Green Office’s calculator to tally up your environmental impact based on common office habits and consumption. Rideshare’s Commute Calculator tells you how much your driving habits are costing the environment (and your wallet).

Saving the planet also saves the bottom line. Telecommuting cuts gas prices, reduces office rent, utility and supply bills, and even makes workers happier and healthier, containing the cost of sick days. We hope you’ll think about how telecommuting can work for you.  Go ahead and bookmark this post — just don’t print it out!

Happy Earth Day!

Asked when Americans could expect jobs outsourced to other countries to return, President Obama replied, “Not all of these jobs are going to come back … And it probably wouldn’t be good for our economy for a bunch of these jobs to come back because, frankly, there’s no way that people could be getting paid a living wage on some of these jobs — at least in order to be competitive in an international setting.”

If you view the world economy as a zero-sum game, this is grim news — if each nation’s economy is a bucket of water, and you only fill one by emptying another, we seem to be running dry pretty fast. Fortunately, it doesn’t really work that way. Sometimes jobs slosh out of one bucket into another, but other times, to totally belabor a metaphor, some entrepreneurial genius adds fresh water to several buckets at once.  We may not yet be at the next wave of entrepreneurship (but remember, both Apple and Microsoft were launched in the wake of the ’70s oil crisis), but even as waves of layoffs make national headlines, jobs are sloshing back into our bucket as companies around the world are outsourcing to United States professionals.

America’s national myth is cowboys, pioneers, revolutionaries — not couchbound whiners.  Displaced U.S. workers are not idly waiting for their old jobs to magically return.  An oDesk survey found that of its 70,000+ U.S.-based contractors, 32 percent had taken up freelancing after recently losing a job.

These Americans are adapting to today’s market needs.  For example, just 20 years ago, graphic artists and designers competed for a tiny pool of newspaper and magazine jobs. Today, those same newspapers are tottering or failing.  But the web is increasingly offering opportunities for freelance designers, opportunities that can come from anywhere in the world.  Similarly, opportunities for freelance writers are on the rise, as businesses need compelling content for their websites, blogs, sales material, help content and even Twitter accounts.

We agree with President Obama that new skills will serve Americans well as the world continues to evolve.  So will new thinking about opportunities, work environments, and the way we apply ourselves.  Flexible thinking, entrepreneurialism and a diehard work ethic have made America what it is today, and while specific jobs come and go, these qualities endure.

When Americans think of outsourcing, they typically think of U.S. work going overseas to lower-cost countries like India and Russia.  However, we’re seeing an interesting trend in small and medium sized businesses around the world increasingly turning to U.S.-based talent.  The last time we reported on this, we focused on homeshoring, or U.S.-based companies hiring U.S.-based freelancers.  Today we’re going to look at the growth in overseas companies doing the same.

Last year, we saw over 300% growth in the number of assignments overseas companies outsourced to United States professionals on oDesk.

Overseas companies have employed more than 700 U.S. workers since January 2008.  These jobs are coming from places as diverse as Jamaica, Egypt, Norway, and Singapore.  However, the top countries outsourcing jobs to U.S. workers were:

Top 10 countries outsourcing work to the U.S. on oDesk

The top categories of U.S. professionals being hired on oDesk are freelance web developers, virtual assistants, and freelance writers.

Why are businesses choosing to outsource their jobs to U.S.-based professionals, who are more expensive than their international counterparts?  One possible explanation is that there are more U.S. providers on oDesk today, providing buyers a wider variety of U.S.-based skills and experience, than ever before. In December alone, over 20,000 new U.S. providers signed up on oDesk, the largest monthly percentage increase (over 40%) that we have seen since 2005.  Another possible reason is that U.S. providers’ average feedback score is consistently higher than the oDesk average.

This is certainly an interesting trend that we intend to keep tabs on.

We’ve been talking about the web a lot lately, like when we reported on Wordpress, the number one blogging platform, or web programming languages like Ruby and Python.  The web looms large in the lives of freelancers, not just as a platform for finding work but also as a medium for that work.  As the web’s importance in the global economy grows, so do opportunities for people with the right skills, especially web developers.

At oDesk, we define “web development” to include web design and programming, web applications, ecommerce, streaming media, user interface design, marketing (SEO/SEM), project management, and QA.  Web development is the largest category of work done on oDesk.

Web development has breached 35,000 hours of work per week, which is enough work for 875 full-time web developers.  And the trend looks good.  The next busiest segment of oDesk, virtual assistants, doesn’t quite reach half that numbers of hours, falling just short of 17,000.

The trend in pay is also appealing.

Hourly rates for web development hovered around the oDesk average until December of 2007.  After that, they broke free, climbing further away from the average nearly every month.

The trend seems solid.  Business today happens on the web.  Gone are the days when a corporate website was a fun novelty, a way to reach the hip or trendy.  Today’s college graduates cannot remember a time in their lives before the internet.  With the web growing more and more ubiquitous, from being a regular feature in our favorite TV shows to having internet access on our cellphones, businesses today are finding they need to be online and in a big way.  Every aspect of business is now online, from sales (ecommerce) and marketing (social media and SEO), to intracompany communications (email and VOIP), to management and even production.  And as companies become more deeply invested in the web, the more they will seek to make the most of every penny.  Web skills offer the savvy freelancer numerous opportunities today, and show every indication of only offering more in the future.

It might be hard to believe, but right now is a very good time for freelance writers. In 2000, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated there were 41,410 employed writers in the USA.  That number rose to 135,246 in 2006, an increase of more than 300%.  Where is all this demand for writers coming from?

It appears to be spurred by the internet.  At the time of this post, jobs listed on oDesk for blog and article writing are nearly double the number listed for the next largest category of writing jobs.  While many bemoan the death of dead-tree newspapers, in truth the internet has been a great boon for writers.  Every serious business now needs a webpage, and with the growth of social media, many are beginning to embrace blogging as well.  This means not just a one-time posting of the company’s mission statement, but frequent updates, press releases, and blog posts written in an engaging, inviting style.  The webpage that isn’t updated frequently isn’t visited.  As businesses learn to leverage social media for their marketing, the demand for writers will only grow.  This may explain why over the past year, the number of jobs posted on oDesk for writers has increased over 500%.

There are currently 390 open writing jobs and 762 new jobs posted each month.  There are 19,723 freelance writers on oDesk today.

The growth in jobs, however, is only part of the story.  A good blog post catches peoples’ attention and gets passed on.   Social media networks like Twitter and Digg can carry a story far beyond the original audience.  Google searches can also keep an old story alive long after it was written. To achieve those sorts of results, however, a story has to be interesting and include factual information and hard data.  This means research, so it’s not a bit surprising to see that the growth in hours worked has kept pace with the growth in jobs.  A year ago, we saw 1,081 hours per week on oDesk.  Today, that number is 5,590 hours.

What does the future hold?   The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted a 10% growth in writing jobs between 2006 and 2016.  Judging by what’s happening at oDesk, this is an extremely conservative estimate.  As companies seek new ways to make use of the social networks becoming a larger part of our daily lives, the demand for good writers will grow.  In spite of YouTube, the internet is still primarily a textual medium.  So long as that is the case, the outlook for writers who can capture the attention of their audience and aren’t afraid of a little research should be good.

In the good old days, landing a job with a big, stable company and riding that horse to retirement was the way to go.  Employees’ lifelong loyalty was rewarded with generous pensions.  But that, as they say, was then and this is now.  Employee perks of the previous century, including holiday parties, company cars, and 401(k) matching are vanishing.  In fact, companies that were assumed to be unshakable and supposed to endure for generations are being absorbed and brought to their knees.  Both sides – companies and employees – have begun to question the assumptions of previous generations.

One of the great things about capitalism is that it allows companies and individuals to experiment with new ways.  Take UPS and FedEx for example.  While both of their services may appear similar to the casual observer, their business models are as different as day and night.  UPS delivery personnel – the folks in the brown uniforms driving the brown trucks – are full-time employees.  The trucks they drive are provided, gassed, and serviced for them by UPS.  The drivers are unionized and their performance is carefully scrutinized by the company.  The company pays attention to every little detail of their activities to shave off even the smallest inefficiencies.

FedEx drivers, on the other hand, are independent contractors.  They get no benefits, no overtime, no sick leave, and no insurance.  They pay for and maintain their own vehicles.  However, they are given independence in how they operate.  A successful independent contractor can even hire their own drivers and manage multiple routes, allowing them to grow their delivery business.  And FedEx provides very little oversight; so long as the customers are happy, FedEx is happy.

FedEx is neither a young company nor a small one, but it has embraced a new model of doing business.  By utilizing independent contractors for their delivery fleet, they’ve both decreased their own costs and created opportunities for others to run their own businesses.  The independent contractors are now incented to make smart business decisions because of their impact to their own bottom lines – for them, “raises” come from their own ingenuity, efficiency, and hustle – not their bosses.

It’s not yet clear to what extent America is ready to shift to independent contractors over full-time employees.  What is clear is that American businesses are more willing then ever to experiment with ways to increase their own efficiencies and decrease their expenses.  At oDesk, we’re certainly seeing an increase in outsourcing and homeshoring, as more small businesses discover the value of contractors.  Only time can tell how far this trend will take us.

“The business of America,” famously observed U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, “is business.”  Economic recession or not, work must continue to get done.  Last month, we reported on the acceleration of homeshoring (US-based companies turning to U.S.-based freelancers to get work done) and the growing freelance economy.  Today, we’re releasing some new survey results that fall right in line with the previous data.

We surveyed 600 small businesses to determine how the recession is affecting their outsourcing plans.  Our survey results showed that 41.9% said they planned to outsource more in the near future, either because they’ve cut full-time staff (7.0%) or because they’re simply unable to hire full-time staff (34.9%).  They are also outsourcing more functions than ever before – 28.5% said they are now outsourcing something that they previously thought they couldn’t.   In light of such numbers, it’s hardly any surprise that 14.6% of them report that they have replaced employees with contractors in the last year, and 14.5% have hired a contractor who would have been otherwise unemployed or a victim of the economic downturn.

It should come as no shock, then, that many who have lost work recently are turning to freelancing.  32.1% of the 350 freelancers we surveyed reported that they’d lost their job within the last year.  A majority (59.0%) said that if they weren’t providing freelance services, they wouldn’t be able to meet their financial obligations and nearly a third (32.4%) said freelance earnings are their primary source of income.  A vast majority said that there are enough jobs on oDesk to meet their needs (73.9%) and feel they are earning fair rates (77.9%).  They cited “flexibility to live and work anywhere” as the number one reason for using our platform, followed by guaranteed payment for hourly work and the ability to set their own hourly rate.

American workers seem to be doing well in the global marketplace.  53.9% of the surveyed small businesses reported employing at least some U.S.-based contractors, while 84.3% of U.S. contractors are working for a U.S.-based buyer.

Outsourcing on oDesk nearly tripled during 2008, and the trend looks likely to continue.

It may be too early to describe what’s happening as a seismic shift in how Americans find and relate to work.  However, the numbers do clearly show a greater acceptance of contract work in the general culture.  Clearly, U.S. businesses are taking full advantage of the pool of freelance talent that’s out there, at the same time that more and more people are discovering the possibilities that contract work provides.

Web 2.0 is still quite the wild frontier, and it’s not always clear which horse you should back in any race.  Take programming languages; Ruby has been dominating Python for some time now.  Things, however, may be changing.  Google recently chose to support Python first for the Google App Engine, and our trends seem to show this fight isn’t over yet.

Ruby is a dynamic, reflective general purpose object-oriented language designed in Japan.  It supports multiple programming paradigms, and combines syntax inspired by Perl with Small-talk like features.  Founder Yukihiro Matsumoto “wanted a language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python,” so he developed Ruby.

Python is another multi-paradigm language conceived in the Netherlands.  Simplicity and flexibility are central to the design of Python.  Python was designed to encourage the creation of extensions, rather than having everything built into the language core, allowing programmers to customize it.

Until recently, Ruby has been greatly outpacing Python.  Our oDesk job data shows that a year ago, Ruby jobs outnumbered Python jobs four-to-one.  Today, that lead has dropped to approximately two-to-one.

There are 1,838 Ruby programmers and 1,175 Python programmers on oDesk.

One possible reason for Python’s recent surge is Google’s choice of Python for implementing its Google App Engine applications.  Google’s App Engine allows you to run web applications on Google’s infrastructure, giving you stability and reliability, and also allowing you to utilize things like Google accounts.

The momentum appears to be with Python for now, and is likely to stay that way so long as Google favors the language. And since Python’s author, Guido van Rossum, works at Google, that’s not likely to change soon.  This fight’s not over, as Python clearly has a lot of ground to make up on Ruby.  But things seem to be going Python’s way today.

Last week we looked at PHP in our ongoing coverage of hot skills in demand on oDesk.  This week, we’re highlighting Microsoft’s .NET software framework.

In spite of some strong growth by Apple’s Mac OS X operating system in the last few years, Microsoft Windows still rules the roost with nearly 90% market share.  This doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future.  The ability to write code for computers running Windows continues to be a valuable skill and the .NET software framework is a key component of many applications.

A major reason the .NET software framework is valuable is that it was designed with Windows in mind.  This means, among other things, that installing an application built on .NET is simplified, since issues such as potential conflicts with other software and security are largely handled for you.  .NET programs also run under the Common Language Runtime, which means you don’t need to jump through a lot of hoops to optimize your code for all sorts of different memory configurations.  Programmers also have access to a large library of .NET classes that manage common functions like manipulating files or handling graphics.  And, since .NET is the backbone of many popular programming languages, like C#, VB.NET, and Cobra, .NET coding skills can improve your ability to code in these languages.

Now, let’s take a look at .NET jobs on oDesk.

As you’d expect from a bedrock skill like .NET, demand has remained steady, despite the difficult economy.  Over 225 .NET jobs are posted each month on oDesk, for the over 4,300 .NET Developers on oDesk to apply for.  In good times and bad, we all rely on our computers to get our work done.  So long as Windows maintains its dominance in the businessplace, .NET should continue to enjoy such strong, unwavering demand.

This tutorial is a good place to start if you’re interested in mastering the .NET framework.  Microsoft, of course, maintains a Developer Center for .NET users as well.  The BCL Team, in charge of maintaining the Basic Class Library that .NET programmers utilize for handling the little common tasks that pepper most projects, also have a blog.

Today we continue our coverage of hot skills in demand at oDesk by shining a spotlight on WordPress.  WordPress is the most popular blogging platform on the net, especially for corporate blogs.  A combination of flexibility, ease of use, and reliability has led many, including us at oDesk, to choose WordPress to power their blogs.  Yep, the blog you’re reading right now is run on WordPress.

Wordpress is open-source and free.  One of Wordpress’s major strengths is the variety of widgets available for the platform. Widgets are small programs that add extra features to your blog.  Many of these are behind-the-scenes sorts of things to make life easier for the blogger, but others, like the animated tag cloud towards the bottom-right of this blog are fun toys for readers to play with.  And since WordPress was designed with a such a flexible plugin architecture, bloggers and developers will continue to improve upon what is already available as blogging continues to evolve.

Now, let’s take a look at Wordpress’s growth on oDesk.

In early 2008, there were just over a hundred Wordpress jobs posted per month on oDesk.  A year later, it’s grown to over 500, and the growth seems to be accelerating.  This growth seems recession proof, likely because as budgets get tighter, and companies are looking for ways to stretch every dollar, they are realizing that blogging is a cheap but effective way of furthering a company’s marketing goals.  But, to make the most of a blog, companies need someone who can infuse it with their style, branding, and look-and-feel.  That’s where Wordpress developers, like the 3,351 on oDesk, can provide value.

The best way to learn more about Wordpress is to start your own Wordpress blog.  The official WordPress site has almost everything you need to get started.  Be sure to check out their Plugin Directory to find all the latest editions and widgets available to make your blog unique.  You can then turn your new blog into a showcase of your (or your company’s) many talents.

We’re going to start blogging about the skill sets that are really hot in our marketplace. The demand for tech skills evolves rapidly, and a smart freelance professional is always looking for the next step in his or her growth. We think the best way to kick this series off is with PHP.

PHP, a scripting language that delivers customizable content on web pages, is all in sorts of popular sites — Yahoo, Digg, Facebook … If you’re on the web these days, that’s probably PHP in the background. It’s flexible, stable and free — and extremely popular with Web 2.0 developers.

The language was developed in 1994 and has relentlessly expanded ever since. These days, PHP 5, powered by Zend Engine II, is no longer the up-and-coming iteration – it’s now fully mainstream.

In early 2008, there were just over a thousand PHP jobs posted per month on oDesk. A year later, it’s 2,000 and climbing, a 75% percent year-over-year increase. There’s not a lot in today’s business world growing at that rate, is there? But the global economic meltdown doesn’t seem to be turning this growth curve around. We’ve been talking about PHP for a while now — back in December, we listed PHP as the web developer skill in most demand, and highlighted its meteoric rise: from 800 jobs posted in November 2007 to 1,800 last July. Clearly, PHP is a skill with legs.

If you’re a PHP developer there is every indication you skills will remain marketable for the next decade. As with any technical skill, maintaining and increasing your skill set should be part of day to day living. PHP training is available online and in formal classes if you are not one to learn as you go. The PHP development page is an obvious good first start and w3schools offers some excellent tutorials also.

Once you have the basics down, it might be time to visit Zend’s website for some more in-depth training, with an eye towards certification. Certification from Zend will carry weight in any interview and establishes a formally measured minimum level of competence. Now that PHP is fully mainstream and the level of competition has increased, certification can be expected to be a given as opposed to a bonus like many other mainstream technologies. Certification will give you an advantage over developers who are not in this competitive job market. Once certified, you can join our own Zend Group as a location employers will look to find fully certified PHP developers as an added resource for your job search arsenal.

In December, we demonstrated that iPhone application development was beating the pants off Android – jobs to develop the Apple apps were leading by 10 to one.  This week, we comb our trend data to look at Facebook app development vs. iPhone app development.  Facebook became open to third party development when it launched the Facebook platform on May 24, 2007.  Apple announced the iPhone SDK on March 6, 2008 at a Town Hall meeting.

Facebook and iPhone are, of course, very different platforms.  One is the leading social network, whereas the other is the world’s fastest growing device.  Not only are these different technologies, they also follow different business models.  Facebook apps are free and depend on traffic and advertising for revenue.  iPhone apps, on the other hand, are either free or charge installation or upgrade fees, usually $0.99 to $2.99.  Distribution of facebook apps is primarily viral (via invites, newsfeed, etc) whereas iPhone applications are downloaded via Apple’s app store.

However, both technologies, and application development for each, have captured mainstream imagination.  So let’s look at the numbers!  There are currently 1,246 Facebook Developers on oDesk.  Demand for Facebook app development rose fast at the beginning of 2008, plateaued, then started a dramatic upswing late in the year, peaking at 159 job posts last month.  Meanwhile, over on the iPhone aisle, we see a much steeper, more prolonged rise in demand starting last May.  217 iPhone jobs were posted last month.  There are 561 iPhone programmers on oDesk.

(Caveat: oDesk is a growing service, so upward trends can partly be attributed to our growth).

Looking at both the January 2009 totals and the angle of these rising curves, it’s clear that iPhone has caught, and is now beating Facebook for developer demand.  Considering Facebook’s head start, and its 175 million users, iPhone’s rising popularity is even more impressive.  Apple’s old-fashioned “make it, sell it, cash the check” business model seems to be humming along while the social networking app business model is a longer-term play.

That’s our latest technology-versus-technology cage match, but the hard-core stats fan can find tons more data on iPhone, Facebook and more than 40 other skills and platforms on our Trends pages.  Comments are open — let us know what you think of the iPhone/Facebook comparison, or tell us which trends you think we should be spotlighting.

Still sick of hearing dreadful news every day about the U.S. economy?  Earlier this month, we provided some rare good news when we reported on the acceleration of U.S. freelance job growth.  Today, we’re going dig deeper into our data to try to provide a fair & balanced assessment on the state of the Freelance Economy.  We are going to answer three questions:

1)    Is outsourcing growing or shrinking as companies are tightening their belts in the recession?
2)    Is competition for freelance jobs heating up?
3)    If so, are wages being depressed?

As a marketplace for online workteams, we keep close tabs on outsourcing trends, including growth, wage statistics, and country-by-country comparisons.  We share as much of this data as possible with our community of businesses & freelancers in our oConomy. This analysis is based off of oConomy data.

1. The growth of outsourcing
Jobs aren’t just being slashed these days — they’re being clearcut like an old-growth forest. Yet work still has to get done, which is why freelancing and outsourcing continue to grow at a furious rate. With unemployment rates at their highest in 15 years, more skilled professionals are looking for freelance work, and leaner companies are looking to outsource functions rather than hire more full-time staff. The bottom line: Last year, outsourcing on oDesk nearly tripled.

This broad-based trend, stretching across continents, had an interesting twist — a resurgence of homeshoring, in which U.S. buyers outsource to U.S. providers.  We reported on this trend earlier this month.  Notice that growth in the amount of work done in the U.S. was faster relative to other countries known for outsourcing, like India and Russia:

We concluded that higher satisfaction rates are helping U.S. workers gain ground against the often cheaper competition overseas.

2. Competition for jobs
Although more freelance work is happening than ever, there are also more people looking to do it, which gives more leverage to employers. Eighteen months ago, there were 2.5 service providers for each buyer. Today, there are nearly 4.

More jobs means more providers are finding work than ever before, but that spike in competition means it takes new workers longer to find their first jobs and get themselves established. In January 2007, 11% of providers found their first job within 90 days of signing up on oDesk. Today, that number is down to 3%.

Increased competition leaves the freelance provider with two recourses as she shapes her resume, especially in tech-oriented categories such as software development: Pursue the skills and jobs showing the greatest growth in 2008, or those with the least competition.

3. Wages
You’d expect greater competition to push down pay rates. Surprisingly, oDesk is seeing wages within countries escape that downward spiral. For example, our U.S. hourly rate stats show key areas holding steady or, for highly technical skills such as software development, actually rising.

So there are more people competing for jobs, but it seems that not everyone is truly competitive.  The provider with valuable skills and the ability to market himself online and deliver results over great distances can still demand healthy rates.

So what’s the state of the freelance economy from our perspective? The bad news is the same that you’re reading in every newspaper — full-time workers are losing their jobs, and companies are tightening their belts. The good news, though, is that there there is more freelance work than ever, and the smart, skilled freelancer is well-positioned to thrive.  And, of course, businesses have more qualified freelancers to choose from than ever.

Today we’re going to look at the growth of Content Management Systems, software packages that allow non-technical users to make changes to existing websites with little or no HTML training.  Joomla and Drupal are the two most popular CMSes on oDesk.  Earlier this month, we listed both of these platforms among our skills with the fastest growing demand of 2008, showing that they are more relevant than ever.  Wordpress topped that list, but we’re considering it a blogging platform for the time being.  Now, let’s take a look at trends in Joomla and Drupal.

There are currently 4,695 Joomla developers on oDesk, and 201 open jobs.  Joomla has shown steady growth over the last two years, from 300 jobs posted per month at the start of 2008 to over 500 today.  The average Joomla job size is 125 hours.

There are about half as many Drupal developers (2,212) and jobs (108) on oDesk, but the average job is almost twice the size, at 234 hours.  Drupal, too, has shown steady growth from 125 jobs posted per month last year to 250 today.

So, Drupal jobs have half the frequency and are twice the length, which may point to the platform being used more by larger enterprises, vs. smaller projects for smaller businesses for Joomla.  Although there are fewer Drupal jobs for providers to choose from, it seems to be much less competitive of a skill.  In fact, it made our list of the top 10 skills with the least competition and most opportunity, which we published in December.

In any case, it looks like both Joomla and Drupal have sizable communities and continue to grow.  Providers with PHP skills should certainly promote them on their resumes to improve their marketability.

Now, onto the question you have been waiting for – which CMS is ‘better’?  It doesn’t matter — both have a lot of buyers looking to spend money.  Both have their own strengths & weaknesses when it comes to factors such as ease-of use, compatibility to databases like MySQL and Postgres, and interoperability with various elements like Shopping Carts, Event Calendars, and Themes.  They have been, and continue to be, analyzed time and again by knowledgeable experts (see here, here, and here.)  But don’t let that stop you from telling us which CMS is better.  What’s a blog for, if not passionate techie arguments?

Are you sick of hearing dreadful news every day about the U.S. economy?  40,000 job cuts here, 15,000 layoffs there.  Unemployment potentially rising to 10% in this recession.  Fortunately, we have some good news for Americans today.

We see over 11,000 jobs posted every month, and historically many of those jobs have gone offshore to lower-cost countries.  But, oDesk is a free market, and over the past year we’ve seen a resurgence in homeshoring, or U.S. companies outsourcing to U.S.-based talent. Why is this the case?  While rates are higher for U.S. providers, feedback scores tend to be higher, too.

Work done in the U.S. grew at a rate of 367% from 2007 to 2008, 50% faster than oDesk’s overall rate of growth.

This growth was faster relative to other countries known for outsourcing, like India and Russia.

One driver for offshore outsourcing has been the lower cost of living in other countries like the Philippines and Ukraine.  Software developers and other skilled professionals in these countries require less income than their counterparts in the U.S.  As seen in the chart below, the U.S. average hourly rate is more than $6 higher than our average.

In fact, when we break U.S. rates into job categories, we see that they are actually rising in skilled categories like software development.

So then why are businesses choosing to outsource their jobs to U.S.-based providers?  One possible explanation is that there are more U.S. providers today, providing buyers a wider variety of U.S.-based skills and experience, than ever before. In December alone, over 20,000 new U.S. providers signed up on oDesk, the largest monthly percentage increase (over 40%) that we have seen since 2005.  Other possible reasons could be better ability to co-ordinate due to time-zone differences or fewer language and cultural barriers.  Regardless of the exact cause, the chart below shows that U.S. providers’ average feedback score has been consistently higher than the oDesk average:

It seems that customer satisfaction on work done by U.S. freelancers is playing a key role in this promising new trend for talented U.S. professionals.  It goes to show that outsourcing is not just about finding the lowest price, and that’s why U.S. professionals are able to command higher rates.  We will keep monitoring this trend and keep you updated on our findings.

На прошлой неделе мы немного поиграли с цифрами, вычисляя, какая из стран предлагает лучшее соотношение «цена-качество» на рынке фрилансерских услуг. На этой неделе мы решили поискать ответ на другой вопрос – кто самый трудолюбивый? Чтобы это выяснить, мы опять обратились к нашей статистике.

Один из самых простых способов определить степень трудолюбия, это посмотреть, сколько люди работают. Итак, сначала мы посмотрели на среднее количество часов, отработанных пользователями каждой из 7 стран, возглавляющих наш список, в 2008 г. – всего за год, и по дням.

*Общее количество часов, отработанных активными пользователями в каждой из стран, поделенное на количество отработанных человеко-часов.

Пользователи из России возглавляют список по количеству часов в год, и занимают второе место по количеству часов в день.

Причин, по которым некоторые пользователи работают больше, чем другие, несколько. Пользователи с высоким рейтингом, скорее всего, работают больше, потому что меньше времени тратят на поиск работы (Россия занимает середину списка из этих 7 стран со своим средним баллом в 4.30 из 5). Так же, пользователи, работающие над продолжительным проектом, работают больше, чем те, которые заняты краткосрочным заданием. Кроме того, пользователи с более низкой почасовой ставкой, как правило, работают большее количество часов (средняя ставка пользователей из России – $16.86, и она находится в более дорогой части спектра).

В дополнение к количеству отработанных часов, мы также рассмотрели усилия пользователей по прохождению квалификационных тестов. Эти тесты позволяют пользователям продемонстрировать потенциальным заказчикам свой опыт в разных областях. Мы исходим из того, что вероятно, что те, кто проходит больше тестов и получает по ним более высокие баллы, также более трудолюбив.

Пользователи из России занимают первое место как по количеству пройденных тестов, так и по полученным за них баллам.

Пользователи из России заняли первое место по трем из четырех рассмотренных нами показателям, и, таким образом, получается, что русские самие трудолюбивые. Так что, следующий раз, когда у вас будет особо трудное задание, рассмотрите в качестве возможного кандидата русского разработчика Ruby-on-Rails с высоким рейтингом – Дмитрия Сокуренко (нажмите на фото, чтобы увидеть его резюме). Конечно, к этому анализу нужно относиться с долей сомнения. Индивидуальные различия между пользователями намного перевешивают различия национальные, поэтому необходимо найти такого работника, который лучше всего пойдет для ваших нужд.

Если вам было интересно следить за нашим анализом (нам точно было интересно), и вы хотите еще, посмотрите раздел oConomy – богатый источник интересной статистики по аутсорсингу. Например, посмотрите на нашу странцу Аутсорсинг в России, где вы найдете более подробную статистику по России. Обобщенная информация представлена в недавно созданной Презентации по статистике по аутсорсингу в России в 2008 г.

(Russian translation of the previous post)

The week before last, we had some fun with numbers by calculating which countries offer the best “value for money” in providing freelance work.  This week, we thought we’d try to answer a different question – who works the hardest?  To figure that out, we again dug through our data on individuals’ work activity on oDesk.

One straightforward way to measure hard work is to look at how much people are working.  So, we began by looking at the average number of hours worked by service providers in each of our top 7 countries in 2008, total and per day.

*Total hours worked by active service providers in each country divided by man-days worked

Russian providers top the list in terms of hours per year, and came in 2nd for hours per day.

There are several reasons why some providers may work more than others.  Providers with higher customer satisfaction scores may work more hours because they spend less time looking for work (Russians’ average feedback score of 4.30 falls in the middle of the spectrum of these 7 countries).  Similarly, providers working on longer-term projects tend to work more hours than those working on shorter gigs.  Finally, providers with lower hourly rates tend to work more hours (Russia’s average hourly rate of $16.86 is towards the more expensive side of the spectrum).

In addition to the number of hours worked, we also considered individuals’ efforts in qualification tests.  These tests allow providers to demonstrate proficiency in various skills to the businesses that hire them.  Presumably, those taking more tests, and scoring higher, are working harder.

Russians providers rank first for both the number of tests taken and their scores on qualification tests.

The Russians came in ranked #1 for three out of the four metrics we considered, and thus it appears that perhaps Russians do work the hardest.    So, next time you’ve got a really tough assignment, consider hiring a Russian like top-rated Ruby-on-Rails developer Dmitry Sokurenko (click photo to see profile).  Of course, this analysis needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  Individual differences between providers far outweigh national differences, so you need to find the right provider for your needs.

If you had fun with this analysis (we did), and want to do more, visit the oConomy, which is a goldmine of interesting statistics on outsourcing. For example, take a look at our Outsourcing to Russia page for more complete stats on Russia.  Summary stats can also be found in our recently created 2008 Russia Outsourcing Statistics Report.

So here we are in 2009 and if you haven’t been living under a rock, you know that you are no longer stuck with the choice between just Windows and Mac.  A third operating system, Linux, has edged its way into the mainstream, propagated by a passionate group of Linux developers.

Today we are going to examine the growth of Linux from oDesk’s perspective (oDesk is a marketplace for online workteams), looking at supply and demand for Linux-related freelance work and the geographies it is taking place in.

Today, oDesk typically has 175-200 jobs posted per month with the “Linux” keyword in them.  A yearly snapshot of this metric shows serious growth.

*Job openings with “Linux” as a keyword

Linux jobs are clearly on the rise, but a more interesting piece of trivia is that there are currently 87 open jobs with the keyword “Linux,” compared to 134 jobs with “Windows” and 43 jobs with “Mac.” This indicates a 32% market share for Linux among new jobs, significantly higher than the 12.7% share of the server market and 1-2% share of the desktop market that Linux owns according to Wikipedia.  Of course, to suggest that Linux truly has a 32% market share on oDesk is aggressive; many job posters do not specify that they prefer Windows — it’s just assumed.  But perhaps this is a leading indicator of Linux’s continued growth on oDesk.

Looking at which countries are embracing Linux, we see the United States dominates in both posting Linux jobs and providing Linux professional services.  But, this may be (and probably) is a reflection of the location distributions of oDesk’s buyers and providers.

*Job openings, last 12 months, with “Linux” listed as a required skill

*Providers with “Linux” listed in their profile titles

Finally, let’s look at what Linux distributions, if any, are requested in job postings.  We find the following data, which shows that the work is, in fact, spread out between several distributions.

*All-time occurrences of jobs with linux distribution keywords on oDesk.

The upshot seems to be that buyers of professional services around the world investing hard cash in Linux-related jobs is a tribute to the platform’s success and credibility.  It seems Linux is here to stay with respectable growth compared to other job skill trends. What do you think? The comment thread is open …

We don’t want to start a battle of the sexes with that headline, but we spent an afternoon playing around with the age-old — and often controversial — idea that men and women are not the same.  In the world of remote work, though, many of the perceived differences between genders shouldn’t come into play, right?  When all you’re seeing is the final product of someone you’re never going to meet face-to-face, all our cultural programming, habits and stereotypes shouldn’t matter: all the employer sees is the work.  With that in mind, we decided to check feedback scores to see whether there’s any perceived difference between the work done on oDesk by men and women.

Trouble is, oDesk doesn’t collect gender info from our remote providers — so we had to do it the hard way.  We took a sampling of 3,000 providers and divided the likely men (the Marks, Dmitriys, and Sanjays) from the likely women (the Jennifers, Olgas, Priyankas).  We threw out the names that could go either way (Robins, Shannons, Valeriys).  Here’s what we got:

The sample suggests that men outnumber women on oDesk by four to one.  Not surprising, since most of the professionals on oDesk are tech-related (like php programmers & ruby on rails programmers), and the engineering gender gap is well-known.  According to the National Science Foundation, fewer than 20 percent of engineering graduates in the U.S. are women.

However, it’s quality that we’re interested in, not quantity, so let’s look at the feedback provided by employers to their freelance professionals:

*These averages were computed with a standard error of 0.049, and are statistically significant with a p-value of 0.009 (for all the hard-core statisticians).

So there are the numbers, folks — women deliver the goods to their employers, 3.5 percent better, on average. (Gentlemen, that sound you’re hearing is thousands upon thousands of female remote workers cranking up Aretha’s “Respect.”) We know, of course, that in the real world, it all comes down to the individual you’re hiring, not how many X chromosomes he or she has. Still, we’re wondering whether any employers of remote workers would like to share their experiences.  Managers of provider companies that include small armies of remote workers might also chime in.  Have you noticed a gender-based difference, and did it contradict or confirm your expectations?

And hey there, remote-workin’ fellas — you may have the numerical advantage now, but our workplace for non-techie jobs is growing fast, so we expect more women to enter our marketplace in 2009.  You think the competition might start heating up?

Today we’re going to have some fun with numbers by trying to calculate “value for money” between countries in hiring contractors to your workteam. The following table summarizes oDesk’s average hourly rates and feedback scores in each of our top 7 provider countries.

*We’ve only broken out the rates for software development and data entry; there are many other categories of work on oDesk that aren’t listed here.

Looking at this data, it’s obvious that there is much greater variance in average hourly rates ($6.33 to $19.60) than feedback scores (4.01 to 4.40). We therefore scale the numbers to percentiles to compare between countries. We then do a quick-and-dirty calculation, averaging the percentiles, and finally rank the countries to determine their relative “value for money.”

The results … the Philippines and Pakistan rank the highest in this admittedly simplistic analysis, which must be taken with a grain of salt. There are many factors to be taken into consideration when hiring contractors to your workteams. But, in the meantime, congratulations to providers in these two countries for topping the list! Fans of outsourcing to the Philippines and Pakistan will also be glad to know that they were also the fastest growing countries on oDesk, by hours worked, from 2007-2008.

If you had fun with this analysis (we did), and want to do more, visit the oConomy, which is a goldmine of interesting statistics on outsourcing. For example, take a look at our Outsourcing to Philippines and Outsourcing to Pakistan pages for more complete stats on these countries. 2008 outsourcing summary stats can also be found in our recently created Philippines and Pakistan slideshare presentations.< –>

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We are going to take a look today at the technologies or skills that enjoyed the greatest percentage increase in 2008 by keywords listed in job postings on oDesk. The numbers in the table below show the number of job postings on oDesk in which the skills were listed as “required,” and their relative increase from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008. You will notice some variance in the numbers between the table and the charts below as the numbers on the charts show keyword mentions in the job post titles, not required skills.

*Because writing, graphic design, and excel have small starting points, we believe their change reflects oDesk growth, not a general trend.

Since oDesk is a job board for freelance and contract technical jobs, the numbers here may vary from permanent placement job data. There are definitely other skills that are in more demand as noted here and here but these skills represent the greatest increase by percentage in 2008.

Blogging seems to dominate as a tech growth area in 2008. Demand for Wordpress designers has increased by more than 4 times. Demand for freelance writers, a good portion of which are online or blog related, more than tripled.

Website (or blog) development and design show up elsewhere on our list with strong demand growth shown for SEO consultants, XHTML designers, Drupal developers, Joomla developers, CSS designers and Graphic Designers.  This list really shows that “web presence” and any of the skills associated with this area were the fastest growing area in 2008.

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Linux continues its march into the mainstream with its 152% increase.

We’ve summarized this data in our latest presentation on the fastest growing skills in 2008:

Enjoy!

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Due to the popularity of our Web Developer Skills in Most Demand post last week, we thought we would follow up with more interesting information from the oDesk Trends vaults to assist you develop your resume to stay employed in these challenging economic times. Last week we looked at the base number of job postings for various web technologies and skills over the past year on the oDesk job boards. This week, we will look at various skills and technologies and the competition, or lack thereof, for them. A look at the supply compared to the demand.

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In viewing these numbers, keep in mind this is for oDesk which is primarily concerned with placement for freelance and contract positions. As noted by some of our .NET and Java brethren from the previous post’s comment section, this may vary with respect to full time placement numbers. We think the data is useful to all.

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In looking at the table below we give you three columns, one with the skill or technology, the second with the average jobs posted per month and the last with the Fill ratio below average. The Fill Ratio Below Average will show the competition for these postings as these jobs are not getting filled at our usual rate. A high number indicates great job opportunities whereas a 0% score indicates all those jobs get filled at our usual rate. Anything not on this list is getting filled at a high rate indicating above average competition for the skill or technology.

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First up, Database Modeling has the lowest fill rate which means the competition is lowest in this particular field but the postings are in the lower ranges of 63 per month.

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Moving down the table we see that Drupal developers are in demand with 187 jobs posted per month and a 32% below average fill rate. PHP is very popular and competitive on oDesk but developing some specialist knowledge of the Drupal CMS might give you an edge in this field.

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The .NET languages have a good showing in demand with ASP.NET developers being most favored and most competitive and C#.NET being the least competitive but with a respectable 205 job postings per month.  

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Java developers and Ruby on Rails developers are similar in fairly high demand per month (180-230 postings per month) and the competition below our average in the 13-18% region below average fill rate.

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AJAX programmers are in high demand with 707 jobs posted requiring this skill and the competition is below average at 11%. This seems like an essential element for any web developer to have on his resume.

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There you have it! Hopefully some useful information when guiding your career path. More information can be found on the skills and languages above as well as many other tech skills on our Trends page.

                     While these may not be a great revelation to many, included below are the web development skills that will get you employed now and by all evidences of their growth, for the foreseeable future. Knowing and being professional in at least some of the skills below to maximize your prospects for being employed.

                     In looking at these graphs, keep in mind that oDesk is a growing site so even a flat trend is a potential sign of decreasing demand.

 PHP

PHP is by far the most in-demand web development programming language right now. As you can see from the graph, it has enjoyed a steady climb from November 2007 leveling off in July 2008 at a spectacular 1400 jobs posted. The demand for PHP development work has tripled over the period of a mere 9 months.

AJAX

The demand for developers with AJAX in their resume or portfolio is also in high demand as the average web page has evolved well beyond animated icons, the presentation and need for a smooth user experience in the front end is more and more essential. The skill enjoyed very similar growth to PHP above from November 2007 to July 2008 where it leveled off holding at around 450 job postings.

 Javascript

As with the 2 skills above, Javascript enjoys high demand and has a similar shape in demand over the past year. As of November 2008, Javascript demand is steady at 400 after a slight decline since July 2008 but overall demand has doubled over the year.

 XML

XML is very dominant in web job postings and would seem like a relatively short learning curve to get capable in since it is not a language but a simple framework for describing and manipulating data. XML has very steadily increased over the past year, almost tripling.

MySQL

MySQL dominates the databases as the data storage method of choice. Increasing to nearly triple over the past year and holding steady at over 1000 jobs posted for the past 8 months.

 CSS

Cascading Style Sheets is now the way to maintain a uniform professional way to monitor the appearance of modern websites. This method is designer friendly too since one design change does not mean editing every page on a single website but instead one or a few style sheets. It too has near tripled over the past year and holds steady at close to 100 jobs posted.

 Graphic Design

Graphic Design is a very in demand skill and although not everyone can color coordinate or design their own icons, if you have any artistic ability or if you can train in it to develop some skills, this will round out your resume nicely. Graphic design demand has tripled over the past year and continues to grow to over 1400 postings.

                     That’s it. These are the skills to have to ensure your resume is not up for long if needed at all. A full view of these skills and 40 more can be seen in our trends page should that interest you.

Ever wonder how different countries compare when it comes to outsourcing?  Where the most talented developers, designers, and writers are located?  How average rates vary around the world, or which countries buyers have had the best experiences with?

We’ve pulled together statistics on our top provider countries in the outsourcing oConomy to help you find answers to these questions.  We’ve created 7 “featured country” pages, each with an interactive map showing top provider cities, charts showing the country’s hourly rates & average feedback versus the oDesk average, and breakdowns of the type of work being done in each country.  We’ve also included other useful information, including time zones, holidays, and languages spoken in the countries, and listed each country’s most active providers.

We hope that the pages will be a valuable resource to both buyers (in making oDesk hiring decisions), and providers (in comparing their statistics to their country averages).  We encourage a healthy discussion around these statistics, and feedback on what other stats may be interesting & useful down the road.  Links to the new Featured Country pages are below:

• Canada
• India
• Pakistan
• Philippines
• Russia
• Ukraine
• United States 

The stats have also been summarized in a slideshare presentation.

A good gauge of the strength of a platform is the trend in demand for development on that platform. Since cell phones are becoming fully featured handheld personal computers, the availability of cool and useful applications they offer will be the battleground by which these platforms will claim their ownership of the cell phone market.

oDesk’s programming skill trends show the demand for application development across almost 80 different skills.  You can get an interesting look at the iPhone’s strong initial and continuously increasing demand. 

As you can see in the graph above, we had 40 jobs posted per month in the 3 months from March until June. This shows a very strong belief in Apple and its future as well as a validation of the power of its public relations department in generating strong buzz. This is followed by a dramatic increase in demand for iPhone developers over the next 6 months to 160 jobs per month posted for iPhone application development. Apple “Talked the talk” and then “Walked the walk” by delivering, as it did with the iPod, a product that people wanted to use. 

Google is less aggressive in its release of new products and features. In many cases we are lucky to get a Google blog post on a new product or feature.  Android is not strictly “Google’s” as it is open source and is merely backed by Google. It is not a Google “product” but we can’t help put them together.

The first Android-powered phone snuck out with nowhere near the fanfare of the iPhone release and it shows in its application demand.  Preceding its release, there was literally no demand for application development.

Post release, the demand for application development has increased to a humble 12 jobs per month compared with the iPhone’s very healthy 160 per month. This represents to some the degree the future of the device’s feature set and does not impress at this stage.

In looking at the demand for application development between the iPhone and Android, one can appreciate the power of the Apple PR department, Apples reputation and the continued popularity of the iPhone. Even with Google’s powerful reputation, Android does not even seem to put up a fight with the mighty Apple product. We can’t necessarily count Android out yet, far from it but it has a ways to go yet based upon the past, present and future application development that the iPhone has mustered. 

A recent internal analysis at oDesk yielded some pretty interesting trends within our own network.

We were looking at the total hours worked by all providers and were segmenting the hours by various different criteria. One of the most startling trends we found was the growth in hours worked by providers from the Philippines.

The number of hours worked in Philippines has grown 4x in just 4 months.

The amazing thing to us is the fully viral expansion of work that’s going on in this country. We have not changed anything about our acquisition strategy in the Philippines so this is true word-of-mouth growth. Kudos to the providers that are driving this rapid expansion.

Here’s a few top providers:

As part of our ongoing marketing efforts at oDesk, we have a pretty substantial Google Adwords campaign set up. I was reviewing some of the data today and we noticed that for all campaigns, the conversion ratios (% of visitors that sign up for an account) were highest on Saturdays. A little unexpected, but an interesting finding. Google allows you to tailor your campaigns by automatically adjusting your bid amounts by day of week. Seems like it would be appropriate to increase our bid amounts on Saturdays so we capitalize on this increased conversion ratio. Or maybe not?

I was wondering why conversion ratio was higher on the weekend so I decided to take a look at oDesk data for job postings over the last few months. I took a look at over 10,000 jobs posted and analyzed results based on a few simple criteria.

First, I wanted to understand the distribution of types of jobs posted by day. I put together all the results in Excel and did a pivot table on the day of week. Note that for all of the following charts, 1 = Monday, 7 = Sunday. This first chart shows the total ratio of fixed price jobs posted on the oDesk network by the day of week. Sundays apparently have the highest percentage of fixed price jobs.

Ok, so clearly there is a small bias toward fixed price jobs on the weekends. What about job size? The following chart shows the average estimated hours for hourly jobs (estimated hours = estimated workload in hours per week * estimated duration in weeks). Note that durations over 100 weeks are rounded down to 100 weeks. Clearly, hourly jobs tend to be smallest on Sundays.

Ok, we’re starting to see a trend here. Let’s take a look at Fixed Price jobs. I looked at a chart of Fixed Price job size by day of week posted. You can see in this next chart that the budgets tend to be smaller than the average (the average being 100%) on Friday thru Sunday.

So, jobs that are posted on the weekend tend to be smaller and more urgent than the rest of the jobs posted. Now, remember that the conversion ratio was highest on Saturdays. The way I read this data is that if you’re looking for urgent work, you’re more willing to try anything to get the job done so you’ll convert to a user at a higher rate than normal. Now the last step is to look at the relative value of a customer that signs up for our network by day of week. If the “weekend warrior” types do indeed have small, urgent jobs then they should have a lower lifetime value than the average.

While there is not a huge difference, I think the findings are pretty interesting. Note for providers -> if you’re looking for the best jobs available – make sure you’re looking Mon – Fri.

Let’s talk about feedback systems. In the early days of oDesk (read: 2005), we didn’t have a feedback system in place and I remember being on sales calls where almost every potential customer said, “You know, you guys should build a feedback system. Like eBay.” And it’s not surprising; feedback systems are such a fundamental part of making an online marketplace work that it sticks out like a sore thumb if you don’t have one.

Feedback systems in online marketplaces are designed to improve the user experience as a whole by allowing users to establish their own reputation and review the reputation of others. Users submit feedback on other users and relay their positive or negative experience so others can review feedback before entering into a transaction or relationship. In theory, it all works great. But it depends on a few key principles:

1) Identity Verification – what if any user could create multiple profiles? Well, then there’s not enough motivation to maintain a positive reputation. If I receive a negative feedback score, no worries, I’ll just create a new profile. Problem solved.

2) Transparency - what if people could leave feedback and comments, but others couldn’t see that feedback? Well, that wouldn’t do much good. If a user has received some negative feedback, others need to know about it.

3) Accuracy - the feedback that users leave on the system must be accurate. This seems simple, but in reality is quite complex. There are a lot of factors that go into a user’s decision about whether or not to leave positive or negative feedback.

4) Consistency - users should all “grade” the same. If a user is just a particularly tough critic, it might throw things off.

For the vast majority of cases, feedback systems work great and we believe oDesk’s system works well too. However, I do want to talk about some potential issues with #3 – accuracy of feedback and the mechanisms that may negatively affect accuracy. Let’s take a look at eBay first – they’re the founder of the feast when it comes to feedback systems, and they’ve announced some very major changes to their feedback system. From eBay’s site:

What changes are being made to the eBay Feedback system?
Sellers will no longer be able to leave negative or neutral Feedback for buyers. This change will occur in May, 2008.

Why is eBay making these changes?
No negative or neutral Feedback for buyers
The current system prevents buyers from leaving honest Feedback as they fear retaliation from the sellers if they leave a negative. This makes it hard for buyers to distinguish between sellers while making bidding or buying decisions. In addition, when buyers receive negative Feedback, they reduce their activity in the marketplace, which in-turn harms all sellers.

So, why have eBay buyers not been leaving accurate feedback. I believe it stems from personal motivation. Let’s say I’m an eBay buyer and I had a bad experience. I could leave negative feedback, but that might end up hurting my reputation if I get retaliatory negative feedback. So, why leave negative feedback, it only benefits the next user, not me.

Now let’s look at oDesk. I don’t think it’s as simple as the eBay feedback system since eBay is all about point transactions. The transaction is arranged, paid, and completed all within a couple days. At oDesk, it’s all about relationships, which are often ongoing and may result in repeat transactions. So, let’s look at some of the possible issues that may arise near the end of a relationship? Let’s say that buyer x has been working with provider y for 3 months on a website. It’s nearing completion, and now there are a few things that might happen (note: oDesk’s feedback system is bi-directional with a 1-5 scale):

• If everything went great, both parties will know that perfect 5 feedback scores will result.
• If the provider is expecting a 4-4.9 feedback, provider might email buyer explicitly asking for a 5.
• If the provider is expecting a lower score, the provider may, in the worst cases, blackmail the buyer. eg, “I’ll take down your site, if you don’t give me a good feedback score.” If you’re buyer x, you might as well give a good feedback score since you don’t want to risk your site coming down.

So, the provider looks to be malicious in the example above. What about buyers? Are there ever any issues that crop up with buyers of services? Here’s a couple examples that I’ve heard:

• So, it’s been 3 months and the buyer has exceeded their budget but has changing requirements and still needs more work. The buyer may threaten bad feedback scores unless the provider finishes the remaining work for free.
• The buyer is actually quite happy with the work of the provider and needs to retain full-time work. The buyer, being of low moral character, does not want to give the provider a good feedback score. Why? Because the buyer fears losing the provider to other interested buyers. Or because the buyer does not want the provider to increase the hourly rate based on a strong reputation.

While these issues are the minority of cases with online feedback systems, they have a negative effect on the whole system. I believe the only way to ultimately resolve the issues is to foster open, honest discussion about the feedback system. This post is just a problem statement, solutions are ‘to be determined’. It seems that eBay hasn’t figured it out yet, and I can certainly say that oDesk hasn’t figured everything out. But I can say that we’re dedicated to focus on user quality, and there’s no doubt that the feedback system and its integrity is critical to the success of the marketplace.

ps – if you know the solution, please comment.

So, as you may know, oDesk offers 100 free online certification tests available to users to prove their skills.

Rewind 1 year ago:

-Many users complained about the quality of the test content.
-We didn’t have the bandwidth to review and improve all of the content ourselves.

So, after a number of users had brought the quality to our attention, we launched two new feedback mechanisms.

First, any user could Report an Issue with a specific question.
Second, any user could provide a Content Feedback Score at the completion of the test.

Now, let’s look at today.

Over the course of 1 year, over 2,500 issues have been reported to improve the test content. Together with our testing vendor, ExpertRating, we have used these issues reported by our users to dramatically improve the test content. These improvements are reflected in the content feedback scores from our users; they have gone up 33% from around a 3.0 (out of 5.0) to over 4.0.

This confirms our beliefs that communities are critically important to shaping the product and offering. While it was initially painful to hear the complaints of our users, it forced us to build a solution that allowed the community to get involved. And it has paid off.

The job going forward for oDesk, and for all Web 2.0 companies, is to continue to build in more ways for the community to contribute.

Much has been published recently about the decline of the US dollar and the reverse flow of jobs back to the US from popular offshore outsourcing hotspots including India and China.

It made me curious to see the trends at oDesk. We have providers all over the world, and should be able to see this trend if it’s really happening.

So here it is:

Looks to me that while the entire market for remote contract labor is growing, the United States is possibly growing most rapidly over the last couple quarters.

Check this out: Age of the Contractor article was posted in the New York Times.

Andrew Benkard interviewed oDesk’s CEO, Gary Swart, and here’s part of what he had to say:

“Here’s the problem: you have hired a website designer in Mumbai, India to redesign your site and you are paying her an hourly wage. How do you know she isn’t sipping chai when she should be coding – and perhaps more to this point, how do you know she’s on the right track in terms of what you want? Enter oDesk…”

Read the full article on oDesk in the New York Times.

There’s always been some discussion about whether or not portraits are important for the provider profiles. I firmly believe that they are – and I’m happy to see some providers have used the portrait to really market themselves well. Consider these portraits:

– This says to me that the provider is professional, can functionally use Photoshop, and gives me a sense of his style.

– I like this one. It shows both individualism as well as the corporate brand of the oDesk affiliate company.

– Another well done portrait showcasing the company name and brand as well as the individual.

– This one makes me feel like she’s already thinking about my design.

– Ok, this guy knows his stuff, a true computer geek with disassembled parts in the background.

– Nice touch, but would prefer more of the face. If I’m looking for an animator, I’m intrigued.

– A bit impersonal since no face, but I like the clever sense of style.

– Hmm. Nothing like showing off a little local scenery I suppose.

– Professional, casual, sincere. I get a sense of the individual as well as the workplace. Quite nice.

Compare the portraits above to this one:

What do you think potential buyers would prefer?

So, upload a portrait. Exercise some creativity, but keep it personal and individual. You only have a brief second to impress buyers in the search results and a good intriguing portrait can capture that attention.