Is oDesk watching you?

oDesk is different from all the other freelance sites I’ve worked with, and I think many of the differences are good things. The first one, which we’ve mentioned more than once, is the hourly model. It’s a great way for people to transition to freelance if they’re not used to estimating how long tasks are going to take. The other big difference is the oDesk client.

I’ve joined several other sites and none of them have required that I download a client the way oDesk does. On the flip side they haven’t guaranteed an hourly wage either. This is oDesk’s biggest strength, and the client is a very small price to pay for that guarantee.

If you’re new to oDesk, or maybe you just heard about it online and want to know if it’s a worthwhile place to look for work you may not know much about the client. Essentially it’s an automated billing system and verification tool.

What it does:

1) Take Regular Screen Shots

2) Record the number of keystrokes/mouse clicks in a given period.

3) Provide proof to the buyer you were working for those hours that your pay is guaranteed.

What it doesn’t do:

1) Scan your hard drive

2) Take images of what isn’t on the monitor in focus

3) Track everything you type while it’s running and upload it to a hidden server.

This is how it works:

You fire up the client and log into your team. The first thing it does is prompt you to enter a memo. If you’re re-opening the client it will have your last memo highlighted. You then either accept the memo or create a new one and the system takes a screen shot. After that you see a little pop-up in the lower right corner of your screen about every ten minutes with a thumbnailed screen shot. Every half hour or so it prompts you to update the memo.

That’s 90% of what’s involved with using it. It’s dead easy.

What it’s doing is recording your time (very important because oDesk only guarantees pay for the time the client records) and uploading the screen shots and productivity data to your work diary. The work diary is your on-line repository of what you’ve done in this reporting period. When you open it up you see a row of screen shots with little icons beside them, ranging from green to red. Green means your keystrokes and mouse clicks are above a certain threshold, red means they’re below.

Don’t worry if you leave it on and forget to exit or suspend when you go grab a coffee or change the laundry. The system allows you to go back in to the work diary and edit it. The buyer can’t but you can. If you see that hour worth of time when you were downstairs changing laundry, all you need to do is click on the relevant screen shots and delete them. Each one you delete chops ten minutes off your time.

That’s the catch; if you spend 2 minutes surfing lobster porn instead of working and decide you really don’t want anyone to see that screen shot you are going to have to delete the other eight minutes when you were working.

As someone who has been burned more than once with work done that I never received payment for I’m going to tell you that the oDesk client is great. Nothing beats guaranteed money. If you do work within the hourly budget and on the clock you will get paid. Yes, it does let the employer see what you’re working on but that’s only fair since it’s their product you’re working on.

I’ll put up with having my work verified in return for guaranteed payment.