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Coder Marts: eSlaves or New Wave?
| 2009-06-08 |
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Need programmers? Need a job? Web-based body shops like oDesk, Guru, RentACoder and Elance offer interesting, low-cost alternatives to conventional outsourcers. Big question: How Much Big Brother can you live with?
Two suggestions and a big question from the “Opportunities and Challenges for Outsourcing” panel at the recent annual Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan CIO Symposium.
The suggestions:
1) Looking to quickly staff up a small software development project on the cheap? (And let’s face it, other than defense contractors and Massachusetts state government, who isn’t?) Then take a look at an interesting alternative to conventional outsourcing—Web-based body shops like oDesk, Guru, RentACoder and Elance). A recent Inc. article nicely lays out the value prop:
These sites, which work like eBay or Match.com for small businesses looking to hire outsourced workers, offer directories of hundreds of thousands of programmers in Russia, India, Ukraine, Pakistan, Argentina—and the U.S. The contractors' profiles are quite detailed; they typically include rankings and comments from former customers, work history, skill level, and hourly rates. RentACoder even displays the number of times a programmer has been involved in arbitration because of a dispute with an employer.
At the MIT conference, Gary Swart, CEO of ODesk, did a terrific job laying out the growing appeal of businesses like his. “The SMB market has a tremendous demand for flexible talent,” Swart said. It’s great for companies that “needed it yesterday but don’t want to pay a lot but want to get started quickly.” The company‘s business in the first quarter of 2009 was up a reported 105 percent over the same period in 2008.
A swing through the oDesk Website is impressive. Easy to use, clear value. Regular payments and clear metrics on deliverables make a win-win for freelancers and employers. The latter can even pay with a credit cards (depending on your view of skunk works in your organization, a good thing—or not). Adding additional talent is easy: Search, point, click. The numbers look pretty good too:
For small projects, online coder marts are certainly easier and cheaper than wheeling in outsourcing contracts the size of the Mexico City phone book for your legal department. All in all, perhaps worth a look for ISVs, IT consultants, project managers, even recent college grads.
2) Lost your IT job? If you’ve still got credible hands-on skills, see suggestion No. 1.
Were Rockwell and Orwell Right?
In a moment, the Question. And I think it’s a Big One. But first, here’s why I ask it:
One way oDesk differentiates itself is by letting employers remotely monitor long-distance temps. Freelance workers upload proprietary work management software that records screenshots, mouse and keystrokes, and Webcam images. These are reported electronically back to employers every 10 minutes. Every hour. Every day. oDesk explains it like this:
Manage Your Team:
Sergey and Christine log in when they are working.
George can literally see the work in their work diaries -- screenshots and memos are recorded six times an hour.
He knows his new hires are being productive and are on the right track.
George is amazed at the level of visibility!
A good idea, again depending on your viewpoint. As a hirer, it seems perfectly reasonable to know if that that bright Ph.D. in Belarus is working 30 minutes of your hour on his side project perfecting porno-bots or napping.
In fact, Swart maintains, this “real-time visibility” is a big hit with employers AND freelancers because it shows the coders are doing what they’re getting paid for. (oDesk also uses numerous other screening, checks and certifications to maintain quality control.) And sure enough, a slew of media stories, many on the company’s Website, include comments from temps perfectly happy to have their every stroke and poke archived. Consider this typical worker quoted in an IEEE Spectrum article “The All-Seeing Employer”:
“As I’m an independent developer, it was very invasive at first,” Cartwright says. But he quickly got used to the screen shots and saw the flip side. ”I like the accountability. Knowing that I was being monitored forced me to reduce distractions and stay focused.”
Lots of quotes like that out there. Apparently, many teethed on Facebook, and The Truman Show and, of course, Big Brother are perfectly comfortable playing and working in the LCD limelight. To them, it’s less “Big Brother,” more like your big brother Odie. It’s all good.
Others are not so keen. Critics have called the monitoring “e-slavery”, “Dickensian,” “Orwellian” and worse. To which I would add, “Rockwellian” too.
“This [harks] back to the old-fashioned idea that you have to keep close tabs on your people or they will steal you blind,” said Gordon Graham, a former president of the Professional Writers Association of Canada whose own freelancing focuses on the software industry.”
OK, so he’s a writer, and God knows we have even lower expectations of their discipline than we do for coders.
Swart notes a) not everyone will be comfortable with the service and b) freelancers can control the level of online scrutiny and that the Webcam is optional. Fair enough.
Now here’s the Question.
How closely should IT monitor employee activity and productivity?
Yes, we’re talking about temp coders here. But it could just as easily be your own in-house developers. Or call center agents, help desk, underwriters, etc., etc.
It sounds like a high-minded, philosophical question. But let’s face it: The way business, capitalism and the global economy are evolving, the mania for measurement, drum-tight processes and KPIs sooner or later will drop this important ethical egg on your desk.
Do you monitor worker activity by computer? Why? Why not?
How much is enough. How much is
too much?
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