The Freelancing Void
12 Jul 2012
One of the strangest things in the Lasso community is the lack of a freelancing websites that have "Lasso" listed as a skill. Recently I've had a flurry of requests from Lasso developers looking for small pieces of work to get done - and I am certainly aware that there are Lasso developers out there actively looking for work. I always send them back to LassoTalk - but I rarely see the posts end up there.
I'm not sure if they actually get their work done or just give up on Lasso and go elsewhere.
To the best of my knowledge, Lasso has been overlooked as a development language in the freelance world. Are we a secret?
One recent complaint, from a passionate developer:
"I've tried everything I can think of to get http://www.oDesk.com to add Lasso as a skill, but they have completely failed to respond. They have been positively belligerent - deleting my posts and claiming that I am trying to 'Advertise a Business or a Product'. They have been positively backward and unhelpful at every turn. Can you help me get Lasso listed?".
I checked a few different sites, including;
http://www.odesk.com
http://www.elance.com
http://www.freelancer.com
http://www.guru.com
http://www.getacoder.com
http://www.vworker.com
And Lasso is not listed on a single one of them.
However, if you look through categories, you'll see that many of the existing categories have very few or zero jobs associated with them. (Caution, raw data ahead):
https://www.odesk.com/gds/oconomy/v1/most_requested_skills
Now, I have always said that one of the competitive advantages of Lasso is that we tend to attract high-performance professionals who focus on large projects for large organizations. This also means that Lasso has very few "newbs" around to lean on, and very little "minor work" to be done. However, there are still millions of web pages out there that need Lasso help (as pointed out by an email to me);
http://www.google.com/search?&q=filetype:lasso
Although I'll certainly buy that we do not want the Lasso community to be littered with low-cost, low-value development talent, we also need to accept that the more people in the community will maximize our potential and increase the value of our skills as developers.
Ergo, I'd love some suggestions from the Lasso crowd.
- What freelancer site would you recommend we use?
- Would you use a freelancer site if it were to have Lasso as a skill set?
- Should we just build our own freelancing system?
As per usual, I'd love some feedback...
Sean Stephens
CEO
LassoSoft Inc.
Comments
oDesk et al
Sean it strikes me your missing the elephant in the corner !
Whilst I can see that being listed on oDesk etal is a flattering thing for Lasso it has precious little benefit for the client or contractor. I have used both oDesk and eLance several times as a resource for locating developers in every case as soon as you find a good contractor the relationship with the job board becomes a hinderance.
Atom Feed