Appreciate odesk's recent approach to change hour rate.

[Damien E]

Shouldn't freelancers and clients be able to agree on their own hourly rate and not have it dictated by oDesk? Using India as an example: the minimum wage in India is somewhere between $15 and $23 per week, depending on the region. Under oDesks's new scheme of making $4 per hour the minimum, a full time freelancer from India would earn around 10 times their local minimum wage! And that is the lowest they could bid... This seems to be eliminating the very reason oDesk exists in the first place - to leverage international markets in order to provide mutually beneficial opportunities for both freelancers and clients.

[Louis p]

as an employer who uses odesk, I don't like the min. rate. If odesk continues to push this min. rate, employers will end up using other sites, and then freelancers will end up going to those other sites also.

[Alexander N]

According to you, ideal freelancer should live in cardboard box, have a prehistoric laptop and use wi-fi from nearby coffee shop. Also he should charge less than 1$ per hour and be very happy with that.

[Stephen B]

"as an employer who uses odesk, I don't like the min. rate." As a person who eats food, I don't like having to pay for it - I think I should be given it for free, and I'm not bothered who else has to have their own life belittled to get it to me for free, because I am me and that's all that matters... Life is full of things we don't like... so we either put up with them or exploit others to get around them.

[Misty K]

Are you saying you don't care who you have to step on to get what you want? That is exactly what it sounds like. If you think work is free, you have another thing coming. Your statement, "As a person who eats food, I don't like having to pay for it," guess what buddy.... We all eat to live and we have to pay in some way for that sustenance. Your comment turns my stomach! You're truly disgusting.

[David G]

I think Stephen was making a sarcastic reference to a previous post by a poster who was stating that he "didn't like the minimum wage".

[Stephen B]

Really, I do know that the US and English senses of humour can be quite different (ie, the English have one ) , but it was hardly subtle and arcane - especially given it was set almost immediately after the post before, which I also quoted. Yes, David is right, it was sarcasm. I make no apologies for it (hold on... maybe Misty is being sarcastic too...) and I'm not really disgusting - in fact I'm quite nice and a big softy if you get to know me

[Misty K]

I didn't pay much attention to the post beforehand when I came across that. Well, to the OP of that then, he or she is disgusting I do apologize for mistaken it as you saying that.

[Stephen B]

Apology accepted Misty - and I agree about the other person - was just trying to make my point in a more English way, which sometimes backfires...

[Marcia M]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law It can be very hard to effectively show sarcasm on the internet. No matter how ridiculous you sound, someone will probably believe you are serious, or even sincerely agree with your ridiculous statement.