[Wikimedia-l] Relationship between Wikimedia and oDesk

[Chad Horohoe]

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:07 AM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc at uberbox.org> wrote:

> On 01/08/2014 02:30 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
> > Can anyone explain the relationship between Wikimedia and oDesk?
>
> The short of it: oDesk is indeed roughly the same kind of job board as
> freelancer.com and its ilk.  The foundation is simply a client, and uses
> it only to pay its contractors and (most of)* their non-US workforce;
> and AFAIK never just contract out from postings.
>
> Contractors input work hours, WMF pays oDesk, oDesk sends monies to
> contractor.  The system itself is a little shitty and quite a bit
> expensive, but considerably less so than it would be to set up legal
> entities able to directly pay people outside the US as local employees
> (including the horrible mess that it actually /is/ to have employees in
> other countries rather than contract out).
>
> -- Marc
>
> * some staffers instead work for a business entity that /itself/
> contracts out to the WMF in which case it works a bit differently
> because then oDesk is no longer necessary as a middle man.
>
>
Marc said everything I was going to say. This was my experience with
oDesk as a US-based contractor as well. The contracting process was
done like the normal hiring process and completely apart from oDesk.
oDesk was simply used to input hours and receive payment.

-Chad