[loboman]

> Remote workers are more OK with having odesk take screenshots of their desktop so I know they are working for the time I paid them.

Probably not very good remote workers if you have to do that, and if they accept you to do that. (I otherwise agree with most of your points)

[gkamal]

I take up assignments on odesk and I like this very much. In my experience the screenshots are only reviewed when the work expectations are not met - I don't think anybody looked at those in most of the work I have done so far (apart from the first couple of days).

Just the fact that they exits promotes transparency and fosters more trust.

Occasionally when a task I estimated to take 30 minutes takes 3 hours I don't have to offer an explanation.

The tool also automatically tracks time that I spend working on a project, submits time sheet / invoice at end of the week ...

[GFischer]

A classmate I respect and who I think is decently skilled started out on Odesk (not very easy to get out of the low paying jobs here in Uruguay), and he accepted the screenshots as part of doing business.

The people that hired him were happy and eventually dropped Odesk in favor of a more permanent relationship, but I think neither my classmate nor the people doing the work were in the wrong, or "not very good". You have to be willing to jump through more hoops sometimes if you're not from the U.S. or Europe.

[loboman]

Yes, I understand. I don't mean that all such remote workers are bad. What I mean is, that kind of thing is a filter that removes good people who wouldn't do that kind of thing. Developers do much better work when there isn't anybody spying on their shoulder. It is the customers who get worse results when they don't understand that (except for programmers who won't work unless somebody is looking at their shoulder... but then you really don't want to hire those).