[podviaznikov]

I would disagree here. You actually can find well paid mid-term and long-term contracts on oDesk. Classification obviously depends on your expenses but I would say it's quite possible to get more money on oDesk than in most IT companies in EU.

[kirillzubovsky]

Well, you could get money by working a lot and doing cheap crappy jobs, that doesn't make it a good job. Besides, I've heard stories for clients being scammed out of their money on oDesk and developers losing reputation because of jerky clients. I bet there are outliers, but overall, it's sup-par, imho.

[podviaznikov]

Yeah, but I would say it's everywhere like that. You have good developers and bad developers, you have interesting projects and bad projects, you have good customers and bad customers. You can find YC companies on oDesk, you can find cool startups there. IMHO it's not difficult to filter good projects.