[wonderyak]

I used oDesk exclusively for hiring developers for a number of years, here is my 2 cents:

> it feels like fighting for scraps

You are fighting for scraps. Generally speaking, until you've been really burnt by a contractor you feel great hiring people in India to work for pennies compared to what you're reselling the service for.

IMO, this is the vast majority of people hiring on oDesk.

In addition, there are SMB or Agency type businesses that are looking to form relationships; they don't want to have to constantly search for new developers. Often, they will find a group or business with a stable of developers even if the quality of the work is a little bit poorer. Many of the firms I worked with just had a project manager that communicated with the developers on their end (often because they did not speak english) and maintained a single point of contact for us. Those were our best experiences.

> Does it get better once you "establish" yourself on the site?

It should. By the end of the time I was using oDesk I had several filters set up when searching so if someone had not completed a test or rating they would never appear on my radar.