Swart Walks The Talk: 7 Key Work Insights From oDesk’s CEO

If you just want the take-aways then scroll down to the third section.

The Backstory To The Interview

I first met Gary Swart at Fishburners in Sydney where he was taking part in a panel on the future of work. At first sight he looked like a polished corporate figurehead practiced in managing his public profile.

Friendly, sharp, well put together, perhaps a little square but at the same time I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me he’d been the quarterback for his high school football team.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how agile his mind was as he answered questions and how funny and lively he was off the cuff. He got a few big laughs but never came across as approval-seeking or straying from the purpose of his visit. After the talk I went up to get a photo with him and he gave me his card.

I asked if he’d consider doing an interview with a lowly blogger and to my surprise he readily agreed and gave me his card. I then saw him give his card out to several other people (this image sums up how I felt) but once I put that pettiness aside I thought how exceptional it was that the CEO of oDesk could have such a personal, direct touch with everyone.

Christian Thurston on the left, Gary Swart on the right.

In situations like this it’s often hard to know in advance if someone truly means it when they encourage you to follow-up with them or if they’re simply being polite and avoiding the awkwardness of turning you down.

To my delight Gary’s offer was completely sincere. So it came to pass that I got to do a one hour interview with Gary Swart on February the 27th at 3:30am Sydney time (see what I put myself through for my readers? My neighbours suffer for your benefit!).

It was originally scheduled as a 30 minute interview but we were on a roll and Gary was super generous with his time so it turned into a full hour. At the bottom of the page I’ve included links to the full transcript and mp3 (unedited so you can hear me ask questions in all my amateur brilliance – note to self: stop saying “wow” so much).

As most people are time poor I decided to combine my research of his other interviews, what I gleaned from his participation and what I learned from my interview with him so that I could pack it all into a super-useful and concise post distilling everything into the key insights, perspectives and take-aways. Unless stated otherwise, assume what’s written below is my opinion.

Background on Gary Swart and oDesk

oDesk does online work, not outsourcing – so what is that exactly?

As Gary puts it (my own emphasis added): “Online work is actually different from outsourcing; it’s really the traditional work model moved online. Online work emphasizes individual relationships, long-term projects, and a high level of project oversight, whereas outsourcing is about sending an entire project or function over to an agency in another country for end-to-end management.

With online work, you select your candidates, interview them, hire them, manage them on a regular basis, and pay them by the hour for the time they spend on your project, just like in the offline world. This builds long-term relationships focused on quality work, instead of the anonymous outsourcing model.”

How did oDesk start?

oDesk itself was started by Stratis Karamanlakis (current Vice President of Development) and Odysseas Tsatalos (current CTO) as a way to scratch their own itch as they needed a way to unite the work and worker whilst they were half the world away from each other.

What they were able to execute really well was the ability to track worker activity with random screenshots that ensured that remote workers were actually doing the work they were being paid for and this feature (patent pending) remains a huge drawcard for the site to this day.

By the end of 2012 they had become the leading platform (1/3 of the total pie) in what was valued as a $1 billion dollar industry in 2012.

How did Gary Swart get involved with oDesk?

Gary Swart joined oDesk in 2005 whilst in the process of trying to raise funding for Intellibank, a startup he was working on at the time. In much the same serendipitous way that most things seem to happen in Silicon Valley the investors weren’t in love with the startup but liked Gary and thought he’d be awesome for oDesk. Gary’s key learning from his personal startup experience: “You have to focus“.

What makes oDesk attractive to both employers and online workers?

What first attracted me (and many others I know) to oDesk in 2008 was the opportunity to save on cost. These days what attracts people to the site is still partly the cost savings but it’s primarily the access to talent. Technology companies in particular see securing talent as their absolute top priority (currently in Silicon Valley and around the world there’s a huge demand and fierce competition for top talent) and they’re willing to go beyond the 50 kilometre radius of their physical office in order to access it. oDesk gives them the ability to do just that.

For example, you can generally get a really great logo designed by someone in India or the Philippines for $20-50 (or less) whereas in my hometown of Sydney you couldn’t get a graphic designer to get out of bed for that kind of money. In contrast, the workers make a good wage given the buying power of that money in their home country. I recently spoke to a computer programmer in Pakistan who told me that when he started working on oDesk he was able make double what his Pakistani employer had been paying him.

The whole industry really took off when Tim Ferriss’s book, “The Four Hour Workweek” (2007) became a runaway best-seller and delivered a massive boon to the online work industry – especially oDesk.

Key Take-Aways, Insights and “Aha!” Moments From Gary Swart

There were a lot of interesting things I got out of the interview with Gary Swart and from reading his other interviews out there. I’ve tried to distill that down into some key concepts and take-aways.

What You Need To Know:The ability to hire and manage employees will become a universal skill required in all office jobs not just for managers. So the feedback your providers give you will be something you’ll begin to feature on your resume and LinkedIn profile.
Fulfillment in Work (& Startups): Gary talks a lot about his view of what people want from their working lives and it’s a mix of four core elements. He also noted that the mix you desire changes over time as it did with him (he went from doing well at IBM and then leaving to join a startup to being asked to be CEO of oDesk). The breakdown that follows is a pretty good way of thinking of work and distilling it down into its core components. (They also appear to plug into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs quite well):
- Impact: How is what I’m doing going to change the world?
- Growth and development: This can be both hard and soft skills as well as professional and personal growth.
- Financial Reward: Money.
- Balance: Free time to do the things that you value outside of work.
- If there’s one thing I could add to Gary’s four above it would be along the lines of how well you connect and feel connected to those you work with on a personal level (Gary speaks about this a lot in other contexts (including the quote in the last section) but it isn’t in his list of things people want from work).
Mis-hires:This was the most powerful thing he said during the interview and it needs to be spoken about a lot more: “And then the other thing that we recognize is that some people who happen to be great folks are just not great at that time.” This resonantes close to the core with me as I once worked for a great company but the timing wasn’t right. The key is to make sure you don’t doubt yourself, find a new place to work and keep focusing on making sure you and the place you work (even if it’s your startup) are extracting the best out of you.
oDesk’s Growth: oDesk is growing in the same way that a balloon inflates. If you picture a balloon on a 3-d graph with the x, y, and z axes then one axis is client size, another is geography and the third is the type of service.
Opportunities for Startups in Outsourcing: oDesk is focusing on these three axes and they are massively increasing year on year but they’re risking missing out on other opportunities, like creating a mobile app to help employers manage their online workforce and offering the platform in other languages like Japanese, Korean or Mandarin.
Future of Online Work: Future companies will seek to optimise their ratio of in-house vs. online working talent and Gary predicts it’ll be 1/3 online workers by 2020. I personally agree. oDesk is at 2/3 online workers already. I think the only companies that will resist this are, ironically, companies that make innovation the centre of their business (like the recent Yahoo! shift or Google’s telecommuting policy).
Advice for young learners: Gary said, “… my advice is that people pick something that they’re really passionate about and that they really get educated in that thing and become a specialist in that thing because what I think is that these specialists are going to have the opportunity to work for many more clients. Right? That skill is going to be transferable and it’s not going to be as difficult to bring a worker to work because the Internet will be able to bring work to workers.”
oDesk Cricket Team: If oDesk forms a cricket team, it will probably outsource most of the playing to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh but it looks like globe-trotting Matt Cooper will be the captain.