The ScobleShow this week highlighted an interesting way for both freelance programmers to find work, and for companies to hire them through a site called ODesk. Alongside the matching services, the site also handles paying the contractors, and even allowing the software companies to check up what work their contractors are doing thanks to it’s built in remote desktop viewing functions.

Essentially it is doing what some developers I know have done for a while. For example one former colleague did software development work remotely for a company in the USA whilst house sitting for his parents in Australia, all ODesk does is take the complication out of the arrangements allowing a wider range of companies and software developers to be involved.

Certainly if you’ve got reasons why you can’t work a regular software development job, or live in a location where there just isn’t the software development work available with your relevant skills, it certainly seems like something that is worth checking out. It’s probably also worth a look if you’re a software company struggling to find suitably qualified staff. However, if you are a developer I would suggest that it would definitely be wise to take some professional advice over the legal and financial intricacies of working remotely in this way, particularly with regards to tax for example.

Anyway, Robert Scoble interviews the people behind the company here:

and this is a demo of the system: