Startup world’s little secret: Everyone’s using TaskUs but no one is talking

http://pandodaily.com/2013/07/17/the-startup-worlds-little-secret-everyones-using-taskus-but-no-one-is-talking-about-it/

by protomyth • 13 years ago

33 20 13 years ago

pandodaily.com

georgebonnr• 13 years ago

Counting the seconds until a scathing, sarcastic piece on this is written on Valleywag.

jpdoctor• 13 years ago

We thought about raising funding [from family and friends] to get press. Then once the stories were done, we would just give it all back because we don’t need it.

People (and the press) need to stop printing nonsense like this. You don't need money? Then don't take it. Any other path screams: We needed money and we're gonna insult your intelligence with a press statement.

To his specific point: The cost of funding would buy a whole lotta press. So cut the crap.

cpursley3• 13 years ago

No surprise here. I have two part-time Filipino VAs who are very competent and a pleasure to work with via oDesk. I'm not sure why companies are hiding this - it's a competitive advantage. Also, to take it further, I'm not sure why more tech startups aren't utilizing the large number of very skilled Eastern European developers to complement their home team. The world is flat.

dclusin3• 13 years ago

A lot of startups don't use offshore workers because it's a logistical nightmare. My company (not a startup) has our QA office based out of Bangalore. As an engineer who delivers things to be verified by said team this is a real pain in the ass. Sunday through thursday my evenings are basically fucked. Every night at 9pm from Sunday to Thursday we have a synch-up call so I never get the chance to make any plans during the week.

Over the years this gets really bothersome. It's usually the number one reason why people I've known at my job have found employment elsewhere. Every time I think about changing jobs, I think about the reasons why I would like to, and this is almost always the number one reason.

pkhamre• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity, why didn't you change job already?

cpursley3• 13 years ago

I obviously can't speak for your company and it's unique situation, but I'm sure there's ways to mitigate and better manage this process.

csours• 13 years ago

It is amazing to think how much progress mere inconvenience may have thwarted.

This is not to downplay the effect this coordination has had on your life. Rather this sort of thing requires deliberate planning and cognizance on the part of management / leadership / founders, not minimizing someones claims of hardship.

Iftheshoefits• 13 years ago

Language and distance barriers are costs to outsourcing those folks. I don't care how skilled a developer is, or which direction the work is going (i.e. whether it's a US startup seeking to exploit, er, employ an Eastern European or vice versa). Unless you don't care about the quality of the code, those two factors matter a lot, and should be considered with much greater weight than they typically are (in my experience, at least), because the language and distance barriers will be additional factors in potential development that deviates from the requirements.

cpursley3• 13 years ago

exploit

You just exposed the lens through which you view the world.

ohashi• 13 years ago

This is one of the fluffiest articles I've seen on here in a while.

jib• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but it sounds like a small outsourcing company like any other outsourcing company?

simonw• 13 years ago

If nothing else, this story is a fantastic example of great startup PR.

taylodl• 13 years ago

Outsourcing, of course, always saves money,

Um, no it doesn't. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Your mileage may vary. It was this thinking that led to all sorts of idiotic outsourcing deals in the early 2000s where businesses discovered there are many scenarios where outsourcing increases costs.

We've gotten a lot smarter since then but statements like this make me bristle.

awwstn• 13 years ago

This is a clever PR move by TaskUs. Rather than emailing Pando and saying "Look how popular we are", like everyone does, they said "Look how few of our many happy customers want to talk publicly about us."

Anytime you can give them something more interesting than a story about users or funding, it's more likely to be covered and more likely to resonate with readers, [edit: I think].

colinm• 13 years ago

Useless article is useless.

iblaine• 13 years ago

Apparently payola is alive & well at pandodaily.com.

smacktoward• 13 years ago

It must be nice to get Pando to give your company a big sloppy wet French kiss like this. If you're the company, that is. If you're Pando it's just embarrassing. (But then you're Pando, you're probably used to embarrassment by now.)

Maddock claims his employees get paid “above average” salaries in the Philippines for business process outsourcing (known as BPO in the Philippines) work, but he didn’t want to reveal exact numbers. He’s concerned TaskUs employees might get disgruntled to see where their salary fits in the pecking order.

This is a weirdly written paragraph. I can't tell if he means that TaskUs doesn't want to reveal salary figures because he's afraid his employees would be mad if they found out what they were paid relative to each other, or relative to other workers in BPO in the Philippines. But either way, it's not encouraging -- if he was paying fair wages, you'd expect him to be trumpeting that fact, not hiding it. So he probably isn't...

Without the numbers there’s no way to fact-check how these outsourced employees’ paychecks compare to cost of living. But the success of TaskUs seems to require that its employees are happy and fulfilled enough to do good work.

...Oh! So it turns out the numbers don't matter after all -- we can just assume from the fact the company exists that it pays its employees well.

I guess that's Journalism 2.0™.

bradleyland• 13 years ago

This is tangential to the point, but TaskUs has the best website of any "outsourcing" company I've ever encountered. Understanding (pardon) what in the fuck an outsourcing company actually does is often absurdly difficult. I don't know why it's so hard to be direct about what you do on a company website.

While the article might appear to be an obvious PR play, it really does underscore that TaskUs is taking a different messaging tack from their competitors. How many outsourcing companies eschew language like "leveraging strategic opportunities for enhanced efficiencies", and in place, cite specific examples of jobs that are being done? It's refreshing.

Startup world’s little secret: Everyone’s using TaskUs but no one is talking

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