05 Nov 2015 Spotlight on Freelancer.com
Eight-time Webby award-winning Freelancer.com is the world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace by total number of users and projects posted. More than 17 million registered users have posted nearly 9 million projects and contests to date in over 850 areas as diverse as website development, logo design, marketing, copywriting, astrophysics, aerospace engineering and manufacturing. Freelancer owns Escrow.com, the leading provider of secure online payments and online transaction management for consumers and businesses on the Internet. Freelancer Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker ASX:FLN, with offices in Sydney, London, Manila, Buenos Aires, Jakarta, and Vancouver.
1. Describe your company and your primary product(s) and/or service(s).
Freelancer.com is the world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace by the total number of users and projects posted. We connect over 17 million employers and freelancers globally from over 247 countries, regions and territories.
Through our marketplace, employers hire freelancers to work in areas such as software development, writing, data entry and design right through to engineering, the sciences, sales and marketing, accounting and legal services.
2. How many employees currently work at your company?
We employ 430 people globally, the vast majority of these are Software Engineers and Data Scientists, or hybrids of both.
3. Where are you located?
Our Vancouver office is Downtown at 650 West Georgia Street; however, we also have offices in Sydney, London, Manila, Buenos Aires, and Jakarta, and encourage staff to work abroad should they wish.
4. Describe the culture at your company.
At our heart, we are a product-focused and data-driven engineering company and we work within a meritocracy where initiative, innovation and, most importantly, execution are highly respected. We run the platform using smart algorithms and machine learning to make the product itself part of our overall process of continual improvement. Our dashboard of over 6000 graphs is fully open to all employees which is important as we decentralise the command and control of the company
We also provide a nice environment to work in, with all the usual tech company perks and more; however, we will not prioritise these perks first. Our culture is defined by the above reasons, which resonates much more than ‘hey, here’s free beer’ (which of course we also have).
5. What does your leadership team (and company as a whole) do to support/grow that culture?
From top-down to bottom-up we are software engineers – our CEO works alongside our Interns pushing code and building our products. Our leaders ensure zero bureaucracy and no roadblocks, everyone is pushing code and making decisions.
6. When your employees talk about your company, what do they brag about?
We brag about our products, they genuinely change lives. We allow businesses of all levels to thrive and we provide opportunity and income to people all over the planet. We have over 2 million Facebook fans and they comment regularly about how we have saved their businesses or how they have housed their families because of what we do. It is so rewarding.
7. Describe your most recent achievement, milestone, reason for bragging rights.
This summer we partnered with NASA. They have used our products to crowdsource designs for new tools to be used on the International Space Station, a smartwatch app designed to be used by their astronauts and other creative solutions to build enhanced communication tools from the ground to the ISS.
This has also allowed members of the public (users of our site) to brag about how they have built products now being used by NASA in space. It is so exciting for everyone.
8. What kinds of roles are you hiring for?
We are looking for the world’s best polyglot Software Engineers, Data Scientists, Product Managers, DevOps Engineers, Mathematicians, Physicists and Rocket Scientists. Please visit www.freelancer.com/careers for any global opportunities.
9. What kinds of people are you looking for?
40% of our team are PhD’s, 30% are university medalists – we employ the brightest people on the planet. We also have one of the world’s most successful cash game poker players. Anyone with fierce intelligence and ability will be welcome. Surrounding yourself with brilliant people every day is truly enjoyable.
10. What is your company goal for the coming year?
Become the next great tech unicorn. Look at our market cap, we are so close!
To learn more about Freelancer, visit them online at www.freelancer.ca
If you’d like us to shine the spotlight on your company, email hello@wearebctech.com today!