I don't get the down votes, nor the negativity in other threads about TopTal. Working for TopTal for a while now and it has been great. I can better rates elsewhere but I notice that clients are really expecting you to be good so the jobs are more interesting and/or you get more freedom. Also no hassle, every 2 weeks a payment.

It's cheaper to hire me directly while I would still be getting paid more but I guess a lot of people want a trusted intermediate.

Rates are negotiable but they'll naturally prefer to pay you less, like any company. Perhaps it's more interesting for people that live in countries that have relatively low wages, but you'll have to be able to converse fluently in English.

I always got the impression (maybe mistakenly) that TopTal was basically like a temp job service for tech workers. Essentially I have been under the impression that one would not be able to work for TopTal while holding down a different job, but at the same time with TopTal you would never have guaranteed work and that their rate of pay would be only in line with what a developer would get at a regular day job except being paid hourly rather than salaried, thus effectively enabling TopTal to pay below market prices.

I'm not saying any of this is fact. I'm asking for clarification since you have first hand experience.

If you're based in United States, Toptal probably isn't the best solution for you.

Otherwise, it's a completely different story.

As a developer I've used Toptal in the past and honestly, they're doing a great job. I'm based in central europe where average salary can be as low as $22,000/y. Toptal allows you to 3x-5x that easily by working 40h/week, 100% remote.

It's literally transformed hundreds of lives within my city.

There are tons of long term projects (6-12+ months), and I've never had problems finding a new project (front-end, js). Once I start looking, I expect to be working the next week.

For some, it's a great long term solution. For others who are more ambitious, it's a great stepping stone into the $70-100+/h market.

They do take a pretty big cut, but the developer is still left with tons of cash.

I dropped it after a while, because I started receiving fat offers directly from other clients, but I'd still recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a well developed client network.

Is it something though where you would have to do a normal 40 hours/week on 9 to 5 hours and so couldn't hold down your day job or are there people working a day job and then doing 20 hours of Toptal work nights and weekends?

You can definately work nights and weekends, but most people don't need to hold down their regular local jobs.

Why would you keep your local $30k/y job when you can work full-time on Toptal for $80k/y?

Toptal covers hourly (min 10h/week), part-time (20h/week), and full-time (40h/week) engagements. Some months I've worked 60h/week (on my own accord).

I have had work from anything from two days up until over a year of constant work. Being a contractor always means companies can fire you more or less at will. That's why you get paid more, there's more risk to it.

The best part is that there is rarely a dry spell. I always find my next project within a week, or two if I'm picky.

How difficult are the interviews? I talked to one guy who said that they are.

Don't worry about the interviews if you're able to have a conversation in English. The interviews are there to weed out the people that can't communicate. There are some technical tests that can be daunting, because they're a bit skewed towards algorithms. I had to take the tests twice actually because I simply wasn't able to pass it the first time, outside of the US people aren't as fixated with algorithms but I still think it's a fair test. You can retest in x months unless you really painfully screwed up some part of the hiring process.

Make sure you're properly prepared for the tests, have your environment set up. My mistake was to use a Playground for a live coding test that would completely screw itself up once the code I entered became more complex. Very painful.

I don't think they only hire the best of the best of the best but anyone that gets through their hiring process is definitely a useful programmer, no doubt.