This will solve 3 of the biggest problems with freelancer sites
1) Not knowing who to choose for the job, I'd rather a good matchmaker just get me someone who can do my task
2) Lack of instant communication, clients get uneasy when programmers don't respond.
3) Negotiating a price point takes too long because of the infrequency of interaction
My experiences with them have been great on all these metrics. I've worked with them as a dev and referred a few happy friends. Email's in my profile if you'd like to hear more.
How are they in that regard, and overall?
In my 20 years, I've never not been able to ask a client or PM or end user for clarification on what they mean, but what I took from toptal is that you'll be expected to work under those conditions.
It certainly weeds people out, and the whole "we'd rather weed good people out than let bad people in" mentality is probably understandable, it just rather felt like a "one size fits all approach".
Interestingly, looking at their site now, I read "we do not tolerate sub-par work or poor communication for any reason." Except, of course, when taking their entrance tests - no communication for clarification there. FWIW, tests were from codility.com
Otherwise, I've always found Toptal personal; even the next algo interview (a Skype-based one) was pleasant and friendly. Just one person's limited experience, though =)
I'll amend that - I had about a 5 minute conversation with someone pleasant at the very start who set up the web test.
Again, I get the idea of trying to weed people out, and this probably just comes across as sour grapes as I didn't make the cut. The tests just felt rather too abstract and nothing like any work I've done across multiple industries, company sizes and teams. I guess to someone who's (recently?) taken computer science courses, it's a walk in the park, and having never taken CS classes, I'm out of the running.
Indeed.
"Engineers will work during the preferred hours of the clients."
"For example, if the in-house engineers start their workday at 11am PST, our Eastern European Toptal engineers can often start working at 7pm EET and work through the night if that's what the client needs."
Requiring their engineers to sacrifice their health and personal life in this way sounds insane.