Crossover (remote hiring platform)

Jeremy SternJeremy SternJeremy Stern is a journalist, editor and podcast host. As editor-in-chief of Colossus, he writes long-form profiles of technology entrepreneurs and investors. He previously served in the U.S. Army, worked as a senior State Department adviser and held editorial roles at Tablet.Open the full entry’s long article in ColossusColossusColossus is a business and investing media company founded by Patrick O’Shaughnessy in 2020. It publishes podcasts, digital journalism and a print magazine, including Invest Like the Best, Business Breakdowns and programs made with independent creators.Open the full entry writes that after ESW Capital began replacing the U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry staff of acquired software companies with overseas contractors, Joe Liemandt went on to start the platform, which began as a LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry account and puts recruits through remote tests of intelligence and competence similar to those pioneered at Trilogy University.⁠[1]

Andrew Allen, the platform’s vice president of content marketing, said in a 2022 interview that the company has worked on removing the barriers to remote work since 2014. ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry wrote in 2018 that the platform’s chief executive, Andy Tryba, had been Joe Liemandt’s right-hand man since 2014, after 14 years in sales at IntelIntelIntel is a semiconductor company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in 1968; it introduced the 4004 microprocessor in 1971, its x86 processors have long powered personal computers, it has pursued a foundry strategy since 2021, and Lip-Bu Tan has been its chief executive officer since 2025.Open the full entry and service as an adviser to President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaBarack Obama (born 1961) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, the first African American to hold the office. He was previously an Illinois state senator and a U.S. senator from Illinois, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.Open the full entry’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.⁠[2][3]

Forbes wrote in 2018 that Alejandra Marquez worked from her home in Buenos Aires in 2015 finding coders for the platform; she said people “would do anything to get a U.S. dollar job,” and of the tracking software, “You don’t have any privacy.”⁠[3]

Forbes wrote that Alan Jhonnes worked from his home in Brazil for a year as a chief architect through the platform, earning $50 an hour on work for ESW’s Aurea; he said that webcam tracking, which his manager had switched off, later had to be turned on—“It bothered me because sometimes I am with my wife here”—and that “It was impossible to meet the metrics within 40 hours”; the article says he quit that June and took another job.⁠[3]

On October 30, 2018, Running Remote published an episode page featuring the platform’s chief executive Andy Tryba, covering his vision for remote work, his goal of finding “the very best talent on the globe” for companies, and building culture across a distributed team.⁠[4]

On November 19, 2018, Forbes published Nathan Vardi’s article whose headline speaks of a tech billionaire, Joe Liemandt in the article, who created “A Global Software Sweatshop.” It describes the platform, with offices on the 26th floor of the Frost Bank Tower in Austin, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry, as the recruiting wing of ESW Capital, with some 5,000 workers in 131 countries, from Ukraine to Pakistan to Egypt; its chief executive Andy Tryba was also chief executive of 12 ESW companies. The platform had no interest in full-time employees, seeking instead contract workers able to commit to a 40- or 50-hour week, who worked from their homes or even local cafes.⁠[3]

In the article Andy Tryba said, “The world is going to a cloud wage,” and put the going cloud wage for a C++ programmer at $15 an hour, the same as AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry paid its warehouse workers; the article notes that his promotional YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry video had 61,717 views.⁠[3]

On June 30, 2020, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published an article by Bennett Cyphers and Karen Gullo on workplace monitoring software that cites WorkSmart as an example of visible monitoring: its maker compares it to “a fitness tracker for computer work,” and workers can see the system’s conclusions about their own activity in graphs and charts.⁠[5]

On April 28, 2022, Comparably published an interview with Andrew Allen, the platform’s vice president of content marketing. Allen said the platform received about 55,000 applications a week, and that one role he had applied for drew about 26,000 applications; applicants go through many rounds of testing, and one of the first things they must do is a cognitive aptitude test, in which those who do not score in the 95th percentile are out. He said the model “comes from the idea that great people come from everywhere” and described a lean structure with an emphasis on “No BS.”⁠[2]

On February 22, 2024, Veriff, an identity verification company, published an interview with Andrew Allen, the platform’s vice president of marketing. It says the platform recruits remote workers mainly for the technology sector, hiring for “some of the world’s leading digital innovators,” and works with Veriff to verify applicants’ identities; the platform had encountered fraud such as outsourcing job tasks and moonlighting in several jobs at once, and Allen said that without verification “our business model would collapse in days.”⁠[6]

Andrew Allen hosts the platform’s bi-weekly Out of Office podcast. Episode 69, published on August 15, 2024, revisited several people hired through the platform, based in Nigeria, Brazil, Chile and Pakistan; Andrew Allen writes in the episode that Xavier, formerly a taxi driver in Chile, now makes 16 times the median wage, and that another, Guilherme Colombo of Brazil, is vice president of strategy and operations at Trilogy Software. The episode says they passed the CCAT, the job skills tests and the structured interview.⁠[6][7]

Colossus wrote in 2025 that the platform had become “the world’s largest recruiter of remote full-time jobs,” and that it sets pay “based on global value, not the local market,” in tiers of $60,000, $100,000, $200,000 and $400,000, always in U.S. dollars.⁠[1]

As of November 2026, www.crossover.com redirects to ed.crossover.com, which describes itself as a global recruitment company specializing in AI-powered U.S. schools and says more than ten schools use it to recruit education staff; the schools and organizations it lists include 2 Hour Learning2 Hour Learning2 Hour Learning is a U.S. education technology company offering an AI learning platform, and the name of its teaching model, under which students spend about two hours a day on core academics with AI software and the rest of the day on life skills and other activities; the model is used by private schools such as Alpha School and by Unbound Academy, a virtual charter school in Arizona.Open the full entry, Alpha, GT School, Texas Sports Academy, NextGen Academy, Alpha Anywhere, Unbound Academy, Nova Academy, Waypoint Academy, Montessorium, LearnWith.AI, Write of Passage and Prequel. The site says it has more than 100 open roles, with a selection process of a chat-style screening interview, a cognitive aptitude test, a real-world job-skills test, a remote hiring-manager interview, a proctored test and a final on-campus interview and offer.⁠[8]

As of November 2026, the Trilogy Software website says that every one of its hires is sourced through the platform, recruiting the top 1% of professionals worldwide, all working 100% remotely.⁠[9]

Forbes wrote in 2018 that software engineers with about two years’ experience made $15 an hour, software architects with about five years $30 an hour, and chief software architects with about eight years $50 an hour, about $100,000 a year on a 40-hour week, compared with starting pay of about $130,000 for new GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry programmers as given by Payscale. Contractors received no paid vacation, healthcare benefits or bonuses, were not issued company PCs, and had to report and pay taxes in their local jurisdictions.⁠[3]

Andrew Allen said in the 2022 interview that hiring companies set a value for each position and the person hired is paid that amount regardless of location or prior experience, which he called “completely equitable pay across the entire company.”⁠[2]

Forbes wrote that the platform administers tests to determine whether a recruit can handle the work, and that new recruits often spend days in an online boot camp that standardizes workflows.⁠[3]

Forbes wrote in 2018 that contractors must install WorkSmart, which counts mouse clicks and keystrokes, takes screenshots every ten minutes and in some cases snaps photos from PC webcams; Andy Tryba called it “a Fitbit for how you work,” and a company spokesperson said all contractors authorize the use of the tracking software.⁠[3]

Colossus wrote that WorkSmart grew out of Trilogy Software’s practice of recording overseas workers’ screens to prevent fraud, and that it lets the platform collect workflow data and track each worker’s productivity; every contractor agrees in advance to have WorkSmart installed on their device.⁠[1]

Crossover: Official website: https://www.crossover.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Crossover4Work (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crossover (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@crossover4work (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/crossover4work/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/crossoverforwork (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

Trilogy Software: Official website: https://www.trilogy.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[9]