51–60 of 163 posts
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Also permanent guys get to support contractors' code, which adds an insult to an injury.
On the flip side, contractors have to sort out the mess that permanent guys have made.
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It's fun to poke fun at the system we have in the US, but we're doing fairly well from a numbers standpoint. Our GDP is fantastic, our median income is quite good, and we still manufacture a bunch of stuff. China didn't actually start to manufacture more than us until just a few years ago, and they have something like three times the population. People say the middle class is shrinking, but seldom mention that the nu…
Numbers are only useful in relative terms. Median is going up, but so is the income and wealth gap. What most people look to achieve in their life is security. Security of resources, water, food, electricity, and physical safety. People want the security of being able to plan for a future, a family, education for their children, seeing their children and children's children move ahead in the world. What GDP and media…
To be absolutely clear - the system isn't perfect and could use improvements. My post was merely to point out that we're not only not doomed but are doing fairly well.
We have hungry people, but we don't have people dying of hunger in the streets. We have crappy medical coverage, but we have some of the best practices in the world - and horribly unaffordable emergency treatment that will probably financially ruin you. We have both wealthy and poor, but our poor are rather wealthy on the global scale.
It's not perfect, there's room to make improvements, but it's not really that terrible and the doom and gloom predictions haven't changed since the 80s. They've barely changed since the 60s. I can't speak for earlier than that, I wasn't cognizant.
Society isn't breaking down. The kids are as reckless as they ever were and old people complain about them as they always have. There isn't going to be a revolution, class warfare isn't going to erupt into violent confrontations on a mass scale, and nobody is going to eat the rich.
Call me when they are hanging bankers and politicians from lamp posts. It's not perfect but it's not horrible. It's actually pretty good for the average person. Even the below average have it pretty good if we examine them from the perspective of a global community.
Our poor people get more monthly food assistance than some people spend on food for an entire year. Not that we should emulate them, but we should stand back and admit that it's not that bad and acknowledge that the many predictions of doom have been grossly inaccurate.
Can we improve? Of course, and we should. Only insane people would think the system is perfect and can't be improved. I'm fact, the only differences I see between groups of people are the things they want to improve. I don't think anyone seriously believes it is currently ideal.
It's just not that terrible for the average person. You don't start getting massive uprisings with serious revolution potential until those average people can't get their football and beer.
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Is contracting in the US the same thing as contracting in the UK? The article doesn't seem to explain what a contractor is.
I have no idea! I get the impression that contracting in the US, at least in tech firms, is a lot less lucrative.
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Also permanent guys get to support contractors' code, which adds an insult to an injury.
On the flip side, contractors have to sort out the mess that permanent guys have made.
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This is my experience in the UK. After a little under a decade in SWE I've consistently seen contractors grossing about 3x the salary of full time employees, with little prospects of "promotion" for engineers without changing employer.
> contractors grossing about 3x the salary of full time employees I dunno where you're seeing that but in the circles I move in, no-one is getting even 75% of 3xEFTE. More like 45-50% of 3xEFTE. (EFTE = Equivalent FTE. Obviously new FTEs cost a lot less.)
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> contractors grossing about 3x the salary of full time employees I dunno where you're seeing that but in the circles I move in, no-one is getting even 75% of 3xEFTE. More like 45-50% of 3xEFTE. (EFTE = Equivalent FTE. Obviously new FTEs cost a lot less.)
Central London contractors can have daily rates of 400/500 easily. That's an equivalent salary of £90k+
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(Warning: this post contains personal opinions and analysis, some of which might be deemed political.) There are really two classes of 'contract work' in the US. The first class is what I'd call skilled specialists. These are your independent marketing consultants, security experts, developers, designers, copywriters, etc. These folks are usually, but not always, fairly experienced. They take up contracting or consul…
It's fun to poke fun at the system we have in the US, but we're doing fairly well from a numbers standpoint. Our GDP is fantastic, our median income is quite good, and we still manufacture a bunch of stuff. China didn't actually start to manufacture more than us until just a few years ago, and they have something like three times the population. People say the middle class is shrinking, but seldom mention that the nu…
In the context of this subthread, which you have missed entirely, I am explaining to someone outside the US what's led to the rise of the contract labor force here in the US, and providing a framework by which we might view the different types of contract labor in our industry. That is all I am doing. That is the whole, fairly narrow subject of my post.
Yes, I'm pointing some fingers in very specific directions where blame is due. I'm hardly denouncing the whole US system, or even the whole financial culture, and I'm hardly throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To be clear, neither is the Wharton professor in the interview we are ostensibly here to discuss.
You have also failed to cite a single number, which is ironic, given the crux of your post. You have provided a broad sweep of claims without citation or data. Put some specific numbers on the table if you're going to make them the basis of your argument. (And hopefully someone else can take you up on that argument, because once again, it's not at all the argument my post seeks to open. If you want to bait me into some broad argument about whether or not the US system is superior to the European or Chinese or Turkish or Brazilian or whatever system, I am not interested in taking the bait.)
Going forward, I'd appreciate if you actually took the time to read what I am saying in the context in which I am saying it. Instead, you seem to have latched onto my use of the words "MBA" and "Reagan" and possibly "Europe," and have thus attempted to beat me in some imaginary debate on a point I didn't even make. If all you're here to do is torch strawmen, you won't find many interested takers.
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On the flip side, contractors have to sort out the mess that permanent guys have made.
Unfortunately for every qualified contractor you have 20 clueless people hired from some body shop who make a mess of things. Good contractors are a rare breed.
I've been contracting five years, and the state of software engineering seems woeful in the small and medium sized countries of the UK.
Its always struck me as odd that Contractors in IT in the USA don't get the premium you do in the UK. I would expect 3x my FTE rate as a self employed contractor and that's before the better tax treatment even after the reforms to tax on dividends.
From what I read, it looks to me like actually, in the UK, it's permanent workers which have pretty poor salary for the IT market.