71–80 of 258 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not really "dangerous" only because that wording implies another state of possible affairs that could be safer. unfortunately, ceteris paribus, the tendency of a rate of profit to ultimately slow is one of the costs of a free market, there is not really a way out of it long term!
Where is this thing called "Free Market"?
Sounds like they were caught red handed, mens rea and all. Any chance this ends up with serious repercussions like prison time?
The fines and judgement they paid were but a tiny fraction of the cumulative wages they stole. The lesson was that wage theft is profitable.
Until we start imposing a corporate death penalty in situations like this there will be no reason for companies to not simply do the economic calculation and decide the defrauding their employees is the right thing to do for their bottom line, one that can be optimized by lowering the risk of prosecution by better obscuring the crime or building up a legal team that can tie up the largest of nation states in court for decades.
My question is, if it's so advantageous to employ people via onsite staffing firms (basically half of FAANG's workforce is employed this way), why doesn't Google stop directly employing people altogether? Without fail, if it's a giant publicly-traded company, a huge percentage of the workforce will always be onsite vendors. It seems so bizarrely arbitrary where they decide to hire direct vs. contract. And I'm not tal…
the engineers etc i’ve worked with that were contractors were far worse and way below normal google hiring bar. sorry if that’s not PC but it’s the truth. if they could get hired at actual google they would’ve done it. hell, if they could get hired as a SWE at a comparable firm they would do that instead of taking a massive pay cut to be a contractor
And that still doesn't answer the question--why hire anybody directly at all?
If you're so much better than the other contractors, they could just pay you higher rates. It'd be the same thing.
Personal Googler story: In Ads and in Search, at least as of 2010 or so, Google employed independent companies who hired "raters" to provide "ground truth" for the ML systems. For example, they would rate proposed ads for a given query, so that the ML system could learn from their "truth". For Search, they'd rate proposed search results for a given query. There was a whole pipeline to bring in the raters' results and…
That's kind of the exception that proves the rule, you think?
That is, your outlining of the situation gives a strong suggestion that this sort of thing is common and unless the contractor has pull (say, a relative that works at Google), they can't do anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the engineers etc i’ve worked with that were contractors were far worse and way below normal google hiring bar. sorry if that’s not PC but it’s the truth. if they could get hired at actual google they would’ve done it. hell, if they could get hired as a SWE at a comparable firm they would do that instead of taking a massive pay cut to be a contractor
That begs the question: why is Google using subpar developers? It's hard to imagine there just not being any better ones, and it probably isn't a money issue. Are they so against having good old employees?
I wouldn't waste a google dev's on grunt work that any coder could do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the engineers etc i’ve worked with that were contractors were far worse and way below normal google hiring bar. sorry if that’s not PC but it’s the truth. if they could get hired at actual google they would’ve done it. hell, if they could get hired as a SWE at a comparable firm they would do that instead of taking a massive pay cut to be a contractor
That's ironic then, because a huge percentage of the full-time employees at FAANG are actually former contractors who've been converted. So that would suggest a large chunk of their full-time employees are sub-par. And that still doesn't answer the question--why hire anybody directly at all? If you're so much better than the other contractors, they could just pay you higher rates. It'd be the same thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Section 2 makes it an offence to commit fraud by false representation in any form. For a representation to be false, the representation being made must be wrong or misleading, and the person making it must know that it is, or might be, wrong or misleading.[0] I think it is reasonable to presume that by paying it's contractors, Google and by virtue it's executive team was representing to said contractor that they we…
>costing potentially tens of thousands of people life changing amounts of money Have any numbers on this implication? How much is life changing in your opinion? Is there evidence this many people were shorted near that amount? It's hard to imagine that local wages are life changing for those "potentially tens of thousands of people" but paying market clearing wages would be significantly different.
Personal Googler story: In Ads and in Search, at least as of 2010 or so, Google employed independent companies who hired "raters" to provide "ground truth" for the ML systems. For example, they would rate proposed ads for a given query, so that the ML system could learn from their "truth". For Search, they'd rate proposed search results for a given query. There was a whole pipeline to bring in the raters' results and…
I can't make any general statements about what happens to everyone, but in this particular case, I can't complain at all about HR's handling. That's kind of the exception that proves the rule , you think? That is, your outlining of the situation gives a strong suggestion that this sort of thing is common and unless the contractor has pull (say, a relative that works at Google), they can't do anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the mechanism by which an entity that has the resources to spend on wrist-slaps is prevented from just continuing the behavior forever? I notice this a lot, and it feels like there are these opportunities everywhere that are exploited by corporations who know they'll skate every time with minimal financial impact.
Agreed. Executives need to start getting personal punishment if we want corporate behavior to change. Alternatively, start issuing fines such that it’s X percent of revenue plus Y percent of salary from all employees. Even a fine of 1% of annual pay would light a big angry fire under most employees, and perhaps incentivize them to stand up to the execs and refuse to follow illegal or unethical decisions.
They're fined indirectly with stock prices already, but man is your idea really bad.
My question is, if it's so advantageous to employ people via onsite staffing firms (basically half of FAANG's workforce is employed this way), why doesn't Google stop directly employing people altogether? Without fail, if it's a giant publicly-traded company, a huge percentage of the workforce will always be onsite vendors. It seems so bizarrely arbitrary where they decide to hire direct vs. contract. And I'm not tal…
There’s a perverse distaste for hiring FTE for bland, routine work or to fill roles that have year to year volatility. Microsoft was notorious for this in the 1980s and early 1990s. If you were a superstar programmer you got offered a full time job as an employee. If you were “just” a technical writer you’d go through the same recruiting process but get offered a contract through a third party. From 1994-1999 I ran i…
Pensions were a massive burden (just look at the auto companies who still have massive pension liabilities), so it probably made a lot of sense back then.
But now that corporate America has eliminated pensions in favor of 401ks, the contractor/employee juggling just seems wildly inefficient for anybody who's not a janitor.
It feels like now its just a case of the sheep following the herd, for no one reason anymore.
Anybody I talk to about this gives a nebulous response that basically amounts to "Hell if I know, that's just the way everybody does it!"