81–90 of 258 posts
Time for a class action against Google. The whole industry could have depressed wages from their actions.
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?
Core product/infra work, and anything non-trivial, is always done by FTE's.
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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.
I've always thought the phrase "the exception that proves the rule" is nonsense, btw. There's no such "proof."
Some how it's morphed to colloquially mean "yes, that one exception aside, I'm right and you're wrong" as if the negative somehow reinforces the positive..
The phrase "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" helps understand this. The pudding may prove to be bad or good. Find which proof by eating it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've always thought the phrase "the exception that proves the rule" is nonsense, btw. There's no such "proof."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always thought the phrase "the exception that proves the rule" is nonsense, btw. There's no such "proof."
The phrase is misunderstood. Historically "Proof" is contextually meaning the nature of the test, not passing it. "failed the test"-proof has been "disproved" by this exception, which shows a belief does not generally apply. I'm not explaining this very well but a Google search will throw up better explanations. Some how it's morphed to colloquially mean "yes, that one exception aside, I'm right and you're wrong" as…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phrase is misunderstood. Historically "Proof" is contextually meaning the nature of the test, not passing it. "failed the test"-proof has been "disproved" by this exception, which shows a belief does not generally apply. I'm not explaining this very well but a Google search will throw up better explanations. Some how it's morphed to colloquially mean "yes, that one exception aside, I'm right and you're wrong" as…
jerf's explanation makes sense. The negative certainly does not reinforce the positive.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've always thought the phrase "the exception that proves the rule" is nonsense, btw. There's no such "proof."
a) the rule is a heuristic, not a hard-and-fast rule, and
b) the notability of exceptions suggests that the heuristic is pretty good.
In other words, if the exception is, in fact, exceptional, it reinforces that the heuristic is reasonably valid for non-exceptional cases.
In this case, the fact that it took the intervention of the family-friend-who-works-at-Google-HQ to resolve a pay dispute is an exceptional circumstance, and reinforces that for most people, because presumably most people don't have a family friend who works at Google HQ, there is no recourse to pay disputes.
Hence, the exception—by being exceptional—proves the heuristic rule that most employees of these contractor corps have little power to negotiate for their rights.