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Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

theguardian.com

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Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#91

Post by [deleted] »

RIMR wrote: post #32
ashtonkem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I keep saying: there’s nothing more dangerous than a company (or department in this case) that was once wildly profitable and is now merely profitable. It’s absurd that even at places like Google, which has effectively infinite money, there’s still this present attitude of not being able to afford paying workers. Nuts.

It's not that they don't think they can afford to pay fairly. It's that the decision makers are incentivized to cut every possible cost and are rewarded for it with multimillion dollar bonuses.

[deleted]

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#92

Post by ashtonkem »

pembrook wrote: post #80
epc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess it could be a practice that started when companies still gave out pensions. 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 li…

My suspicion is that it’s a way to dodge labor laws.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#94

Post by m-ee »

ffggvv wrote: post #57
pembrook wrote: post #52

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

I interviewed with the self driving car team while it was still part of google X. I was told that every single employee on the team started out as a contractor, people would be converted to full time on a first come first serve basis, usually about a year and a half in. There was no path to jumping straight to FTE according to the hiring manager.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#97

Post by lotsofpulp »

Cederfjard wrote: post #86
AlbertCory wrote: post #37

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…

Sorry, I’m not following. Which company did the HR rep belong to? Which company did the ”corporate toadies” belong to? Perhaps I’m just confused how you were able to have such a direct influence on the internal goings on of a supposedly independent company.

The story does not make sense to me either. Google’s HR should surely know better than to get involved in a labor issue at company they contracted with and claiming are not google employees.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#98

Post by johannes1234321 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #37

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…

Probably HR did the math how to protect the company. A legal case is bad for reputation and might inspire others. Paying quietly is cheap.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#99

Post by pembrook »

arve0 wrote: post #68
pembrook wrote: post #52

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…

> 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? Because it’s the mix that is advantageous, not either one (employees only vs contractors only).

Is there any data or studies to back that up though?

My guess is, like most of the norms and practices of corporate America, the answer is "We do things that way because other companies do things that way."

Kind of like the hilarious herd-like back-and-forth of these corporate back to office policies.

CEO: "Apple's going back to the office in September? Ok we should too! Send out the press release Karen!"

Karen: "Sir, Apple just pushed back to January."

CEO: "Then we should too! Send out a new press release, STAT!"

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#100

Post by throwawaylinux »

pengaru wrote: post #48

Never forget: if slavery weren't illegal there would be no shortage of slave owners.

There are no shortage of slave owners today. Just not so much in western countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maps_Global_Slavery_Index...

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