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Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

theguardian.com

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Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#101

Post by lotsofpulp »

ashtonkem wrote: post #92
pembrook wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not defined benefit pensions or labor laws. It is cheaper to scale up and down expenses instead of firing people due to unemployment insurance premiums increasing when you lay people off due to lack of work who are then eligible for unemployment benefits. Also, benefits can get expensive if you also have to offer them to lower paid employees if they normally would not be able to get them at a different employer, due to non discrimination testing.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#103

Post by rcpt »

ffggvv wrote: post #75
luckylion wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

sometimes you just need someone who can write super simple scripts to help process/clean some data or do grunt work that none of the devs want to do. And sometimes this need is just temporary for 4 months etc. I wouldn't waste a google dev's on grunt work that any coder could do.

> who can write super simple scripts to help process/clean some data

If you can figure how to make that process "super simple" you can make staff engineer. Source: am L5 SWE at Google spending most of time wrangling unclean data

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#104

Post by gscott »

rastafang wrote: post #95
pengaru wrote: post #48

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

slavery is legal, but it is regulated, somewhat.

Now you can just call your slaves independent contractors who set their own time but have to have a certain percentage of performance to get paid.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#105

Post by Tenoke »

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…

I've worked for one of those companies and I don't understand this. It was about paying them for just a test problem? During an interview presumably? And you got involved with them through HR even given how completely separate they are?

On the actual jobs you get so many timed tasks that a single one wouldn't even stand out, really.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#106

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #78
joe_the_user wrote: post #74

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."

It's so misused most of the time. The clearest, correct example of it I've seen is a sign that says "No Parking from 10PM to 5AM". This is an exception to the otherwise unstated rule that parking is allowed during all other times, therefore proving it exists.

I disagree with most of the commenters that want to apply the phrase to heuristic claims.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#107

Post by AlbertCory »

zamfi wrote: post #90
AlbertCory wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought the phrase "the exception that proves the rule" is nonsense, btw. There's no such "proof."

I think the intent behind the modern usage of "the exception that proves the rule" is that: 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…

Another commonly misused phrase is "begging the question" which you have done here. It means "assuming that which you need to prove."

You have no proof that it was exceptional. All you have is one case. You have no idea what other people in pay disputes end up doing.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#108

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

walshemj wrote: post #7

Rather odd as in the UK id expect to get paid a lot more as a contractor for the same roll as a FTE. A bit of "schadenfreude " that clerical jobs in HR are some of the one in the UK Update Having said that I was underpaid as full timer when I worked for a BT subsidiary back in the day and the HR director was a "piece of work"

> expect to get paid a lot more as a contractor for the same roll as a FTE

In general, there are no FTE positions at the big-name companies themselves for Mechanical Turk-like gigs like these: high-turnover and churn is expected because the work is so monotonous. It’s all contracted-out to “body-shops” (like TEKSystems, etc) who have a roster of their own FTEs who are then seconded to the host company (Google, Microsoft, etc). They then get rotated out based on the company’s time limit (Microsoft’s was 18 months, I think?) assuming they don’t burn-out or quit before then.

This is also where Facebook and YouTube get their content moderators from.

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#109

Post by abdabab »

ashtonkem wrote: post #27
threatofrain wrote: post #3

> Google executives have been aware since at least May 2019 that the company was failing to comply with local laws in the UK, Europe and Asia that mandate temporary workers be paid equal rates to full-time employees performing similar work, internal Google documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian show. > But rather than immediately correct the errors, the company dragged its feet for more than two years, the doc…

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.

Maybe you were talking about other companies. Google is still wildly profitable.

> the company just set an all-time record revenue of $61.9 billion this quarter, and record profits for the fourth quarter in a row at $18.5 billion.

From https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22596592/google-q2-2021-r...

Re: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

#110

Post by timoth3y »

AlbertCory wrote: post #78
joe_the_user wrote: post #74

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."

The word "prove" used to also encompass the meaning of "challenge" or "put to the test".

It still retains that archaic meaning in the phrase you mentioned and terms like "proving grounds".

Edit:

And like so many other proverbs like "A few bad apples", "Blood is thicker than water", "Carpe diem", "The exception proves the rule" means exactly the opposite of what most people think it does.

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