Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers

Post by com2kid » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:09 AM UTC

ffggvv wrote: post #76

pembrook wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"huge percentage".. got any numbers to back that up? i can tell you its a single digit percent at G.

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:15 AM UTC

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…

Post by ashtonkem » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

beepbooptheory wrote: post #49

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.

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!

Post by gricardo99 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

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…

  These outside companies had minimal oversight from Google, by design. 

Post by addaon » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

6502nerdface wrote: post #130

timoth3y wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also "proof reading" and "100 proof whisky".