Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#1

Post by UncleOxidant » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

I'm regularly getting emails from contract recruiters about jobs at Intel. The pay rates are inevitably well below market rates.

For example, last week a couple of different recruiters contacted me about a compiler engineer contract job at Intel. They wanted compiler development experience, LLVM experience (including familiarity with backend optimization), excellent knowledge of GPU architecures, SIMD, vectorization, machine learning. When I asked what the rate of pay was I was told $65/hour.

Again today 2 different contract recruiters contact me about another job at Intel: 5 years C++, 5 years Linux development experience, 5 years of Python, 5 years of embedded development experience. The pay rate? $44/hour.

In both of these examples the rate of pay is about 1/2 of what you'd expect. And they wonder why they can't find people. What's going on at Intel - do they just figure they'll find someone in India or Eastern Europe to do these jobs? (for the first one it said you needed to be in the Pacific time zone or be willing to work on that schedule).

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#2

Post by towhom » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

I recall some discussion of this a while back. Someone from Intel mentioned that they were paying the contract house $150/hr so the contract house is skimming about $100/hr off the top and paying $50/hr to the contractor which seems really not right. Maybe Intel should look at working with more ethical contract houses?

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#3

Post by MattGaiser » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

Would you directly contracted by Intel or are you being run through a firm? I can see that firm having a set rate with Intel and then just wanting the cheapest person they can find to fill the position to increase their margins.

That and hardware in general seems to pay poorly. I have some friends at Synopsys and it does not pay well either.

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#4

Post by UncleOxidant » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #3

Would you directly contracted by Intel or are you being run through a firm? I can see that firm having a set rate with Intel and then just wanting the cheapest person they can find to fill the position to increase their margins. That and hardware in general seems to pay poorly. I have some friends at Synopsys and it does not pay well either.

These are firms that try to find bodies for Intel.

I've seen other companies offering much more competitive rates for embedded developers.

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#5

Post by MattGaiser » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #4

MattGaiser wrote: post #3

Would you directly contracted by Intel or are you being run through a firm? I can see that firm having a set rate with Intel and then just wanting the cheapest person they can find to fill the position to increase their margins. That and hardware in general seems to pay poorly. I have some friends at Synopsys and it does not pay well either.

These are firms that try to find bodies for Intel. I've seen other companies offering much more competitive rates for embedded developers.

So instead of companies looking for the best, companies are looking for the cheapest human they can get away with.

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#6

Post by phibz » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 12:24 AM UTC

I'm not in the hardware engineering space but in advertising and finance common languages seem to pay more: java, python, ruby javascript. In my 20 some years working I've never worked a project where my ability to code in C was a plus. Rust? They couldn't care less. I think there's just way less demand for those lower level languages.

Combine that with they might have trouble filling the position, so they out source it. Each sub, sub sub, etc contractor takes more of the pie.

You wanna make bank as a contractor? Look at cloud architecture, big data, devops, java or something important but obscure like cobol.

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#7

Post by perl4ever » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

I have been contacted by a recruiter for a job at a rather low rate, and when I searched for the language, eventually found the same description with a much higher rate stated as the maximum available.

And then I asked a 3rd degree connection on LinkedIn that worked for the purported client, and they said their company didn't use third party recruiters.

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#8

Post by UncleOxidant » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

phibz wrote: post #6

I'm not in the hardware engineering space but in advertising and finance common languages seem to pay more: java, python, ruby javascript. In my 20 some years working I've never worked a project where my ability to code in C was a plus. Rust? They couldn't care less. I think there's just way less demand for those lower level languages. Combine that with they might have trouble filling the position, so they out source…

C++ is a pretty good paying skill. I've had contract gigs at other places doing similar things to what I listed above (compiler, LLVM, C++) making $100/hr (that was 6 years ago now) so it's not like the skills aren't in demand - if anything it's going to be a lot harder to find someone with C++ and a good understanding of LLVM and compiler development than it will be to find folks with Java or Python skills. What I've noticed consistently, though, is that Intel pays contractors significantly less. (note that the compiler job above also wants some machine learning skills - definitely in demand)

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#9

Post by akudha » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

Last week, some recruiter told me the max he can pay is 75 per hour. Just for fun, I said the min I would consider is 90 (my rate is not that much). He immediately said yes. Then I found out that this was for a FAANG company, I am pretty sure he is charging much more than 90.

Point being, recruiters suck. I have no idea how much Intel pays, but I'd wager it is much more than 65, especially if they are asking for deep knowledge of the topics you mentioned.

If you can avoid recruiters, avoid them. Some of us can't, and that sucks.

Some of my delightful experiences with recruiters:

Changing my resume without my knowledge, I find out during the interview. Awkward silence between me and the interviewer.

Asking for referral fee a full six months after I was placed. My friend referred me, got the referral bonus. Six months later, this recruiter calls me up angry, asking for referral fee (why he called me instead of HR, I have no idea).

Lying (or not mentioning) about the end client, to get lower rate.

Asking for every single detail about the candidate, many of which makes zero sense. In other words, collecting as much data as possible, God knows what they use it for.

Yelling at me when I refused to take up a contract after the interview (I didn't like the place) because "You are ruining my relationship with my client"

And on and on. I know others have worse stories. I am yet to find a recruiter who genuinely cares about the people they place. It is all transaction to them, to hell with relationships and people.

Re: Why do Intel contracts pay so poorly?

#10

Post by kypro » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

akudha wrote: post #9

Last week, some recruiter told me the max he can pay is 75 per hour. Just for fun, I said the min I would consider is 90 (my rate is not that much). He immediately said yes. Then I found out that this was for a FAANG company, I am pretty sure he is charging much more than 90. Point being, recruiters suck. I have no idea how much Intel pays, but I'd wager it is much more than 65, especially if they are asking for deep…

> Last week, some recruiter told me the max he can pay is 75 per hour. Just for fun, I said the min I would consider is 90 (my rate is not that much). He immediately said yes. Then I found out that this was for a FAANG company, I am pretty sure he is charging much more than 90.

I'm from the UK so perhaps I'm missing something here, but how would the recruiter benefit from putting you forward at a lower rate? Do they not take commission as a percentage of your rate?

Here in the UK recruiters are pretty decent imo. They've helped me negotiation higher salaries and day rates in the past. They take a decent cut, but that gives them more incentive to get the best rate possible.