Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors

I worked for a couple of staffing companies in the Washington D.C. area in my twenties and reflecting back I view it as a mistake (or at least tough learning experience for a naive college grad). Ultimately, dead-end jobs like these prolonged my journey to landing a job as a developer with a company that actually valued me and treated me with respect.

I ground through contractor jobs because I told myself two lies:

#1. “This is not an ideal situation, but I’m an optimist and will make the best of it.”. Wrong, the truth is that I approached the company and took the job. I may have been a little inexperienced in the ways of the world but I knew full well that these were dead-end jobs. The limitations for potential personal growth, or professional advancement, were clearly documented in the onboarding process. Finding a good job is a real undertaking, requires some luck, and doesn’t have a fixed timeline. Something I also didn’t consider is the impression I would give to future employers later down the road when I listed a staffing company on my resume. It’s funny that a less confident version of myself found so much optimism when considering powering through a bad situation, but I couldn’t spare any of that optimism if I dreamed of reaching for something higher.

#2. “I’m a hard worker and I’ll survive the layoffs through merit”. Wrong, the truth is that the vast majority of the contractors I worked with were eventually laid off (or resigned) and I don’t think poorly of them for it. In fact, the few buddies that I have kept in touch with all eventually moved on to better things. I found the paths they chose after leaving to be inspiring. They took on more challenging jobs, started graduate school, moved to another city, etc. I on the other hand quietly worked off the clock on nights and weekends to mitigate my chances of being laid off. At the time, I told myself that I was acting out of virtue, but really it was fear. My strategy carried me for a long time, but eventually the psychological impact of being treated as a second rate human being caught up to me.

Just sharing my own personal reflections on a very specific set of experiences in case someone finds themselves with similar thoughts.

That is how it is if you are a contractor working for any tech company.

The actual shitty part about being a "contractor" is you are almost always a W2 for the contracting firm. Which means you get none of the benefits of actually being a real contractor. As a 1099 you can:

* Deduct (and potentially charge for) a ton of shit like travel expenses, hardware, software, internet, phones, home office, etc

* Set up a SEP IRA which lets you contribute 25% of your salary up to $58,000. This is far more than what you can contribute to an employer sponsored 401k (though as a W2 your employer can top your 401k to the same limit)

* Bill as high of a rate as you can get away with

* Easily work multiple gigs at once

* Use your own tools.

* It's your own business, literally. So act like it!

The drawbacks to a 1099 are:

* You are your own collection agency. Some clients are very slow to pay you.

* You have to pay your own social security and stuff

* You pay full freight for healthcare

* You are not entitled to unemployment

* Taxes get a little more complex

* You are a "flake" in the eyes of a bank... so getting loans for houses and stuff is a little harder.

As a W2 working through a bodyshop you get:

* Paid weekly no matter how slow their client is paying

* They provide you equipment... no matter how shitty it is

* Maybe some kind of shitty healthcare offering that disqualifies you from buying your own plan and deducting it on your taxes

* Maybe some kind of shitty retirement plan that disqualifies you from contributing pre-tax money to your own IRA

* You can collect unemployment. Helpful for that 6 month break.

* You get paid at a substantially lower rate than whatever they are billing the client.

* You are a cog in a machine.

I have personal friends that joined MS during this era. They were told by their managers, off record of course, exactly how to game WA unemployment during their 6 months on, 3 months off, contracting years. They were doing stuff like flying to Mexico for 3 months, then filing false job application progress notifications to unemployment from their laptop on the beach.

The root problem here is that sophisticated businesses can game what should be straight forward worker protections. The MS case is a bandaid. The problem is the erosion of labor rights and negotiating power that's been a decades long trend in the US.