411–420 of 645 posts
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> which may be limited in a remote work environment. That "may" is carrying a lot of weight there. Almost makes it sound like a fact, while in fact being merely an unsupported opinion.
It’s also the conclusion that meta made after hiring remotely during Covid and observing how that went
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Nope, not even close to true in my experience. Almost all of the high performers I know have a huge social network they can tap into and you can't finger them as SWEs from a mile away.
Do these high performers also cast their colleagues with tasteful adjectives such as "abject"? Must be a bunch of very interesting people indeed.
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So if they want to trim costs and not do that it would be better if they hired no-one? It is the same with undocumented workers. Would it better if they were deported than to be denied benefits afforded to citizens?
By that logic it's always fine for companies to get around labour protections. Yes, it would be better if they hired no-one. When your job conditions are beneath human dignity, you don't get to hire people for that job, even if that means your stock price doesn't grow quite as much and GDP is lower this year.
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It sounds truly awful. In Australia we have laws protecting de facto FTEs. We even have laws mandating that co tractors must add extra to invoices to cover their Pension fund contributions! They have to charge this by law!
Do we? Could you describe the law? I don't think we have much protection for these types of labour hirec(as we'd call them in Aus) arrangements
[1] https://www.fairwork.gov.au/sites/default/files/migration/72...
[2] https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/national-e...
The "red badge" thing was very real. It was really weird having TVCs on your team. You'd all work hard together to launch a thing, and then everybody except the red badge would get a celebratory team tchotchke or a team lunch or something. If you asked about it, the manager would say "we can't give Jim things directly because that might be like compensation and they'd be like an employee." There'd be all-hands meetin…
thank you for mentioning this. i was a red badge. it was fucking demeaning. i have a lot of stories, but my favorite was when everyone on my floor got an earthquake safety kit except me. literally google didn't care if i lived or died. the expectation was that if i sucked up enough ("demonstrated my value") they MIGHT make me a real boy, like some bizarre Velveteen Rabbit fetish game. i loved watching how Google woul…
This was in the days of cubes, and contractors got the ones that were two folks per cube and there were other things.
Some of us did get hired and became "real". But the concerns that led to this kind of treatment were quite real.
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thank you for mentioning this. i was a red badge. it was fucking demeaning. i have a lot of stories, but my favorite was when everyone on my floor got an earthquake safety kit except me. literally google didn't care if i lived or died. the expectation was that if i sucked up enough ("demonstrated my value") they MIGHT make me a real boy, like some bizarre Velveteen Rabbit fetish game. i loved watching how Google woul…
It sounds truly awful. In Australia we have laws protecting de facto FTEs. We even have laws mandating that co tractors must add extra to invoices to cover their Pension fund contributions! They have to charge this by law!
1. Person directly employed on an ongoing basis. The employer pays all insurances, professional memberships and generally contributes to the professional development of the employee.
2. Person directly employed on a fixed-term basis. The employer must offer employment on an ongoing basis if the employee has been engaged for a certain period of time. The employer pays all insurances, professional memberships and generally responsible for professional development of the employee (but generally more limited than what is available to employees under option (1)).
3. Person contracted from a consulting firm, where the consulting firm directly employs the person on an ongoing basis. Once one client engagement ends, the consulting firm try to place the person with a different client as quickly as possible, and will keep paying the person during this process. The consulting firm pays all insurances, professional memberships and generally responsible for professional development of the employee.
4. Person contracted from a labour hire firm, where the labour hire firm directly employs the person on a _casual_ fixed-term basis. The labour hire firm may be required to offer employment on an ongoing basis if the employee has been engaged for a certain period of time with a regular pattern of work apparent. The employee doesn't have to accept (and it typically wouldn't be in the persons or labour hire firms interests to do so). Labour hire employment agreements will typically specify a base rate and then a casual loading on top, so it is clear what the remuneration changes would be if casual employment is changed to ongoing employment (including if this occurs retrospectively). This option is generally used by professionals in unregulated professions such as ICT. Labour hire firms pay insurance, taxes, etc and clients and/or employees generally provide facilities and tools of the trade.
5. Person directly contracted through that person's "personal services income" "business" (note: it's technically not considered a business). This option is generally used by professionals in highly regulated professions such as medicine. The person's "business" pays the person wages, insurances, professional memberships, and more commonly than (4) also facilities and tools of trade.
For total remuneration benefits from highest to lowest, it's generally (5) > (4) > (3) > (1) > (2). Ongoing employment of (1), (2) and (3) are generally detrimental versus casual employment of (4) and (5) because a person could be employed for 6 years and have accumulated months of personal/sick leave and be close to having long service leave payable, and be forced out of their employment arrangement for an external reason such as a bad boss, a spouse needing to relocate or a family member some distance away needing care. When the person leaves their employer, they lose all accumulated benefits and start from scratch with their new employer. Options (4) and (5) ensure the person is no worse off when changing employers as the person has been paid the benefits upfront on a continuous basis, rather than waiting for a day that may never occur to obtain those benefits.
For job security, there isn't much difference. Sometimes directly employed persons are made redundant before labour hire persons. Sometimes it's the opposite and labour hire persons are first to go. The main difference is whether a person gets 1 day notice and pay (casual employees of labour hire firms), 4 weeks notice and pay, or longer if a person has worked for the same employer for over a year. As employees have to change jobs every few years to grow a career and gain higher remuneration, the redundancy payouts for extended service are minimal compared to missed opportunity cost of not changing jobs. 1 day or 4 weeks notice and pay is negligible in the grand scheme of things, and most of the time labour hire employees would get much more than 1 day notice anyway to avoid the client gaining a bad reputation amongst the pool of labour hire employees.
For the order in which people progress through these options in a professional career, it's generally (2)|(1) > (3)|(4) > (5).
For overall employment preference of professionals, I'd suggest perhaps most to least preferred of (4) > (5) > (3) > (1) > (2). (4) has less overhead and distraction of (5) as one can focus on their profession without having to worry about frequent changes to tax laws, changes to insurance policies, etc. But eventually to grow further, a professional would be required to switch from option (4) to option (5) and then may need to switch focus away from their profession and towards business priorities such as hiring support staff, engaging other professionals such as accountants, lawyers, insurance brokers, etc. (3) generally provides better remuneration and career growth over (1) and (2) because client engagements are shorter and more varied. But sometimes (1) is a good way to get a foothold into an industry or move into more senior positions (particularly management roles), and may make more sense than options (3), (4) and (5).
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>> Google pays the staffing agency, the staffing agency pays the "contractor" a salary (significantly less than what Google pays the staffing agency), and all is fine... legally, anyway. The staffing agency vig is so high it is practically the same as an FTE.
FWIW, this isn't the case at Google (or many other large technology companies). Google dictates the staffing agency markup (which is very limited) and audits for compliance. This, among many other processes, has significant negative impacts on the quality of the agency that will work with Google on this sort of work - but it does help with cost control. (Source: I ran one of these agencies, and Google was a past clie…
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Every US company. European companies somehow have contractors without caste system. Obviously there are different policies for internals and contractors, but fruits and pizza are for everyone in the office.
Which is because it is extremely rude, like meanest of meanest, to not share food with each other. Like, of all mean but not illegal things you can do to contractors, not sharing food is probably what people consider the worst. Small every day things are way more provocative than abstract things like retirement funds or whatever. Been there. Done that. The FTEs got strawberries. I didn't. I don't think I have been th…
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I'm surprised this even legally flies. Seems like the legal equivalent of creating a shell company.
I mean classic example are contracting out food service in the corporate cafeteria. You contract the work to some random other company who hire people to do food service or do you want Google or whoever to start hiring cooks themselves? Janitorial staff is also a classic role for this style of employment.
Yes? Whats wrong with hiring a cook if you need to cook?
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That's how it works with contractors in most large organisations. The other side of the coin is that they're usually rewarded better than employees are, on the basis that they can be fired at any time with no notice. In practice that rarely happens, as higher-pay => better-retention => becomes-most-knowledgeable-person-over-time.
I've never seen a contractor have better salary/pay unless they're a fully independent subject matter expert and have no interest in being employed. I've hired a quite a few contractors and there is usually two cases, I need workers, or expertise that is highly limited. Most contractors, not SME, are sourced from staffing agencies/partners. Sure, the resource cost is on par with a salaried worker, but typically the s…
And you’re right about the difference between “staff augmentation” contractors pay and SMEs. I just went into detail in a sibling reply.
But to add on, the company I ended up being a tech lead at with a full time position. I came in at $65/hour. I only took the job because I saw a chance to eventually wiggle my way into a tech lead role and I wanted to be on the ground floor of a green field project. I ended up working so much overtime - and getting paid for it - I made out pretty well compared to the local market. I got on my wife’s health insurance.
I also mentioned that now that I am a SME on a niche but growing AWS service [1], I am able to charge $135 an hour for a side project and that’s a discount.
[1] I beta tested the APIs while working at AWS and I was a major contributor on a popular open source official “AWS Solution” that’s built on top of it.