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

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

#71

Post by username90 »

pydry wrote: post #62
username90 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contractors are easy, you just throw money at a contracting firm and they solve your problem. Doing it inhouse means they have to hire managers and all other support personnel needed to hire and keep employees, that is a lot more complicated. The law makes it more complicated to throw money at contracting firms to make them solve your problems, hence why they get fired every 2 years etc.

Except they actually have managers and if they've been there two years it's easy as pie to just hire them. This is Google cheaping out on medical insurance and PTO.

If Google wanted to be cheap they could just hire them and pay them less, but they don't.

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

#72

Post by anvandare »

dx034 wrote: post #38
randomifcpfan wrote: post #20

This is all due to Microsoft contractors (who were treated like regular employees in the 80s and 90s) winning a lawsuit that retroactively forced Microsoft to give them a ton of stock. Companies now have to be rude to contractors to avoid a similar lawsuit. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/business/technology-temp-...

Or they could hire them as employees. This is not temporary work, they only use agencies to save money and circumvent workers protections. I get that there are freelancers who like not being employees but that's not the case here. I bet most Temps at Google would love getting employee status and there's no reason most of them shouldn't. It's not like Google couldn't afford the extra payroll.

It's not that they could not afford doing it. It's that it's more affordable to not do it. Companies are not people, they have no ethics, they have no morality, they have only simple stimulus-and-response behavior, based on profit.

Make it more expensive to have long-term 'temporary' contractors, and they'll transform them all into employees overnight.

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

#73

Post by rtkwe »

geodel wrote: post #60
donkeyd wrote: post #12

> Love the good pay. > It pays relatively well ($15 per hour for most contract workers). How is that relatively well? Compared to McDonald's employees, probably. Compared to other actual technical jobs, like electrician, I can't imagine. Compared to Google devs, not at all. Working 40 hours a week with no vacation that's about 31k. Being a contractor means no sick leave, vacation days, pension, insurance, etc. The US…

> The US is such an odd country. I guess this is why no one want to come to US to work as contractors.

People taking a deal doesn’t mean it’s not exploitative, it just means it’s enough of an improvement (or the downsides of not taking it are bad enough) [0] that people take the deal. Indentured servitude was for some a willingly taken deal but that doesn’t mean it’s something we should bring back as a common, endorsed arrangement...

[0] In the US not working is a shitty way to live.

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

#74

Post by throwaway0a5e »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #55
caseysoftware wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compared to McDonald's employees, probably. Compared to other actual technical jobs, like electrician, I can't imagine. When someone has few work skills - as noted in the article - do they more closely resemble a McDonald's employee or an electrician? Yes, people with low/no skills and little/no experience tend to start in crap roles. Some people will not further their skills, abilities, or knowledge and stay there…

Tell me - are there any possibilities of advancement in today's streamlined datacenter job? In the past, someone eager and capable might have been given training opportunities, but that doesn't really exist any longer, does it?

It's not like they promote people on a schedule but BigCos typically use the lower levels as part of the hiring pool for the higher levels. This has benefits since you know that anyone already working that role already knows your policies and procedures and are basically pre-vetted so you don't have to worry about getting them 90% of the way through the pipeline then failing the drug test or background check.

There's basically no chance of moving into a white collar role internally unless you get a degree but there's definitely room for advancement. Though you could probably advance faster by jumping ship.

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

#75

Post by C19is20 »

geodel wrote: post #60
donkeyd wrote: post #12

> Love the good pay. > It pays relatively well ($15 per hour for most contract workers). How is that relatively well? Compared to McDonald's employees, probably. Compared to other actual technical jobs, like electrician, I can't imagine. Compared to Google devs, not at all. Working 40 hours a week with no vacation that's about 31k. Being a contractor means no sick leave, vacation days, pension, insurance, etc. The US…

> The US is such an odd country. I guess this is why no one want to come to US to work as contractors.

I don't. ....want to.

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

#76

Post by scoopdewoop »

randomifcpfan wrote: post #67
dx034 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could hire them as employees. This is not temporary work, they only use agencies to save money and circumvent workers protections. I get that there are freelancers who like not being employees but that's not the case here. I bet most Temps at Google would love getting employee status and there's no reason most of them shouldn't. It's not like Google couldn't afford the extra payroll.

Or they could not hire them at all. This is a version of a minimum wage, and runs into the same tradeoffs between economic growth and social fairness.

And who would keep the data centers running? The invisible hand of the market? Labor does stuff.

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

#77

Post by CPLX »

randomifcpfan wrote: post #20

This is all due to Microsoft contractors (who were treated like regular employees in the 80s and 90s) winning a lawsuit that retroactively forced Microsoft to give them a ton of stock. Companies now have to be rude to contractors to avoid a similar lawsuit. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/business/technology-temp-...

> Companies now have to be rude

Or, you know, not do the thing they want to do which is to have employees while pretending they aren't employees.

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

#78

Post by yaml-ops-guy »

RHSeeger wrote: post #70
dcolkitt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employee-status may come with certain benefits, but it also comes with many drawbacks and burdens for the employee. For me, and probably many on this board, the biggest risk is "works-for-hire". Under US law, contractors have strong legal protections of their own intellectual protection. Whereas it's much easier for a W-2 employer to claim IP made in personal time. I don't really care about healthcare of unemployment…

> Forcing freelancers into W-2 status is just another example of the government screwing people over "for their own good". It's the government screwing _some_ people over for the good of everyone else, where it's presumed that "good of everyone else" is worth more to society than what is lost by those that get screwed over by it. At least, that's generally the intent.

I’m very glad we’re only screwing over “some” people, good to have that cleared up, thank you for that...it’s still an abominable practice to put any amount of laborers through.

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

#79

Post by im_down_w_otp »

ahelwer wrote: post #25
jasode wrote: post #13

>Contractors love the good pay and engaging work in Google's data centers. They resent that Google and its staffing firm, Modis Engineering, make them quit every two years. >[...] But those two-year contracts are written in stone. Workers like Wait are not usually allowed to apply either to renew their contracts or to do the same job as a Google employee. If they want to keep working in the same job, they have to lea…

I also had to engage with this bodyshop arrangement. Heard a fellow contractor referring to it as "paying the pimp", which I guess has some similarities. It's worth noting that you can usually contract directly with a company as long as you maintain scoped part-time contracts with multiple companies, instead of a single open-ended long-term contract with a single company. It's true that independent contractors are so…

Isn't it? Isn't that what the "bodyshop" is for? To protect the dynamic the buyer exploited previously, but now with a rent-seeker in the middle? It doesn't seem like the workers on either end are better protected as a result.

Honestly asking.

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

#80

Post by matz1 »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #41
yanderekko wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because companies reasonably try to avoid throwing away money? I mean, I'm not sure exactly why companies higher CWs as opposed to just lower-paid FTEs. Could be a remedial stopgap to deal with issues in the "normal" hiring pipeline, I'd guess? But the answer to why they don't just throw extra money at people who are already willing to work for you is obvious.

Well, if Google can afford to do it (they can) then it's perfectly practical. They just don't want to, and you're right that the reason is obvious.

I can easily afford to pay my mechanic twice the money. Of course just like google, I don't want to.
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