Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors
protocol.com>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 leave the data center for six months and then come back and apply again — but neither Google nor Modis will tell workers why.
>[...] Google likely requires the six-month leave due to federal employment law, Barbara Figari, an employment attorney in California, told Protocol.
Yes. All companies got rattled by Microsoft losing their lawsuit with permatemp contractors in 2000: https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+contractors+lawsui...
Before the Microsoft settlement, I was able to sell my services directly to the client company as a 1099 freelance contractor because I did not want to be an employee. But after that, all companies got paranoid about contractors and I then had to go through a middleman bodyshop as a "fake" W-2 employee. The programming bodyshop then skims a fee from my hourly rate to provide a "lawsuit shield" for the client that wants to pay for my services.
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 somewhat disadvantaged by this whole setup, but we should also recognize that voluntary independent freelance contracting of this type is quite a privileged position and it's good our desired style of work isn't being used to undermine the rights of W-2 employees.
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.
You're mostly right, although the way I see it is this: there are a few subclasses of independent contractor. At the top are people with high hourly rates who have niche skillsets and want to work on their own with minimal involvement in the company with which they have a contract. In the middle are the perma-temps involved in the Microsoft lawsuit or at H-1B shops, usually fairly well-paid but lacking many benefits like stock grants. At the bottom are the precarious underclass of people outlined in the article who make close to minimum wage. Then of course you have the gig workers (Uber, Instacart, etc.) who are paid piecemeal.
It used to be the people at the top could have their cake & eat it too, where sometimes they'd have long open-ended contracts with a company directly - maintaining independence but also getting a steady paycheck. Now they have to shack up with one of these bodyshops that gets a fat cut of their labor, which disincentivizes the setup. I was certainly glad to get out of it; the whole operation felt shady from start to finish. Politically, this class of people used to be available as cover for the entirety of the contracting workforce. Did lawmakers really want to rob these All-American Mavericks of their Freedom? Anything that further disincentivizes the mock W-2 job route is a good thing IMO. The current situation of course is not sufficient but it's better than the free-for-all it used to be. I guess you could say it has hightened the contradictions.
Some might say given the reality of these distinctions within independent contractors, we should segregate protections based on income. I don't think that'll work. Any policy targeted at helping only those of lower means will quickly become a policy to be watered down further and further and further as all the incentives in the system are aligned toward greater exploitation. By including all classes of independent contractor in any legislation, we make it stronger against attacks that would land hardest on the worst off. If that shuts down some avenues of employment for people at the top, well, so be it. I don't think scoped contracts will ever go away.
Worth noting this entire thing is to some degree a sideshow of the larger debate about health insurance and how it's tied to employment. If medicare for all were passed, a lot of these issues would just go away.
> health insurance and how it's tied to employment
Without getting too political, I really feel like untying health insurance from employment would transform the labor market and encourage far more entrepreneurial endeavors. People could take more risks if they didn't have to worry about losing healthcare coverage.
There are obvious tradeoffs involved, but I really never see this aspect considered in public debate. Making healthcare independent of employment really empowers people to do their own thing.
> There are obvious tradeoffs involved, but I really never see this aspect considered in public debate.
It was a big aspect in 2009/2010 when ACA was being passed.
The reason people want insurance tied to employment is because they benefit from lower premiums because their risk pool experiences less healthcare costs than the general public.
If everyone was dumped into one marketplace and risk pool, then the insurance premiums would have to rise for those working in white collar businesses who had previously been able to enjoy lower premiums since the nature of employment as a requirement precludes many sick people experiencing healthcare costs.
So when people complain that ACA increased their healthcare costs, what they are actually complaining about is having to now share risk pools with sicker people who previously were not getting healthcare period.
The optimal way this would work is if everyone was dumped onto healthcare.gov, and they picked whatever health insurance plan they want, and then naturally the premiums would balance out over time so that the costs are spread amongst the whole population.
Basically, taxpayer funded healthcare, except instead of one managed care organization (the US federal government) you have multiple (United Health, Anthem, Kaiser, CVS, Humana, etc).
Why continue to allow the existence of these various parasitic middlemen health insurance companies with their redundant bureaucracies and the N x N billing problems, networks, etc. they introduce?
Because there are insufficient votes in Congress to change it. Even the current implementation of various managed care organizations and mandatory coverage with limits on premiums and out of pocket maximums BARELY passed.
And it was gutted pretty quickly when the most important part of it, mandatory purchasing of insurance (I.e. a tax), was repealed in 2017.
Which is crazy from the simple standpoint. All businesses other than health care coverage providers would benefit from never needing to worry about this HR burden again.
Probably those small companies lobby / donate to both parties to prevent a single payer system where normal workers and normal employees don't have to care.
They're not small companies, the managed care organizations (MCOs) are some of the biggest companies in the US.
But I do not think their lobbying is what prevents single payer. For one, single payer (taxpayer funded healthcare) still uses managed care organizations in the US. The only difference is that instead of paying insurance premiums to MCOs, you pay taxes to the government. The government then goes out and hires the MCOs to ration healthcare and implement various formularies and double check doctors' orders to limit spending and prevent waste. This currently happens with Medicare (over 65 years of age), Medicaid (low income/wealth), and Tricare (for military).
So the MCOs are involved in the healthcare delivery no matter what. The only difference is for non military, non poor people pay MCOs insurance premiums instead of taxes to the government, with which the government then hires MCOs to do all the administrative work of dealing with patients, doctors, finding fraud, approving/denying medicines, negotiating pricing, etc. Although, the government sets pricing in big ways too, via reimbursements for Medicare/Medicaid.
In any case, the elephant in the room is and always has been how much do people with money want to pay for people without money. The more obfuscation there is, the less healthcare is delivered, and the less it costs people who would be net payers into the system.
Sidenote: I think governments (politicians) like the system of using MCOs because they take the heat for any rationing or mistakes in the implementation. It's not the government denying you, it's UHC denying payment, even though the government gave the formulary to UHC to implement.
That's one of the reasons a lot of businesses in tech are founded while still in school: You get to keep your (low premium) coverage.
Isn't a lot of Europe like this? Do they have more entrepreneurial endeavors than the US?
Yes, in some places. In the US the entrepreneurship rate measuring the % of the population involved in that kind of activity hovers around 14%-ish. There are European countries like Estonia and others in the north and baltic regions that beat that rate while still providing high quality universal healthcare. As a rule, though, it seems like western European countries are significantly less entrepreneurial.
I think the entrepreneurial rate has a lot more to do with cultural attitudes around risk and individual success. Some countries like Italy, for example, have rates in the very low single digits. I'm not sure you can overall make a case for universal healthcare increasing entrepreneurial enterprise. Whether it might increase it specifically in the US might be a different question, though.
The right thing for the company to do would be to hire people as employees, but it appears that worker protections are too strong for them to want to financially.
Universal healthcare/dental/paid leave would allow for companies who’s employees currently are the only receivers of these “benefits” to not require companies to hold onto people so long.
Worker protections are supposed to be so that catastrophic job loss is less catastrophic and companies can’t just arbitrarily decide they need 20000 people one month and 0 the next. But we should definitely look into a better deal for the workers and give companies less power over their livelihood.
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 insurance. I'm well compensated enough that I can buy my own high-deductible insurance and have more than enough assets to feed myself between jobs. Forcing freelancers into W-2 status is just another example of the government screwing people over "for their own good".
> 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.
Considering that the people it was supposed to help are being fired every 2 years for 6 months I'd say the governments plan to help some people hasn't and caught people like the GP in the crossfire. Quelle surprise.
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.
Are you of the belief that there are a set of policies/laws that result in everyone being happy and nobody being screwed over? Such a thing is not realistic. Every system of laws results in some people suffering for the benefit of others. The better law system result in less suffering for more benefit.
Government policy is inherently concerned with those kinds of moral tradeoffs. Vaccines and lockdowns naturally pose such questions.
Its more having a fake second class worker which benefits massively the employer and not real self employed people.
Ahh the old "Greater Good", the most evil phrase in the English Language
Anyone attempting to do anything for "the greater good" should be viewed with suspicion and disrespect as most at best what they are attempting to do no matter the intent will fail and harm more people than it will help
At worst is it just a shield to cover their immoral actions, or thirst for power
Every person that values freedom, individuality, and prosperity should reject any policy or law that is based on a "greater good" narrative
Every person that values freedom, individuality, and prosperity should reject any policy or law that is based on a "greater good" narrative
So pretty much all laws and policies? Anarchy doesn't seem that sustainable.
I don’t understand why all the staunch libertarians just don’t move to a favela or some other similar place where they can enjoy absolute freedoms
Why don't people that want all these new things move to where they already exist?
In Response to this common statement we have 2 video responses
You Can Always Leave ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fasTSY-dB-s )
Why Libertarianism Is So Dangerous ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbNFJK1ZpVg )
This was painful to watch.
I am sorry that logic and reason is painful to you
"logic and reason" sounds very cultish, like another way of writing The Truth.
> Every person that values freedom, individuality, and prosperity should reject any policy or law that is based on a "greater good" narrative
Curious what you think about COVID lockdowns then
Should be very clear, I oppose government mandated lock downs.
Seems selfish. Lockdowns reduce deaths.
Edit: I don’t mean to call anyone names, genuinely interested in understanding if you’re concerned about being perceived as selfish and if so how you reconcile the tension?
>>if you’re concerned about being perceived as selfish
I am not, All persons act in their own personal or familial self interest, to deny that is to deny reality.
>>and if so how you reconcile the tension?
I dont plan to
>> Lockdowns reduce deaths.
There is very little actual evidence of this, even further there is little evidence that draconian government measures have done more than voluntary action of informed persons.
It is far too large of topic to discuss here but no one can honestly say "draconian government lock-downs were the best way to deal with the pandemic" because that is simply false.
What do you think about defence spending?
That is more complicated, but I take a traditionally libertarian view, opposing world policing actual defense is acceptable, actual defense being something akin to a slightly more powerful coast guard.
But going item by item on the list of government actions would be rather pointless, politically I fall somewhere between Anarcho-Capitalism and Geo-Libertarianism
> Employee-status may come with certain benefits, but it also comes with many drawbacks and burdens for the employee.
Not to the employees in question. Clearly the frame and interview content of the linked article is that these employees WANT to be permanent employees. But they're not allowed to be because their employer wants the flexibility to terminate them at any time. The fact that the two year contract exists is just a side effect.
Yes, there are real people who want to do contract work. They exist, though it's relatively rare and clustered in careers (software is one) where short term work makes sense. But that's not who we're talking about here. These are datacenter maintenance folks, they want steady work.
And off topic, but:
> I don't really care about healthcare of unemployment insurance.
This is something only ever said by young people who have never been sick (or had a family member suffer from) with a career-threatening condition. Yes, in your 20's it sounds like self-insurance is totally doable. Wait until you have four dependents or until you need to arrange for a parents' surprise retirement.
I'll second that. I know many people stuck in the Microsoft forever-contractor hell (QA, Project Management, etc) and all of them want to be employees. They've worked there longer than most current employees in their area. They get 40-50% of what Microsoft pays for them taken by their consulting agency who has a contract with MS legal, so the only way to get hired for their positions is through that company.
Its a huge financial burden for them to have to take these 6 months off. The worst part is since they're all "contract ended" so regularly, Microsoft can just say they're not reopening for many req's and many people who were waiting their 6 months to be up so they could go back are suddenly having to look for a totally different job.
Or, your state could protect W-2 employees’ IP developed on personal time and equipment, as California does. You are barking up the wrong tree.
> Whereas it's much easier for a W-2 employer to claim IP made in personal time.
I've heard this mentioned a lot but how often does it happen and how much of a risk is it? Employees developing IP in personal time doesn't seem like it would be that common.
"This project happens to be owned by Google" is common for a reason.
I don't understand your response.
As a Google employee, Google owns everything you make even in your free time unless you go through some kind of process. Never worked there so don't know the details but have had it confirmed from other Google engineers.
Some other companies got this idea as well, but it's usually very easy to get that removed from an offer.
There is no single way of doing contract work. And the kind of thing Google does provide very little benefit to the contractor vs an employee.
I don't know how it is in the US but we have the same issues in France.
The law is called "délit de marchandage" and what it means, essentially, is that a contractor is treated like an employee but without the benefits of an employee.
The idea of the law is that contract work is fine, but the contractor has to stay independent. For example, if I want to have an Indian do the work for me, that's my right as a contractor, my only obligation is to deliver what we agreed upon in the contract. Obviously, it is not always practical, I may want to hire a consultant for a specific task because I don't have the expertise and it is not worth hiring someone for just that one task. That's where the 2 years rule comes from. If I have to hire a consultant, full time, for 2 years, then it is not just a mission anymore and I need to hire an employee.
Part of the problem in France is that it seems firing underperforming employees is almost impossible (multi-year process)
Yes, it can be very difficult.
But for it to be a multi-year process, it has to be an exceptional situation. Often involving court battles, unions, etc... In practice, most employees don't want to stay in a company where they are unwanted, they may try to negotiate a bonus but rarely fight to the bitter end. But sometimes, it happens, and it is one of the things small employers fear the most.
Getting fired can actually be a good deal for the employee because he will get unemployment benefits after that, whereas if you quit, you won't.
But generally, you are right by saying that in France having an employee is a big commitment for a company, plus, large companies often have unions.
Sounds like that legislation doesn't work at all for startups.
Startups have some benefits to compensate. Less legal obligations, less taxes, and sometimes subsidies.
Some people, like the grandparent or me, don't want to be employees.
The difference between a contractor and an employee isn’t arbitrarily. Basically, if you’re using company equipment, following the companies schedule, and don’t have a clear task with a clear finishing condition then you’re an employee.
Finding someone to fill in for a secretary on maternity leave is fine, but open ended contacts on their equipment and schedule without some specific task is just opening them up to lose another lawsuit.
By that metric almost every contractor I've ever worked with should be an employee. Which I sort of agree with. But you can come up with "well defined project's" when its really "staff-aug".
I also wouldn't want to be an employee. I work best in short monthly bursts with legitimate breaks in between. I'm working on setting it up so I can do that as an experienced consultant/freelancer.
The job market is pretty different though for full time employees - one part of which is the insane contractor usage at big companies with money. Microsoft is still like 50% contractors, and in this area if you have "contractor for a bigco" attached to your resume I'd estimate you'll be talked to by far fewer recruiters, and then offered less lucrative work. Also as others have stated you'll have up to 60% of what the company pays for your work taken by the contracting agency especially if they do "management" for their workforce.
Then benefits are a real thing. I have some healthcare needs which require me to have consistent insurance that isn't going to force me to other providers just because I switch. Retirement investing without a 401k is basically all cash since the roth and regular IRA limit is so low. I'm still figuring out how that will work, whether I should incorporate as a consultant so I can provide a 401k to myself, or just not bother with it and just invest.
You don't need to incorporate - you can open a sole 401k plan at Vanguard as an LLC.
And it's fine to be a contractor—as long as that's genuinely and meaningfully what you are.
If you're contracting out your services to only one company, and they have primary say over when and how you work[1], then that's not a genuine "contractor" relationship; you're an employee that they're taking advantage of by paying less and not providing benefits to.
If you really do want to be a contractor, who sells their services to many companies, sets their own hours, and has primary control over their tasks and such, then by all means do so. But please don't try to make things worse for the vast majority who do not want these things by advocating for stripping away protections from people who are being abusively and illegally misclassified as contractors.
[1] I don't recall offhand all the various specific aspects of a job that define whether you're logically a contractor or an employee, but I do remember that it's basically "if your livelihood depends entirely on one company paying you, and/or they have near-total control over how you do your work, you're an employee, whatever the paperwork says".
RE: [1] this is somewhat dated but a “contractor” friend used this “twenty factor” list to determine her “employer” was acting questionably maybe ten years ago: https://www.lakeshoreacct.com/blog/what-irs-20-factor-test
The site says the IRS no longer uses it but it’s still generally a good rule of thumb. And yes I recognize the irony that both her and her employer used the terms contractor and employer when describing their relationship.
The IRS has very clear guidelines on the difference between contractor and employee:
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
There's a very clear explanation in the article about the reason for this from an employment attorney. It's necessary so that Google can falsely classify these workers as non-employees.
Under existing IRS guidelines, a company can't arbitrarily determine which workers are full employees and which are contractors. The business has to be able to prove when a worker meets certain key legal definitions about contract work, and, if they fail, they would be required to treat the contractor as if they were an employee, according to Figari.
"One of those guidelines is whether there is a written contract or employment benefits. The other aspect is, is the relationship a continuing one, and is it a key aspect of the business," Figari said. Companies will try to work around this by saying: "If it's cut off at a specific timeline, we were able to get by without them for six months. They are not a key aspect of our business, and [the role] is not a continuing one," she explained.
It is federal law that makes them do this, but it's also because they are in fact using contractors for full time work, they're just doing the bare minimum to separate the two.
They do it to keep headcount down, this is just abuse. Feds have their rules because of past abuse. This should be added.
but why are they no allow to do the same job as a Google employee? Isn't starting as a contractor and being brought on as an fte common practice?
> but why are they no allow to do the same job as a Google employee?
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.
They could hire them as a FTE, but that would cost more. This six month “break” is little more than a cost optimization exercise.
Because if they're doing the job an FTE does, they should be full-time from the start. Otherwise, a company could be doing software development or food delivery or whatever and have no employees at all, merely having them all be "independent" "contractors" with very few legal protections.
You just invented Uber. Congratulations, you're rich!
That's the dream
It depends a lot on the role. There are some roles where Contractor to FTE is fairly common and other roles where there is no equivalent FTE role and there is basically no chance of making the transition. (You would be basically applying fresh)
They are not allowed to do the same job as a Google employee because Google does not want them to ever become an employee - even though they do need many full time people for that job.
In my time at MSFT there was at least one staffing firm that was founded by a couple contractors who decided to just fuck it and make their own LLC so they didn't have to "pay the pimp" as some put it. If you went through them, you could do so as a 1099.
Given their "fuck it" roots, I'm not actually sure how much of a shield they provided between you and Microsoft's Accounts Payable. I bet they paid you every week like most of these staffing firms no matter how fast or slow Microsoft felt like paying its invoices. I'm also pretty sure they provided you with equipment (though how that works if you are also a 1099... I'm not sure).
What a lot of people who haven't done true 1099 work don't realize is... people and companies can be incredibly slow paying you. And as a 1099 you are your own collection agency so it's upon you to hassle them into paying you.
What I'm saying is... if there is a will there is a way. I bet there is more than a few Microsoft contractors who act like their own agency. It's probably a lot of paperwork, and I have no clue if it is worth it.
Oh man, the industry expectation of delayed payment was my largest headache as an independent contractor.
When I was first starting out, and still struggling to get a good stable of clients, delayed payment was often something I let slide in negotiations. Better to secure a 100k contract w/ payment 3-6(!) months out than risk losing out to another shop.
Even though I was bringing in a lot of income, cash flow was a constant struggle. It took a long time to build up enough billable work to smooth out income curve over time.
The worst of it was when I was just transitioning from a single man shop to bringing on additional help. Conversion from independent 1099 to having your own subs, or worse, trying to carry people on overhead is hard. As the owner, you've bought into the idea of lean times, and variable income, but staff expect to be paid every week. Gogo credit cards as short term emergency bridge loans.
Ahh, the fun of being a small business owner.
The trick for billing big companies (those with a separate accounts payable division) is to incentivize early payment (say with a 5% discount). Most account payable divisions will always try and pay the lowest amount, so they will pay early to receive the discount. Of course you bump up your rate in initial contract negotiations to make up for the discount.
I remember a contractor sued a startup for which I worked for treating him as a permanent employee yet didn't give her the same benefits, for the startup gave her the same laptop and the same office environment. She won the suit. Consequently, contractors from then on got crappy equipments and office environment from then on.
I worked at Ford as a contractor back in the 80's. They regularly hired contractors, usually from India on a green card, through body shops. The body shop could be making $30/hr while the contractor was getting a pittance in exchange for the green card. And because the body shop was sponsoring their green card, the "employee" couldn't switch to another company. Pretty horrible.
Instead of going through a body shop, which I refused to do, Ford just required that I was incorporated. This completely lets them off the hook on the contractor vs employee question. Did the same thing with IBM.
Forming an LLC is something that at least here in Indiana can be done in a few days by filling out a form online with the state and getting a tax id with the IRS. This allows you (actually, your LLC) to be directly hired at any company without them taking any risk of you being classified as an employee.
Indeed. Sometimes "wins" are really losses. This was a terrible outcome for temps in the long run.
Very similar to the introduction of IR35 legislation in the UK.
And recent clamping down no?
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.
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.
They They could hire a smaller of more qualified and invest more into automation.
The only reason Google is doing this is because they don't want to spend the same amount on benefits and other overhead on 15$ per hour worker as they do for a 30$ per hour one.
"invest more into automation"
Like they were sitting there and paying for all this work they could automate, but now they are gonna wake up and autonate it all in a day
Yes, as long as paying somebody 15$ an hour is cheaper.
They have the $15/hour contractors lugging batteries, hell yea they should invest in automation, but unfortunately as you point out the legal environment does not incentivize them to do so.
Why should they be incentivized to automate? That just places even more downward pressure the price of low-skill labor.
$15 is already equal to the proposed federal minimum wage under the current administration. They should automate because lugging batteries isn’t a healthy fit for many of the humans that they are attracting at this low wage.
However working in an Amazon warehouse or a McDonald's is? It's not unlikely that a significant number of people lugging batteries at google would be forced to do that since Google would have no reason to hire them the.
>Or they could hire them as employees.
some people don't want to be employees, they want to be contractors.
> some people don't want to be employees, they want to be contractors.
Highly educated, well-paid people much more likely than people doing physical jobs. If you can negotiate your rates, your projects and can skip some corporate bullshit that fits some people. With a physical job where the wage is hardly enough until next pay day, I doubt that is a preferred option for many.
I've done the 1099 thing before. I had an accountant and my own LLC. I made sure to have a separate bank account that I dumped 30% of my billable time into. Each tax season I'd cut a giant check to the IRS.
I mean no disrespect to the "gig economy" people, but 1099 requires a lot of discipline. Most of them probably don't need to pay estimated taxes and instead will be cutting giant checks to the IRS each year. It requires a hell of a lot of discipline to stare at thousands of dollars of money sitting in your own bank account knowing you cannot spend that no matter what--that is uncle sam's money.
I wonder how many gig economy people wind up owing the IRS a ton of money. Especially when they have to pay self-employment tax on top of normal tax.
Plus I bet very good money 99% of them aren't paying state or municipal taxes. As a 1099 I had to pay Washington State B&O tax every year as well as some token amount to Seattle.
But this argument presupposes that employee v. contractor is a choice that the worker or the company is allowed to make. It's emphatically, objectively not. It's a tax designation. There are lines and rules that define which of those you are.
Or they could keep them as contractors and discontinue their contracts every two years. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
> 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.
This is all due to Microsoft who used contractors like regular employees in the 80s and 90s but did not compensate them like regular employees. It's not the workers fault.
The Microsoft contractors double-dipped. They got higher-than-employee wages during their contracts, and later got all the stock options they gave up by being contractors. Nice work if you can get it.
I don't know the exact numbers for this case, but contractors always appear to be overpaid. What most people who call them overpaid miss is that contractors have to pay their own employment taxes, as well as any health benefits (including vacation time) they want out of that income.
If you consider those, the cost of your average employee to the company employing them is roughly 1.6x to 2x their gross income. An overpaid contractor would have to make well over 2x that of a normal employee.
And the point of the person above you is that after the lawsuit, they had all those things retroactively paid for, so they ended up making more than they would have as employees.
The parent makes no such claims. They claim that prior to the lawsuit they were being paid "higher wages", and stock options after. There is no mention of taxes, health care, vacation, etc.
> 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.
I once knew a guy who was paid $1500 US dollars per day working for the government as a contractor. He was an SAP Developer.
For the first 6 weeks of his contract with the government, he didn't have a computer at his desk. So he sat there reading manuals and stuff.
I don't think the government will ever want to reform the system of "contractors should be employees". The government too benefits from contractors. Bigly.
I know someone who works as a contractor for Google (not through Modis). It's quite odd. They had to go through a lot of Google specified training, they only work for Google, their manager is someone from Google, the computer was supplied from Google, they're doing work that is directed by Google, they receive performance feedback from Google. But at the day, they're officially employed by this vendor company. I just don't see how it can be argued that people like this are not really employed by Google. If Google doesn't need this job anymore, this staffing company isn't going to retain them. It's not like they have other clients where they can redirect the person to as far as I can tell.
Why is it that Google uses these staffing firms? I get that they don't want to provide the same benefits to lower skilled workers but then why not just have 2 sets of benefits? One for higher skilled employees and one for lower skilled employees? I suppose the other answer is when it comes to layoffs, it won't be in the news because these types of workers are not officially employed by Google.
Yeah I think it's basically that. If push comes to shove financially you're less safe at modis then at Google. Google has few, if any, layoffs. It's a part of their brand and their value proposition to potential employees.
Plus I don't think the two tiers of benefits thing would go over as well as you think it might. Either you're in and you have their great, expensive benefits, or you're out.
Also looks nicer on the balance sheet. Basically Workers as a Service. Makes Google look much more efficient (in terms of revenue per employee) than it actually is.
There are laws against providing different tiers for some benefits (I'm pretty certain healthcare is one). So if Google were to hire them, it has to decide if its worth lowering the standard of healthcare for their six-figure engineers or giving these datacenter employees a really expensive healthcare plan.
So yet another case of the US's brain-dead healthcare system ruining everything.
We desperately need to sever the link between employers and healthcare.
I didn't know that, why do USA try to make companies take the role of a government, except that they can fire you?
They don't make anyone take the role of a government. The US government gives tax breaks for certain benefits available to all employees. If the benefits are only available to certain employees, the company loses those tax benefits.
Would it be fair for another company to get a tax deduction for paid meals, 100% employer paid healthcare just to the executives while everyone else has to pay to eat in the cafeteria and pay for their own healthcare?
Unlike Uber, Google has proactively taken steps to ensure contractors are not able to be considered employees. If Google wants to use contractors, for one reason or another, lawyers have told them they need to take these sort of steps.
This whole article is basically complaining that being a contractor sucks because the law forces Google to follow these sorts of practices, but then blames Google for following these sorts of practices.
Yep. It's an awkward situation. A lot of the data engineers I work with are CWs, and under the circumstances of normal interaction they're pretty much indistinguishable from FTEs. But there are all sorts of compliance reasons for why you aren't supposed to treat them as real "team members" with all the attendant perks and privileges. Many ICs will not even realize that their colleagues are CWs since it's not the default presumption.
The "solution" of just converting them all to FTEs and effectively giving them massive boosts in total compensation is impractical. So this awkward, hushed reality is likely to continue as a least-bad solution.
Why do you have to give them a huge boost in comp? There's no union at Google, they can pay whatever they see fit. They could just hire them at lower salaries but that'd destroy the image that anyone working at a FAANG makes at least $250k/yr.
A W-2 employee has to be offered all the same benefits as other employees to pass non discrimination testing to keep all those other benefits tax free. W-2 employees also increase unemployment insurance premiums, as well as be liabilities when it comes time to downsize.
I doubt it has anything to do with image.
Coming from the other direction, the whole point of keeping them as contractors is that it reduces costs. Therefore, converting them by definition means increased costs.
Seems that they're running the same gambit Microsoft did years ago. Microsoft did not win that court case, and that set precedent that other companies are now trying to stay clear of.
Yes, that would just compound the grief. Endless media articles on how certain employees are considered second class citizens at Google.
Doesn’t this whole thread make it pretty clear that they are?
And this is when they are not actual employees so there is at least legal cover. If Google made them employee it would be 100 times worse.
Mind you, I am not somehow advocating that Google must not hire them. From a culture/ country other than America, I see people can be treated with respect but not paid lot of money mainly because there is not much money to around. But people receiving also understand not a lot of money can be given for certain tasks.
However modern media culture is worst. If Google were to hire full time, I can see headlines "World Richest company pay pittance for back breaking work". And point about job security , benefits would be forgotten.
One can check coverage of full time Amazon warehouse workers on how it plays out. I have never heard a good story about it. Or how other companies hiring warehouse workers doing compare to Amazon across America or world.
I mean, this is the case at any company really. The highly valued people or people in the management structure are more highly valued and have more say. The very org structure alludes to a class system.
>The "solution" of just converting them all to FTEs and effectively giving them massive boosts in total compensation is impractical.
Why is it impractical?
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.
Exactly. When others do it, it is just an excuse. When I do it, it is necessity.
So when you go to find a Plumber, Auto Mechanic, Roofer, etc you look at the amount of money you can "afford" than pay exactly that?
so If a plumber says he can fix my sink for $150 but I cna "afford" to pay $500 I should pay $500?
Are you also actively working with other people/companies who might hire those same people to put caps on what they might get paid, or indeed to negotiate hiring them at all? Google/apple/etc have enormous sway in some areas re: hiring/referrals/etc, and engaged in 'antipoaching' stuff that prevented free movement of labor (imo).
The plumber/mechanic analogies fall down when you look at the size and actions of google in the marketplace as a whole, not just with the specific interactions of an individual contractor/employee.
>Are you also actively working with other people/companies who might hire those same people to put caps on what they might get paid, or indeed to negotiate hiring them at all? Google/apple/etc have enormous sway in some areas re: hiring/referrals/etc, and engaged in 'antipoaching' stuff that prevented free movement of labor (imo).
If I have the ability/resource to do that and if the total cost is less then of course.
During the time of the anti-poaching agreements, Apple and Google had close to an oligopsony on high-end tech labor. There are too many employers of low-skill labor for collusion to accomplish anything.
"Impractical" and "not throwing away money" are really interesting choices of words when discussing why one of the world's richest companies gives PTO or health insurance.
I think it's a lot less interesting than people want to pretend it is. A company's willingness to throw away money should be largely invariant to its overall financial health.
I like that you're blunt about it, makes it much easier to reason why more regulation around labor is required.
"BigCorp will avoid as much labor costs as possible. To improve labor conditions and compensation, regulation must require it."
"To ensure that people only have good jobs, we must ensure that people who cannot get good jobs are unemployable."
>we must ensure that people who cannot get good jobs are unemployable
How are "we" doing that precisely?
"How can we justify Big Tech being worth trillions collectively without allowing them to treat their workers as interchangeable widgets at the lowest cost possible."
Which sounds better to an electorate? What are the odds your average citizen is ever going to be an ultra high net worth individual or work at a FAANG? I believe the odds are in regulatory favor.
Google has the resources (with gross profit ~$100 billion for 2020), they simply choose to evade labor law in this case.
Except in this case "throw away money" is a euphemism for "paying workers enough that they don't need welfare to support their families."
How many Google contractors/employees are on welfare?
That’s cause they were sued and lost.
Google then added trainings to avoid future issues. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/11/google-tv...
The law forces google to choose contractors instead of hiring employees?
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.
In order to keep benefits tax free, companies have to make them lucrative enough for lower paid employees such that they pass non discrimination testing. It’s not a trivial expense even if the wage is lower, the total compensation cost can be higher.
They’re attempting to make use of technicalities in the rules which are likely to be viewed with skepticism if a lawsuit were to ever arise. The law and regulations aren’t applied algorithmically. The lawsuit might not be won, but it’d be interesting to see.
> 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 is such an odd country.
> 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. Others - like Ms Wait in the article - will use it as a stepping stone to pay the bills as they grow and improve.
Wiping out low level jobs by paying "too much" (yes, entirely subjective) raises the bottom rung of the ladder but also puts it out of reach of others. There's no magic right number but there are dangers in having it too low or too high.
Empirical evidence for the idea that raising the minimum wage in the US will lead to unemployment is quite weak. Those arguments may kick in at some point, but it's pretty clear we're way under the price level that would do that.
You're using some common rhetoric to reframe this entirely as one of personal volition. Just be like Ms Wait and pull yourself up the ladder. This is a form of the just world delusion, and ignores all the complex ways poverty can be a trap, or how people working at this end of the labor market are basically one roll of the dice away from financial ruin due to illness, car accident, etc.
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?
Not sure about Amazon datacenters, but I know an actual person in real life who went from an unskilled Amazon warehouse worker to a full-time SDE at Amazon with zero previous coding experience or a relevant degree. All in a 1-year timespan iirc, simply going through one of the training programs that their warehouse offered.
Apparently, those on-the-job training programs that Amazon offers actually tend to work at times. And of course this is just a single datapoint not indicative of anything, but it kinda shows that those programs might actually work to a degree. I don't doubt that their success rate is likely not even close to 100%, but if it worked even for a chunk of the people attempting it, it is still something.
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.
Nope, doesn't look like it. Google is screwing over tons of people here and obviously they're not alone.
Why do we "trust" them again?
Training unskilled workers and giving them normal professional worker wages is screwing them over how? It isn't like they would be better off at mcdonalds.
Teaching them skills and laying them off without cause is screwing them over. If you also consider that the skills they teach aren't enough to get them to the next level, it's worse.
This is covered in great detail in the article.
> Compared to other actual technical jobs, like electrician,
FWIW, these people seem to be people who otherwise have no skilled work experience.
To compare I’ve seen electrician apprenticeships paying less than that.
>The US is such an odd country.
It's not odd once you understand our culture celebrates and almost worships exploitation of some form or the other. It may be exploitation of science and engineering leading to technological growth that we can all share, it may be exploitation of natural resources we've found for a bargain, it may be exploitation of human labor finding how the least amounts can be spent of necessary labor to maximize revenue.
The recent focus to me seems to be on targeting labor and optimizing those costs since the low hanging socially acceptable fruits are starting to give diminishing returns that can't meet some peoples' insatiable appetites for financial growth. This contract position is yet another story of yet another casuality in the cost optimization war by business against human labor expenses.
So in the context of this article, contract means that Google hires a company (Modis) for specific work, and Modis hires workers who Google considers to be from the contract company. Modis workers get benefits (healthcare, retirement, vacation) from Modis if they are eligible based on Modis's policies and if they're full time. This is different than an independent contractor, who would have to self fund all benefits.
"other actual technical jobs, like electrician," have barriers to entry.
Ms Wait would have to break her back schlepping spools around a jobsite for a few years before she could get onto the actual electrician career track.
Before they took away the light at the end of the tunnel schlepping batteries around for Google was just as good.
> Ms Wait would have to break her back schlepping spools around a jobsite for a few years before she could get onto the actual electrician career track.
Ms Wait would be paid >=$15 to do this.
Maybe she'd get $16, but anywhere where data-center techs are making 15 general construction laborers aren't gonna be making much more and they don't get to work indoors.
In Seattle today, union electrical apprentices often earn under $18hr, while Safeway is paying new hires $20hr in Seattle and Bellevue.
General construction does not pay that much unless your licensed, bonded and running your own business or have a decade or more in with the union.
They were hired with no skills and trained on the job.
Now, 2 years later, they can get a job at any data center. They can work for Google, AWS, Azure, or any data center they wish. On the job training is the sweet bit.
> 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.
> or the downsides of not taking it are bad enough
Crucial point is are the bad enough or worse than taking a deal.
I'd say we should shut up and work to create better deal for workers , instead of just telling people that "you do not know you are so exploited". To me it is no better than telling people "Just be lucky" or "Just be rich"
I hear this a lot as if the groups and people talking about exploitative work situations aren't also pushing for things that would make these situations less exploitative and to make the consequences of not working less dire through socialized health care or similar programs... That's tough to do in the US system for a number of reasons so one thing that probably has to happen before the legislative solutions can happen is to get more people to realize they're being taken advantage of. (At the very least it should make it easier to address!)
I don't. ....want to.
Seems very different to the story in the legacy financial tech world (i.e. tech in old school investment banks and hedge funds) - often times contracting is preferred to being a full time employee. As a contractor you can get paid 1.5-2x+ what a FTE might get, albeit without insurance or vacation days. For insurance, many who are young and healthy (knock on wood) just shrug it off, while those who are married often times rely on their spouse's employer's plan.
I've seen contractors at IBs and hedge funds decline the offer to be converted to employees because it would mean a big paycut for them.
The 18 month period limit could be seen as a downside, but in this day and age when spending too much time at one company is ironically seen as a bad thing (unless maybe you're at a FAANG tier org), maybe it's not really a big downside either.
Other than that, at least in the legacy financial world, you don't get to put on a fancy but utterly meaningless (and quite frankly, stupid) "Vice President" or "Director" title the employees have.
i just left a 3+ year stint as a contractor at Apple. Some of the stuff from the article rings a bit true to my experience (we get "sad grey apple badges" and apple employees get colored apple badges, we don't get to go to any corporate events (even though we get the e-mails to attend with the asterik at the bottom loljk) but on the whole i always didnt really feel like a second class citizen too much. that being said, every 3 years wondering if my contract was going to get resigned was a bit nerve wracking. im much happer in the past 3 weeks being fulltime somewhere else :).
I can totally understand what it feels to miss out while seeing others enjoy at the same time.
true. 99% of the time i wasn't on campus so "come to the friday afternoon austin beer bash" e-mails didn't bother me as I wasn't in austin :). its more the silent power dynamic that i felt. if a full time apple employee is just spouting nonsense on a call, i was not going to make too much of a peep. but if they had a disagreement with me or one of my coworkers we usually just had to grin and bear it and "ohh yes of course we can do it that way". but thats life i guess.
The pay for most Apple contractors in Austin is abysmal. Multiple people I knew from UW earned barely over $30k a year working there.
That depends very much on what you're doing.
One time I met one of these guys on a flight that was delayed out of PHL airport.
We were in a little ERJ-135 and never got a clear view of the line we were in because we kept turning corners, but when we were second-in-line for takeoff we broke out of the line and I could see a long line of big and small airplanes waiting behind us close to sunset.
I thought was a miracle, like a scene out of a science fiction movie.
He said "I can't believe I paid $1000 for this!"
I started asking him questions and found out he worked as a contractor running fiber for data centers operators by Google and Facebook and I picked his brain for 45 minutes about how a modern datacenter is wired up.
Dev in France, sounds very familiar, except the force-quit bit.
As a fresh graduate in bigcorp world, especially foreigner who doesn't know on arrival how this works:
You get hired by SSII (Société de services et d'ingénierie en informatique), and do same work as regular staff employees of bigcorp, in the same building etc., except you get sad contractor badge, and no yearly bonuses and perks. The promise is to become staff after 2 years but the bigcorp has arbitrary quotas (per department) on how many people get converted, "hiring freezes" etc.; some people remain contractors for years and years, in the same team (which is pretty much illegal as far as I can tell) as the bigcorp likes to have a bunch of contractors that can be fired quickly in case shit happens (like covid).
It's not _too bad_ because the job at middleman company is typically "CDI" aka "unfirable" due to French labor law, but when all the people around you doing same job as you get a juicy yearly bonus and you don't, it gets you really angry. I was super glad when I found a better company which doesn't do that bullshit and hires everyone as staff.
Aren’t data center employees crucial as they are making sure your services are running perfectly even in an event of emergency.
Why not hire them and pay them better wages
Because Google turned the computers into a commodity. These employees swap out broken machines for the most part, but the software stack is so redundant that you can pull out a machine running a key job and the scheduler will simply retry it somewhere else. Similarly for files with GFS. All machines have their own battery so the possibility of the whole thing going down is slim. It’s beautiful how they’ve evolved from running on Sun mainframes in the early part of the century. The workers at the datacenters basically do mindless labour, so aren’t paid like a typical sysadmin.
To be blunt: Because they don’t have to.
If they were struggling to find or retain talent or if they weren’t getting the caliber of employee required, they would certainly increase wages as they did with engineers.
When I was tangentially involved with a datacenter company several years ago, they had hundreds of qualified applicants for every job opening. It’s a job that a lot of people want but with few openings.
> Why not hire them and pay them better wages
You would have to search a lot to find any big, international conglomerates with shareholders who would willingly pay higher wages for workers without a fight.
I assume some day they will want to use robots for this work. Amazon is already working on it for their warehouses. It is not much of a stretch to imagine they've had conversations about what physical work can be automated. I could be wrong.
They do? TFA says as many as half they techs are FTE.
The alternative is not that they hire everyone as FTE, its that they hire and fire FTE to meet their labor demand, and then we get lots of doom and gloom and stock price dips about Google firing techs in Iowa or wherever.
A lot of the workers are FTEs, hence the "class system". Those FTEs are likely the ones that would handle such emergencies.
Why do that when you can, instead, return more money to investors?
Sad to see this practice. I wonder why can’t google hire them as regular data center employees and pay them better wages.
I don't think there is any reason why they can't, they certainly have the money for it, they simply don't want to.
Unfortunately there just isn't enough of an intensive to pay more for the same labor. If contractors stop making them self available for the work, they may have butter luck becoming employees.
Don't they end up paying more though? Modis must be making a profit on the workers so Google could, in theory, hire them directly and save money.
I got a feeling contracting firms are used mainly becouse managers don't want more managers around or they just want to hand off their work to someone else.
I mean janitors, cafeteria and cleaners used to be in-house. Maybe managers are afraid of being demoted to manage the cafeteria?
> If contractors stop making them self available for the work, they may have butter luck becoming employees.
There will always be a steady supply of people willing to work in shitty conditions because either the employer is a big name (Google) or they have no other alternative to put food on the table.
The latter aspect is why government regulation and minimum standards are the only way to prevent exploitation.
Yup I totally agree this why I was a little surprised they make huge profits why not hire them as employees
I have friends that have the same setup at their jobs at Intel in Portland. Its not just Google.
And Intel in Folsom California
> He knows he would be reprimanded if he gave a contractor a Google t-shirt handed out for free during an event. "But there's no issue if they go on the Google merchandise store and buy it themselves," he said.
Yes, because one of those makes them look like a perm for tax reasons, and the other does not.
Does anyone know if Google uses these folks via a "services" type contract or a "staff augmentation" contract? That is, is the data center floor 100% from one company, with someone from that company directing work?
The 2 year limit suggests "staff aug", as that's a tactic to avoid them being classed as employees. If it were run like a service, there's no need to roll them off every 2 years.
Quite a few people here are bemoaning the MS lawsuit result as some sort of bad call or unnecessary burden on businesses. That's not the root problem, and misunderstands the scale of what was going on at MS.
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.
TLDR: If you're considering working for a staffing company like the one mentioned in the article don't do it. You can do better and are capable of much more.
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.
almost all high tech software companies hire firms like Modis/Experis/Manpower to do menial labor tasks related to hardware: mostly racking and stacking, responding to hardware incidents, wiring up stuff, etc.
the reason is because every process is very documented and almost any high schooler can follow the steps and replace and wire up server/firewall (power and backbone is all ya need). Configuration is usually done by full time well paid experts (or even done automatically by software)
These contractors should be preparing for another line of work anyway, since Google has been working for years on making their data center equipment completely hands-off with robots swapping out the machines and parts. Recently Joe Kava said in a public interview:
"As far as robotics, our hyperscale data centers are more like warehouses and most of the processes require a robot to navigate to a specific location to perform a task. Some of these technologies are in development right now – things like robot navigation, computer vision, motion planning and device tooling for what the robot will employ to do that operation… These have advanced exponentially over the last few years..."
There are job postings on Google's site right now for technical program managers to "Work with Roboticists, Control Engineers and Hardware Lab staff to lead the concept, planning, and development of Data Center Automation System programs with an end-to-end responsibility". In the near future they will still need the skilled trades for power, water, and air, but it's clear that they'll ultimately get rid of them, too.
> "The only complaint I have is the fact that I have to leave for six months. I don't feel that's right that TVCs get recycled like this," he said. "I've never gotten a real answer as of why."
This is likely done so Google doesn't need to classify TVPs as regular working employees. The six month wait enforces this commoditization upon the people.
This arrangement also helps Google maintain the illusion that they "only hire the best and brightest" and that onerous technical interviews are "necessary" for the sort of work Google does "at scale".
This article is a great example of "essential journalism", which is quite rare overall.
"Sensational journalism". Asking questions that are clearly answered by an expert in the article, but then continuing to pretend that the answer is unclear.
It’s ok. Google banned the terms “first class” and “second class”. Problem solved.
I think the term is "precariat."
"Don't be evil (unless it's profitable)."
These contract workers should be employees.
I’m getting tired of these low-value workers complaining they should be paid as well as high-value workers.
They were hired with no skills, and were trained from the ground up. They are getting a livable wage but now they want more. If they want more, they need to elevate their worth and become high value employees or find a better job that values them better.
They are contractors. Because of their particular life experiences and life choices, they were unable to come as a more valuable employee. Google doesn’t owe them anything except the job they offered them. If they want better terms they can ask, but Google will refuse. So it’s on them to find a better job.
But please stop complaining about it and think you’re more valuable than you actually are. They can be replaced by someone who has no skills and can be trained from scratch, just like they were. The pay is fair, the conditions are good. That’s better than many jobs out there.
To me, it sounds as though these people want to be treated fairly and with humanity. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect that businesses in our society treat people as investments and give opportunities for upward mobility, not fire them every two years and pay them half as much as their counterparts who do the same job but wear a different color badge.
I work for Google, opinions are my own.
You are right it is unfair. So now Google decides to hire everyone and pay everyone the same $12 an hour + full time benefits. That would make everyone happy, no?
If I am understanding you correctly, this seems like a strawman. You don't need to equalize everyone's pay to make the material lives of these data center workers better, nobody asked for that anyways. People are simply asking to be treated the same as the people who do the same work but have a different colored badge, and not to be fired every two years. It doesn't really seem like that much to ask for
What makes you think the way Google paid and hired datacenter workers before wasn't way too much and they now are nice to keep them at that level instead of firing them all replacing them with cheaper people?
How are they not being treated with humanity? They started with no skills or experience and were trained from scratch. How many jobs train on the job? Paid a good wage in an easy job and given a job for 2 years. Is that not humane and fair?
How much of your salary are you willing to give up so that these people get their job security?
Every job requires some amount of on the job training. FTEs of all levels at Google are practically useless for at least 6 months after they join, often requiring hours of training and 1-1s. It's pretty standard.
Yeah I agree that it sounds like a good deal until they fire you after two years and don't allow you to move up like they used to. These terminations are arbitrary, unnecessary, and legitimely harmful to people's lives, so no I don't think it's fair or humane.
I don't see why their initial skill level when they were first hired really matters here, people deserve to have job security based on current performance regardless of their initial conditions.
I don't see why I need to give up any of my salary for these people have job security. I'm sure a small portion of the funds allocated to stock buybacks should do. And, for the record, I already give 1% of my total comp to the union, which was created to protect people in situations like these
> and don't allow you to move up like they used to
Is there even a position to move up to?
> These terminations are arbitrary, unnecessary, and legitimely harmful to people's lives, so no I don't think it's fair or humane.
That's something they should bring to Modis, their employers. Also, do they operate any other data centers outside of Google ones?
> Is there even a position to move up to?
Yes, it is common for data center workers and tech support to move up to sysadmin or something similar sometimes even SRE.
They are given a 6 month trial period on a team to train and then go through the external interview process afterwards
> That's something they should bring to Modis, their employers
The whole point here is that they effectively work for Google, and Modis is a layer of indirection that enables Google to exploit them, so bringing this up to Modis is kind of besides the point
> Yes, it is common for data center workers and tech support to move up to sysadmin or something similar sometimes even SRE.
It sounds like they isolated tasks that are performed frequently enough and need no specialization and decided to outsource these. Maybe as a stopgap before they get completely automated.
I don't think these were ever intended as entry level to something else.
> I don't think these were ever intended as entry level to something else
They said in the article that there was a chance you could get hired into corporate originally but that process was removed.
> It sounds like they isolated tasks that are performed frequently enough and need no specialization and decided to outsource these. Maybe as a stopgap before they get completely automated.
Yeah but that doesn't mean we should be treating workers like shit
Read the article - they aren't complaining about pay, they are complaining about job security. They are doing work that is going to be needed for the foreseeable future but can only work 2 years before they have to leave (for a period).
They are low value workers. They don’t get job security. That’s the reality of it. They are replaceable with people with no experience. They have to understand that. There’s no job security to waiters either or Uber drivers. Just because they work in a datacenter doesn’t mean they deserve more money for a low value job.
If they want a full time job, they need to elevate themselves. Educate yourself, get a degree, find a new job, become management etc. Lots of paths to job security. Just because people want job security doesn’t mean they deserve it.
> If they want a full time job, they need to elevate themselves
This suggestion only makes sense until it doesn't. Suppose everyone actually took that advice. Then you'd have an entire population of overqualified people who cannot find jobs that are appropriate to their skill level and who still have to take crappy jobs. Paradoxically, maybe even you are one of them. Then what?
Now consider that this upleveling actually does happen for many people, and yet the issue of risk of financial ruin continues to exist for the bottom rungs in perpetuity.
Also, the point about deserving feels a bit myopic. Does someone deserve to be so poor that their family ends up resorting to tax funded programs like unemployment benefits, or worse, they turn to stealing, landing in jail and imposing a $40k tax burden per head on the rest of the population?
If the money flows from big corps to privileged highly paid workers pockets to the IRS to govt-run programs, why not just route the money directly to the less privileged so govt programs are less needed in the first place? The status quo is really not that different from Omelas[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...
> Then you'd have an entire population of overqualified people who cannot find jobs
Why would you? In the time it takes to train, those jobs could be created; if some of those workers become business owners, for example.
You still need someone to pick your potatoes in the farm for you. If everyone has white collar skills, then that means one of two things:
1) white collar jobs don't pay as much comparatively to blue collar (meaning your supermarket potatoes now cost $50 due to high labor costs because there's no supply of workers)
2) people with white collar skills cannot find white collar jobs and are forced to take low pay blue collar jobs so that they can put food on the table, while you can continue to enjoy $1 potatoes.
The latter is actually how the world works now: there are people w/ master degrees doing Uber, actors working on starbucks, etc. One can argue that most adults are in fact overqualified for physical labor: they can read and write and do math, which are arguably "higher level" skills than what is required for those jobs (cf. farming in the feudal ages).
If there is a dire need for potato-picking manual labour, pay will increase, as will the price of potatoes, short-term at least, assuming the change is sudden and of immediate effect, which makes the scenario even more unrealistic. Realistically, rather than labourers becoming indefinitely well-paid, and potatoes indefinitely expensive, alternatives to manual labour will rapidly be developed, incentivised by high demand for potatoes and low supply of labour e.g. potato picking machines (which already exist btw). The sudden increased supply of automation and robotics engineers won't hurt either.
> your supermarket potatoes now cost $50 due to high labor costs
which is as meaningful as $1 potatoes since we don't know the value of a dollar in this hypothetical "everyone is a white collar worker" world. More likely the value applied to all jobs shift, and previously lucrative jobs are not so lucrative anymore; that said, this may not be zero sum, the average standard of living may also increase - but many humans derive their satisfaction relative to the average, a metric that can never satisfy everyone, a poor man in the west today may have better nutrition, health, welfare and SoL than a kind hundreds of years ago.
> people with white collar skills cannot find white collar jobs
This is what I asked - why do you think this is? I'm not convinced.
> there are people w/ master degrees doing Uber
master degrees, in what? If if need to be said: get an education in something useful, and paid well by the market. STEM is usually a good bet.
> they can read and write and do math
But how do those skill translate into something useful for someone else? And how does demand compare to supply?
> This is what I asked - why do you think this is? I'm not convinced
The simplest way to explain is to just look at basic math: if there are 3 doctor jobs and 4 doctors, one gets the short end of the stick.
> master degrees, in what
In STEM, most surprisingly, but also other careers that sound fairly reasonable. You'd think stuff like civil engineering or accounting would be fine careers, right? But somehow, Uber drivers have the craziest life stories...
I've yet to see a doctor unable to either be employed or self-employ.
Try looking a bit harder then. From my first google search:
"Among European countries that have grappled with the problem of unemployed doctors are Italy, with an unemployment rate among doctors of 17% in 1990; Austria, with a rate of 9%; Germany, with 8%; the Netherlands, with 6%; and Spain, with 5%. In the Nordic countries the phenomenon is more recent-throughout most of their history they have suffered a shortage of doctors. Since the early 1990s, the unemployment rate among doctors has increased rapidly in both Sweden and Finland, and is expected to reach 10 to 15% by the year 2000"[0]
[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014107689608900...
It can't be helped if an industry is socialised to the extent that professionals are dependant on the state. At that point the mechanics of supply and demand are affected by interference.Among the unemployed doctors in countries with a large public sector of health care, there has been little interest in venturing out as private entrepreneurs. Instead, the medical profession is interested in protecting the position of doctors as employees in the public sector, which can secure their position in the division of labour in health care better than the private sector.
Why do you have so little compassion for people? Just because a person has "low value" skills doesn't mean we _have_ to treat them like they are disposable. These "low skill" jobs are critical to the function of society and the people that do them deserve respect, security, and acknowledgment.
I’ve worked a ton of low value jobs. I’ve worked in factories, as a receptionist, as a secretary, in a bank, etc. I never felt that I deserved to make more money just because it was compassionate to give me more. I understood exactly where I stood and why I was being paid.
That’s what motivated me to study my ass off and work hard at my job and elevate myself. Some people are okay with not working harder and making what they do. Half my close friends are like that. That’s great and I don’t look down on them. But I don’t think they need to make more money “just because.” It’s whatever the market bears.
I think you are letting your personal experience with "low value" jobs cloud your vision in this situation. Its great that you worked your way out and I am sure you deserve whatever position you are in now. However, I think there is some survivorship bias at play here.
> I understood exactly where I stood and why I was being paid.
I am sure that the people in the article know this as well, but that doesn't mean they are treated fairly. The way society is structured and businesses treat people is not just by default. If this was the case, there should be no worker protections and we should simply pay people "what they are worth", which, in the past, resulted in factory towns and child labor.
Nobody in the article is demanding more money by arguing it is the compassionate thing to do, they want pay _parity_ with their coworkers who do the same job, which is pretty different in my opinion. They also want to keep their jobs after 2 years instead of getting fired for basically no reason other than it saves Google money through a regulation loophole.
> I don’t think they need to make more money “just because.” It’s whatever the market bears.
We do not live in a free market economy by any means. The reason why these people are being treated so badly is because of a poorly thought out regulation. Acting as though the system is a "free market" is just an indirect way of justify oppression of workers under the current mixed market system
Please, do tell, of all the fresh college grads that get hired for dev/SWE jobs at Big N companies, how many have specialized skills that will bring value from day 1?
In fact, how many weeks / months / years does it take for someone to become a consistent value-add contributor to ANY company?