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Microsoft Caste System
Ericka writes "Computer Source Magazine recently published an article on Microsoft's treatment of its contractors. According to some temps, the work environment for these folks has taken a downturn since the resolution of the permatemp suit."
I thought C# was supposed to do away with a lot of casting in everyday programming. oh FUCK
They aren't invited to company parties.
This has gone too far! The humanity! Surely the person-to-cake ratio would be sufficient with them included!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I spent some time as a contractor at Mastercard. Poor treatment of contractors there is not only well-known, but encouraged. Hell, we weren't even allowed to park in the same parking lot as the employees. At least we got a shuttle bus. Deliver me unto my corporate master.
Contract programmers get a considerably better rate and overtime pay... They also are a bit more secure as they have a signed contract for X hours, which is legally actionable if not met...
boohoo, they don't get other benefits, but that's just the tradeoff..
I think there were rules about not inviting them to employee parties, and I was told that we could not send a consultant a gift when he or she was hospitalized or had suffered a family tragedy.
Because of this, when one extremely worthy consultant lost a parent, her gift went on my personal credit card rather than a company card. My understanding was that one or another of the managers would do this in similar cases, in this case I was the volunteer. We handled gifts out of our own pockets because we felt the policy was crass, denying the civility that we should display as managers.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I'm a contractor. I don't get benefits from the company I'm working for and nor should I - I'm not its employee. I would expect it to treat employees better. Frankly, I can live without 'promotional swag'. I don't get invited to company parties? Well, guess what? The client company doesn't get invited to mine either...
As a contractor, I am the boss of my own company and I have an explicit business arrangement with the client. That's it. Doesn't go any further, shouldn't go any further. I have no interest in whether they give me blue, orange or sky-blue pink with polka dots security cards - their choice and privilege. Now sign this invoice here...
Cheers,
Ian
withholding full-time benefits and pay while working them like full-time employees
Check. I did a 9-5 like everyone else and was paid according to the contract. Which, if it was less than others, I was SOL.
Microsoft does not allow these workers to use employee discounts for products they help to design
Check. So? They're a temp, that perk it would appear if for perminant staff. I don't see a problem here.
They aren't invited to company parties. They don't get promotional swag.
Same again. I was never invited to parties nor did I get swag from anyone. Because I was a temp.
Contractors must wear orange name badges to contrast with the blue of full-time employees.
Check again. Been in places where security needs to identify you as either perminant, contract, intern or whatever.
a nickname borne from the "a-" that precedes any Microsoft temp's e-mail address.
They're lucky they got an email address. Often I wasn't even on the network.
Maybe the working laws are different in the US to the UK - but i've been through all the above and people here go through all the above on a daily basis without complaining.
I can't really see what they're complaining about.
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I'm been both a blue and an orange badge.
a- == temp employee
v- == vendor
t- == intern
\I live in Switzerland, so this may not apply to you.\
I'm an IT security and unix consultant/contractor here. Aside from a few years before 2001, when massive numbers of low-skill kids decided to make a quick buck as contractors, consultants are held to a far higher standard than "permies". Much as I hate to say it, there's a sense of elitism among "real" contractors here--these are the hardcore tech guys whom you bring in when something is gefuckt beyond salvation by mere mortals.
N.b. that I don't count myself as a Superman like that, just lucky to be in the right places at the right time so far.
I've never contracted in the US, but I recall looking at contract sysadmin jobs during college, paying $17.50 US per hour. Most of my American contractor colleagues' conversations I overhear involve an ambition to go permie, and how shitty contracting is.
This surprises the hell out of me, as I think contractors/consultants here generate sort of a sense of "awe" (crappy word, but I can't think of anything better), as the outsider who comes in to do the _really_ hard stuff, among employees. This can develop into resentment if not handled carefully.
One of my project managers taught me a good lesson for consulting--never cease looking at a job as an "us-vs-them" situation. Deliver more than you promised ahead of schedule and raise the bar all around, but consider yourself as providing a good example. Stokely offers what I consider to be some excellent guidelines of how to go about this.
The idea of a 'caste' system, where the permies look down at contractors amuses me to no end.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Before the lawsuit: MS is treating us like fulltime employees when we're not!
After the lawsuit: MS isn't treating us like fulltime employees anymore!
Seriously, you get a paycheck? Good. You do not have a right to anything beyond that. That's it. Don't like it? Seek a fulltime position or find work elsewhere.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
1. Put contractors in vital development roles
Seriously, I can think of a number of other companies that have similar caste systems, sometimes even within the hierarchy of permanent positions in the company. Unless I missed the graphic descriptions of inhuman torture and anal probing, I can think of several businesses that I've been told are much worse places to temp for.2. Treat all contractors like utter crap
3. Exclude contractors from having the most current and accurate information with respect to project specs, company standards, and their team's vision & progress by excluding them from important meetings
4. Depend heavily on the quality of the work the contractors do, including their code in the latest version of MS BugMaker 2003.
5. Whine about the mean lawyers and judges who make you play nice with the other kids
6. Charge an exorbitant per-seat license for each application that expires approximately 27 minutes and 3 seconds after registration, but includes a feature that automatically takes out a second mortgage on your home so that you're able to continue working
7. Profit!
Reading this article I couldn't help but think that MS is doing the same thing to contractor abuse that it did with DOS a couple of decades ago- they didn't actually invent the concept, but it's been lovingly adopted and taken in directions that only MS would dare to go. Where would you like to be screwed today?
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
Look I've been a contractor for awhile with a very large company and let me give you a little bit of insight into the reality of this situation. Before the permatemp suit with MS, contractors everywhere who worked for big companies had it A LOT better than they do now. When I first started at my current position, there wasn't anybody worrying about the 365 day limit or whether or not they should invite a contractor to a company party.
When this suit went through - everything changed. 365 day employment limits came down like clamps and contractors became somewhat more alienated in the grand scheme of things. In the long run this doesn't bother me as I believe the pros of contracting still far outweigh the cons. Not to mention the fact that there are several loopholes which can be employed to keep contractors longer than a year (which incidently are currently keeping me employed here since I've been here close to 3 years).
Does this situation bother me? Not too much. Does the linked article bother me? Damn straight it does. These contractors that work for MS really have nobody to blame but themselves for the current set of restrictions they work under. Frankly I'm amazed that these people complained in the first place. As a contractor you are typically paid by the hour rather than salaried. This means that (A) you either work less than your fulltime coworkers or (B) are better compensated for your time spent at work or even (C) both. What truly boggles the mind is that these people sounded like they were getting some fulltime benefits such as product discounts, party invites, and a few other things. So I have to ask, what was the problem? The answer of course is that they got greedy.
Personally I have absolutely no urge to work fulltime for anybody again. Clamor on all you want about better benefits and other intangibles that come with being a fulltime slave but keep this in mind: A lot of contracting agencies provide a full benefits package (i.e. Mine) along with paying the actual employee more money and they still somehow manage to do this cheaper than their customers are able to. And to top it all off, in all of my three years in my current position I've only worked over 40 hours a week once. That leaves a lot of time for recreational and social activities that I otherwise would have to forego.
Bottom Line: The MS contractors made it worse for everybody else so I have nothing to say beyond "fuck you" when I hear them complaining about what has sprung from the seeds they have sown. I know a lot of you will view this story as an opportunity to bash MS but keep in mind that everything was fine and dandy right up until the contractors got a little too greedy for their own good.
J
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
As someone who has been interviewed by a journalist for a similar article (taken completely out of context by the New York Times, no less), I think I detect some serious fudging here.
When a reporter goes to get "the story," they start with something either they THINK they can make a big hit with, or take some cruddy assignment and try to take off with it. They interview some people "in the thick" of the issue, and get some "expert" opinions.
This particular article seems to be a re-hash of some old '90s era brou-ha-ha about FTEs vs. Contractors at Microsoft. And it starts out with "you thought you knew the whole story. But we have MORE horrifying, panic inducing rumor and speculation to throw at you now!"
They then spin sound bites from their interviews to argue their angle for the story. And barring that, take a couple of really positive sound bites, like Jannell Myers did in this article, followed by "but others would tend to disagree!" Follow with the thrust of your angle, without any supporting opinions or evidence.
Throw in the testimony of a psychiatrist who basically says "yeah, people outside of a clique often feel left out; and the people in the clique make fun of them."
To flesh it all out, we go for the "public outrage" angle. We get the implication that all of these poor defenseless contractors go on unemployment when they leave Microsoft, and Microsoft is placing undue liability on Joe Taxpayer by their naughty employment practices!
Honestly, this is one of the most transparent pieces of dispassionate journalism I have seen in months. If I were teaching Journalism 101, Jannell Myers gets an "F-."
First of all... I am a blue badge. And anything I say is MY point of view.
But... I was a contracter in a previous life... and I worked for a company who outsourced me to other companies. My benefits came from the company I worked for... not the client companies.
Secondly, the hours I worked were defined by my contract that bound me to my employer... not the client ocmpany.
Thirdly, the unemployement benefits are NOT funded by the government as the article states. Companies pay into a fund that is used to pay these employees who are out of work. It's like an insurance fund, but it's required. Now... it is also up to the contractors employer to keep them busy... they know exactly when they will be let go by MS so it's not like it's a suprise or anything. If the contractors employer decides to lay them off, then it goes against their (not Microsoft's) unemployment account.
Oh... and finally, the v- or a- or t- simply means that someone is a vendor, admin or intern. I've never heard the term "Dash Trash" in all my years at MS.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
You're too locked into the standard /. groupthink.
To quote from the the article "When times are bad, Microsoft can lay off hundreds of contingent workers without a word to the analysts or to shareholders. It's a common practice that most contractors know and fear.".
There you have it, this is the corporate culture at Microsoft. Every single day i find a new reason to dislike that company.
To quote from the the article "When times are bad, any corporation can lay off hundreds of contingent workers without a word to the analysts or to shareholders. It's a common practice that most contractors know and fear.".
There you have it, this is the corporate culture at any corporation. Every single day i find a new reason to dislike uncaring corporations.
Before we go too far into the MS bashing, or Other-Big-Like-Evil-Company(TM) bashing for caste mentality division in the workforce, remember that we have a similar problem in the OSS world.
Anti-noob and RTFM mentality is a serious obstacle for the heavily geek-driven projects in the OSS world. Both on the side of new developers and new users. These are important people and a valuable resource for renewing project growth, ideas, and direction.
Just something to think about...
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*beware the cute-bunny virus
>They just have low karma...
:p
Even though this sounds funny, you are pretty much right on the mark. I did some consulting, and I did some contract work during the boom and every once in a while I would catch some static from the FTE's.
Sometimes I earned my space on the floor by being a serious bad ass - the techs or FTE programmers were genuinely interested in my technique, my thoughts, and my experiences in similar situations. They were eager to absorb the things I had to offer, and I was eager to share.
Occasionally I would run into someone that had a chip on their shoulder and I had to earn my space on the floor the hard way (Shock and Awe). I got into a pissing match with a DBA once over the way we were going to configure a particular SQL box and when push came to shove in the server room I held up my hand as if to say 'hold on a sec', looked at my watch. We sat there silent for a full 60 seconds as I watched the second hand on my watch go full circle. I put my hand down and said 'Your company just paid me $4 for that minute. I get paid another $4 for the sixty seconds it takes for me to explain this to you, and during the sixty seconds it takes you to consider the full ramifications of that statement, (you guessed it) I earn another four dollars. We can discuss this as long as you like, and I am willing to discuss it with whoever you want to bring into this discussion. If your pride is on the line here, I will let you adopt my recommendations and demand that we do it that way and I will let you take credit for the idea - I don't care because in four days I will be out of here.' BOOM! That pretty much ended the pissing match and I got on with my work.
I didn't get invited to the company party. I didn't get perks and I had to park out in left field. I didn't get invited to lunch. And I didn't care. God I miss those days
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As for the low karma bit - it is entirely possible that the temps (at least some of them, the ones whining about their stapler or not being respected) were shining examples of Darwin in action and were not worthy of respect. Otis may have hit the nail on the head on this one.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Company must hire to meet work demand in a fluctuating economy.
Or is that to create supply? Funny how "free-market" capitalists can't make up their minds.
Government regulates pay and benefits to full-time employees to make them very expensive.
Right. Please demonstrate how the government regulates pay at a private firm.
Company reacts by hiring more part-timers and temps.
Because it is too concerned with short-term bottom-lining than long term growth of its company with dedicated employees who show up to do incredible work for a good wage and benefit package.
Government regulates temps to try to force companies to hire more full-time workers.
Again, show how the government does this.
Company pushes temps to the margins.
By definition, a temp is a marginal worker.
Full-time workers given busier workload and longer hours.
Because, company is too concerned about short-term bottom-lining to invest in more dedicated workers devoted to the company and rewarded with a good wage and benefits package.
Arguably the company may eventually hire more full time workers, but at the expense of a lot of decent part-time and temp jobs.
Part-time and temp jobs which do not pay benefits and are usually lower waged, thereby increasing the profits for the company at the expense of workers.
See where this is going folks?
Yes.
I remember when the commie pinkos picked up the cause or the "temps" and "contracted workers" a few years ago.
Wheeeeee! Red Baiting! Welcome back to the 1950s! Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? No. But you were a member of the IBEW? Ummm, that's a union not a Soviet cadre.
Only an idiot would doublt it would end in the same way the "benefits" of unionizing did.
I am waiting to see how this ends... Waiting... Waiting...
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
They also are a bit more secure as they have a signed contract for X hours, which is legally actionable if not met...
You have just demonstrated that you have never actually been a contractor. Nobody who has ever worked as a contractor would make such a statement.
Contractors are generally hired to stabilize the work force, so that perms don't have to be hired or fired as often. I have spent more than half of my career as a contractor, and I have never had a contract with a guaranteed number of hours.
Also, the times that I have been dismissed early from a contract have usually been with no warning at all, due to the action of someone who has never met me and has no idea of what I do. It is typical in a really large defense contractor that the 3rd VP in charge of left-handed paperclips will wake up one morning and discover that there are (*gasp*) contractors in his organization, and issue an edict to get rid of all of them. About 6 months later, when it becomes obvious that the work isn't getting done, the lower-level managers start bringing them in again.
And then there are some employers that want their cake and eat it, too, like (a now-defunct telecom company)-- they fired me after less than 2 weeks because I wouldn't work unpaid overtime as a contractor. The amount of 'warning' I got was that my badge stopped working, and I had to threaten to call the police to get my personal items back from my (former) desk. I knew then that they were in deep trouble, and they have since been in the news, featured for being caught doing some creative accounting. Shortly after my experience, I discovered that I had been the 4th contractor in that position in less than 3 months.
Since that experience, I have been more careful about what companies I contract with, and I have 'fired' more than one of my clients at the first sign of dishonesty -- also without notice. The door swings both ways.
Word to the wise: A company that screws its employees (including contractors), its vendors, or its customers will eventually screw all three -- plus its investors. It's part of a general mindset in which the folks running the company think it's ok to screw people.
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Those who work neither as blue- nor orange-badges may wonder why they should care about Microsoft's practices. The answer is that from day 366 to day 466, Microsoft temps still get paid. Only the check is written not by Bill Gates, but by the State of Washington.
That's one of the way temporary workers have been punished. Real nice of them. Think about doing routine work for M$ and having to take 100 days off every year. Right now that means being unemployed. Washington State might have better benifits than my state where the best you can get in benifits is minimum wage. What a great way to treat the people who get your work done: no retirement, no stock options, 25% of your pay comes from welfare. This is a much larger slap than being called "dash trash" and otherwise treated like an outcast.
Is this what we can expect in the future from Corporate Amercia? Microsoft is one of the few companies that really grew in the last 20 years. If they won't treat their employess well, who will? Reading storries like this makes me sick.
"Let them eat cake" indeed. Fuck you Joe.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Most of the posts here have to do with consulting/permatemping in the IT field...permatemping in the non-IT field is slightly different, since the pay is usually quite a lot lower, and there are a few other things of note.
I worked for the financial services arm of a large european auto company (whose name begins with B and ends with W) and the cost to the company for me was just a little bit lower than for a regular employee, when extra administrative costs and temp company costs were added in. The claim was that headquarters in Germany specifically authorized headcount, and apparently that took ages to do, so the only solution was to have permatemp employees.
They did make some effort to move employees over, except for the fact that, since we were a "bank" of some type, they took credit issues seriously. You could get hired as a temp with bad credit, but you couldn't get hired as a perm with bad credit, and worse, if the company found out about your bad credit in your application, you jeopardized your temp. position.
That essentially meant that we had permatemp employees making a lot less than regular employees stuck in permatemp positions, and oddly enough, they sorta of worked up the ladder in the permatemp system, so they were often people who were somewhat key to the system based on their knowledge and experience.
The other odd thing was, after I left, that temps could apply for full time positions in the first month they worked in a position there, or after a year of working there. They could not apply for a full time position in months 2 through 11. This apparently was to reduce the amount of talented temps jumping into perm jobs ahead of other perm employees. The reports I've had are that if the temp is talented and realizes this, they just go elsewhere after month 1.
I do have some sympathy for the badge issue, in that it can be symbolic (we didn't have the same issue ourselves per se, temp badges did not have photos on them, and I was ecstatic to have a non-photo badge, and the perm employees were always cheesed off that they had to have photo ones. Perhaps a person who liked being photographed would have had a different attitude on it.) Our symbolic issue was the car, in that a perm employee could get a really great lease on a car after one year of working there. When I first got there, the time working as a temp was counted toward your one year...however, shortly before I left, it was decided to change that so that only the time working as a perm employee would be counted for that year. It caused a bunch of us to leave, since it was such a symbolic disappointment. (I drove a Saab anyway, a vastly superior car, which admittedly kept me on their shit-list.)
I volunteered to be a notary public (we had a use for a few of em.) The cost of training a notary was $40, but the company didn't want temps to be trained, no particular reason why. If a temp came in as a notary, all the cooler; and it would have made a lot of sense for them to train me, since I was there at times when most of the other notaries werent, yet, they didn't want to.
In the long run though, it was the pay...the difference between the $17/hr of a perm employee and the $10/hr of a temp was heartbreaking at times. I'm glad I'm no longer there.
Contractors at IBM are not even allowed to talk to their own managers. They must communicate through their contracting firm. The badges are different, the e-mail addresses are different, they are not allowed to go to group functions, including their own department's meetings. Like many Very Large Corporations of America, they treat valuable and important workers as if they were third class citizens in a caste system. We have the legal system and the greed of lawyers to thank for this (not to mention the folks that worked at IBM as contractors and decided to sue the hand that fed them).
StyleChief
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! -M. Python