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Google's Second-Class Citizens
theodp writes "Valleywag reports on a new caste system at Google, which will mean compulsory lunch breaks, two additional unpaid 15-minute breaks, limited OT, and e-clock punching for those reclassified as hourly workers starting April 1. Could be worse, though. Google also offers gigs through WorkforceLogic (the company that helped Microsoft deal with its pesky permatemps), which come with a guarantee of unemployment after one year. Guess that's what passes for the Best Employer in the US these days."
Well, the only part of this that I CAN understand being upset about are the UNPAID 15 minute breaks. While it is google's perogative to make them unpaid, generally the 15 minute breaks (law mandates 10 minute BTW) are paid. Again, not illegal, but google has built a reputation for offering it's employees more. Anyone who has ever worked for an outstanding company that gave all kinds of perks is familiar with the google employee's pain. It sucks to have tons of cool benefits then gradually watch them slip away as the company grows and seeks to boost the bottom line.
It used to be that where I work, everyone in our department was exempt. The catch is that for a few folks, they were treated like hourly employees (strict work times for the help desk staff, for example). Eventually someone complained and certain jobs were reclassified as hourly.
In general, I don't think it made much of a difference to people's salaries. Certain Help Desk staff had their schedules adjusted to prevent overtime. Hourly people had to record their times. What's strange is that there was a loss of prestige of sorts. Hourly employees weren't considered as "professional" as exempt employees. It wasn't major, and I don't think anyone mentions it now, but it was a cause of grumbling at the time.
The problem I would have with the Google work environment is that it all appears to be geared to getting you to spend as many hours as possible at the office.
;-)
That is, the free food, and fun corporate events are all nice and everything; but my sense is that in return you're pretty much expected to work extremely long hours, to make your job your life.
IMO, it's extremely important -- crucial even -- to have a separate work life and home life. Work hard from 9-to-5 but then drop everything and go home, spend the evening with your wife and family. Forget about work and come back fresh the next day. Google doesn't seem to emphasize that. It appears when you work at Google, you work there 24/7. I don't think that's necessarily a healthy approach.
Still -- looks like a very fun place to work. If you are allowed to go home at the end of the day.
boxlight
When you do it in a systematic way to avoid hiring employees as regular, full-time workers to avoid paying benefits. MSFT lost a big lawsuit in the early '90's over this. A little research with your favorite search engine should give you the background.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Let's play this one out a bit. You work for a company that makes widgets. Your company is really really good at making widgets. Janitorial services are definitely not the forte of anyone directly responsible for the normal operations of making and selling these widgets.
Why add an in-house service that you're obviously not good at when there are plenty of local janitorial service companies that you can contract out to and be more capable of at least telling whether or not the contracted company is doing a good or bad job at it?
Note, I do know that it's harder to tell on some things whether the contracted company is doing a good job without internal working knowledge. But janitation... pretty easy to tell that the toilets, bathrooms, carpets aren't being cleaned.
Excellent.
True, the hourly guy could be making more money - but that's not all there is to compensation.
The ability to influence actual change is worth more than money to some. I know that I am more than willing to "lose" a few dollars an hour in order to be given free reign to implement my ideas on a large scale. If my ideas work I am in a much better position to be given more critical tasks and matching compensation.
Some companies don't give this freedom to hourlies.
It would be so much more motivating to be paid by the hour. If the company wanted you to work long hours, they would have to pay extra for the privilege. The only tangible thing salaried employees get for working overtime is "maybe this will put you slightly higher on the list for raises next year, if there's money for raises at all".
It's a healthier attitude, I think. My employer would pay a fixed amount of money per unit of my time / effort. Of course, employers don't want that because they want you to donate a bunch of work to them, saving them some money. Of course, it never saves enough money to make your job safe from offshoring.
Take for example this quote:
The real reason for this rule is to protect the employees. It is really intended for people like foundry employees. The law makes the lunch break manditory so that the company cannot force employees to work through lunch and not eat. By being mandatory the company cannot coerce the employees into claiming they skipped the lunch break by choice, when in fact management told them that they would be fired if they did not skip lunch.The breaks have a very similar reason. Now I admit that these laws seem broken. Google's hourly employees really have no risk ob being coerced into skipping lunch or breaks. It would be nice if Google would demonstrate that these changes are merely being made to comply with the law, by paying for lunch and the breaks. The fact that they are not is somewhat concerning.
Finally I will note that the requirement of receiving management approval for overtime does not seem to be for the protection of the worker. That one does exist only for the protection of profit.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Hell...just take up smoking and you get at least 3-5 breaks a day of about 5 minutes.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The mandatory breaks are there to protect the worker. And by making them mandatory rather than voluntary it protects the employer as well because there can be no dispute as to if there was some "arrangement" made or not.
Working an 8 hour day, and getting paid extra for working long hours. and being limited on the number of hours you work (forcing a business to hire more people to handle the work load) is a GOOD thing.
Getting paid a set salary, then working tons of hours is labor abuse, in my mind. Because if you don't like it, your only choice is to complain and get fired for not being a "team player". happens all the time.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I spent 10 years working for "body shops" after I passed a certain age milestone, than after passing one more of those milestones, I could not get a job at all, period.
The "recruiters" or "headhunters" lie to you, keep you running around for nothing, bring you in to their offices for nothing, don't read the resumes, and other really stupid stuff that you'd expect from a bunch of mindless coke fiends.
The industry now (high tech) is all about getting labor on the cheap and all about not giving workers any of the benefits that we took for granted during most of my working lifetime. Surftemps (Tempsurfs?) and H1B's are how the multibillionaire punks "get over" on the labor laws here in the US of A, as a "Temp" you can be let go because you have gas & you get no benefits. As a "guest worker" (H1B) not only can you be fired for clearing you throat during a meeting but you can be deported too!
I know why people from "developing" countries come here, money, something in short supply (back home). But why the hell do I see people from western Europe working here? Maybe I'm missing something?
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd