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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."
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
What's strange is that there was a loss of prestige of sorts.
That's a really interesting point. I think the loss of prestige is a major factor of grumbling. Although I cannot determine if being classified as hourly is the source of the issue or if the rank and file hourly archetype is to blame.
At every company I have ever worked for, the hourlies rarely took any initiative to change anything. There were always plenty of complaints from this group, but rarely were there any potential solutions offered.
Was this a side effect of being an hourly worker? Did they feel they had no leverage or voice to influence change? Did they feel that their job classification put their jobs on a precipice and rocking the boat might get them fired?
Does being classified as an hourly worker limit your growth potential in a company? That varies by company to company, but I can understand how the perception might be that it would. I can see discontentment arising out of having a ceiling thrown on your career ladder, even if that ceiling is just a perception.
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.
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.........
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