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About Half of Google's Workers Are Contractors Who Don't Receive the Same Benefits as Direct Employees (bloomberg.com)
Every day, tens of thousands of people stream into Google offices wearing red name badges. They eat in Google's cafeterias, ride its commuter shuttles and work alongside its celebrated geeks. But they can't access all of the company's celebrated perks. They aren't entitled to stock and can't enter certain offices. Many don't have health insurance. Bloomberg: Before each weekly Google all-hands meeting, trays of hors d'oeuvres and, sometimes, kegs of beer are carted into an auditorium and satellite offices around the globe for employees, who wear white badges. Those without white badges are asked to return to their desks. Google's Alphabet employs hordes of these red-badged contract workers in addition to its full-fledged staff. They serve meals and clean offices. They write code, handle sales calls, recruit staff, screen YouTube videos, test self-driving cars and even manage entire teams -- a sea of skilled laborers that fuel the $795 billion company but reap few of the benefits and opportunities available to direct employees.
Earlier this year, those contractors outnumbered direct employees for the first time in the company's twenty-year history, according to a person who viewed the numbers on an internal company database. It's unclear if that is still the case. Alphabet reported 89,058 direct employees at the end of the second quarter. The company declined to comment on the number of contract workers.
Earlier this year, those contractors outnumbered direct employees for the first time in the company's twenty-year history, according to a person who viewed the numbers on an internal company database. It's unclear if that is still the case. Alphabet reported 89,058 direct employees at the end of the second quarter. The company declined to comment on the number of contract workers.
He will be employed making license plates in Federal prison - if he earns that privilege back, the obese treasonous retard lol. That is, if we don't hang him for treason. Get a thick rope, he's so full of shit the sheer weight is an issue.
Hang his bitch beta traitor sons and feckless cunt daughter, imported whore wife too. Traitors due.
Google involved in trafficking, for cheap labor, wouldn't be a big surprise.
Still better than socialism and unions.
Just learn to negotiate your salaries better. Or learn to do something that is worth paying for. It’s the American way.
They're trying to maximize profit like other companies. Their only responsibility is to the shareholders. Same reason they (and other megacorps) aren't strongly supporting net neutrality. It raises the bar for their competition so they're fine with it.
...is this not how most businesses with over 100 employees operate these days?
When I started in my current job, everyone was anxious and scared because so many of the long-time employees left or were let go. A year later, about half of them got hired back getting paid more to work part time for the services.
In the mean time, all the work those long-timers used to do go transitioned over to contract firms that simply cannot do it as well, and when you transfer all that high-level technical knowledge between enough parties, the degradation in the quality of the knowledge is inevitable.
The fact that you're not getting benefits is the cherry on top of that mess.
I have been a contractor myself for many years, sometimes in huge groups of other contractors working for companies with employees.
I have also been on the other side, working for companies as an employee in teams that worked alongside large teams of contractors...
I think it should say a lot as to which situation is better that I have ended up working as a contractor for years instead of working as an FTE. If for no other reason than, overtime work really loses the sting when you are paid hourly...
Yes I lack some "benefits" a company might offer but I get more freedom in how to make up those "benefits". Because I work on contract I can take more vacation time than almost any company would allow. Because I work contract I can choose health care options that make sense to me and stick with them rather than being shifted around in changing company plans. And It's also lots easier to untangle myself from a bad contract than a bad employer... not to mention being more free to speak my mind since as a contractor I am generally free of politics (though on larger team of contractors that still can be a factor, but not as much as it is for employees).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Almost all of Uber's drivers are contractors who don't receive the same benefits as direct employees.
Want benefits? Don't be a contractor.
This isn't a "Google" problem, this is an industry-wide problem. What larger tech company ISNT doing this?
Have the authors never actually worked for a large corporation? GE, Microsoft, IBM.......? Like, how old are they, really?
There are lots of contract workers around. They don't get the same benefits as employees. No, they can't enter certain offices or participate in certain functions. Because they're contractors. Not employees. That's how it works. I know for a fact IBM gives presentations that explicitly say, repeatedly, "Contractors are not IBM employees."
Now if you want to complain that these contractors should actually be employees and they're classification as contractors dodges certain labor and tax laws, fine, go ahead and start building a case. But then, don't single-out Google. Maybe mention some other companies ... and don't just put the keywords "Apple" and "Facebook" in there for SEO purposes. Actually, y'know, research.
but who cares this is just a hit piece anyway. wanna bet Bloomberg relies on contractors as well?
If you work at a big company, most of the people there are contractors, vendors, consultants, or whatnot. The reason for this is that you can fire contractors easily, without having the press get wind of layoffs. Plus, you can treat contractors like garbage. Want them gone, and don't have the cajones to actually tell them? Disable their badge.
Of course, companies love stirring up the rivalry between FTEs and contractors. With FTEs, they make them scared that the contractors will take their jobs, with contractors, they make them feel disposable.
Your Lousiana INCEL chapter hired you as a contractor? I doubt it. You're a lying self-aggrandizing faggot more than not.
A former classmate worked for Google in the 90's and was paid enough to retire very early
Many companies like to now pretend that there isn't enough money to pay employees well enough (gamed with the phrase 'market-rate')
OS. Now BSDI is With process andm America. You,
See, those contracting companies will lure you in with seemingly great rates.
So, you bite. Thinking, "I'll have my own business!" Even though, you are stuck at one job and forbidden to work elsewhere.
So, you work. And "great" money - or so you think.
Then you have to file taxes. So...you're $50 or so an hour doesn't seem so good. You have self-employment taxes and all of the bookkeeping of keeping up with those taxes.
Guess what? You were better off as an employee. (yeah, some very talented people with some very esoteric skills do very well, but honestly ask yourself, are you one of them?)
And you have to submit invoices. And many companies insist (falsely) that it MUST be 30 days net because of "IRS rules" - Um, no. They just want free credit.
And do they pay on 30 days? Me'h! Some do.
But the fact is, you're spending many hours a week doing their bookkeeping work because you are a "contractor".
I'm self-employed, then I'm doing work for others. I can't?! Then I'm an employee.
Been there.
Alphabet can do what it wants as long as it follows the laws. If you owned a company you will see that employees cost a lot more and have a significant impact to the bottom line. People need to stop being whiny babies and get over it.If they don't like it, they are free to go somewhere else or start their own company.
" I am generally free of politics " - You're a paid troll who spends "work days" on Slashdot whining about employee benefits and unions and trying to defend traitors from what they said themselves. You're generally free of actual integrity, cunt.
contractors in technologies? how disruptive of them.
Then they are in violation of the Affordable Care Act which requires everyone to purchase insurance or sign up for Medicare otherwise they face IRS fines.
Having contractors is a great way to weed out garbage employees. You can let them go or not invite them back. I started out as a contractor and kicked ass. I went above and beyond my coworkers and the parent organization noticed. They poached me and now I oversee the contractors. I would do it this way if I owned a company. Forget having all employees, it's a pain in the ass.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
and while there is still legal protections for pre-existing conditions. "Benefits" in America usually means health benefits. Everything else is nice but secondary.
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this is Uber & Lyft's entire business model (albeit taken to the extreme). Companies have broken the social contract. There's no longer any stability for workers. That plus the death of Unions and the end of collective bargaining is why wages are declining even though productivity is way, way up.
Time for a New New Deal.
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Maybe I missed it in TFA, but I don't think that Google applies the same diversity requirements when hiring its contract employees as it does its permanent ones. I wonder what its employee demographics would show if they included contract workers into the total labor force.
Waaaaaahhhh!!
You're surprised? How do you think Walmart, Amazon, Google etc, make so much money?
if they are working 29+ hours health insurance is buy law unless they are 1099's but the IRS may not see it that way. even more so if they told to be at desk at X time.
Direct employees always got better benefits than contractors. In the 30 years ive worked, never in any industry did a contractor get better than a directly employed employee.
Managers don't care about you, you are just invisible to them.
So, Trump is right, H1-B visa program kills skilled workers jobs in USA
See, those contracting companies will lure you in with seemingly great rates.
I contract for myself.
When working as a subcontractor, I've worked through small to medium size consulting firms - but still under my own company, not theirs.
I should have mentioned, but basically, do not contract for the giant firms. The rates they give are terrible, and they treat you worse.
I assure you, working independently you can make more. than you would working at a company, even after factoring in taxes and paying for your own benefits. But even if not the freedom can be worth it, or the chance to work on more interesting things as an expert helping bring some product to life... sometimes I've taken a lower rate for very small company just because I like a project.
All the contracts I have taken I have them generally pay every two to four weeks. That's worked out fine.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This rule is so often spun, to the point it's almost unrecognizable. People say all kinds of things that just aren't true. It's really not difficult, either. Very simply:
The officers of a company (CEO etc) don't own the company. They work for the people who own the company, mostly people with retirement funds that have the stock. Therefore, the CEO isn't allowed to give himself or his wife money out of the company bank account. Rather, he must use company assets to do things that the shareholders (retirement savers) would want him to do. It's their money, he has to use it the they would want it used. That simple.
There is nothing in Apple's charter about being environmentally friendly, and there doesn't need to be. If most stockholders would want them to do X thing that's good for the environment, they should do it. What they can't do is pay the CEO's cousin $10,000/hour to install solar panels.
In times past, the corporate charter and bylaws often indicated what the corporation was intended to do. For a corporation I sold a few years ago, an old-fashioned charter would have said the purpose of the corporation was to do three things, in this order:
Provide jobs for people who had lost them when another company shut down
Provide best in class security solutions for web businesses
Potentially turn a profit
Nowadays, the charter or articles of incorporation frequently says "conduct business and other lawful activities" because that gives them maximum flexibility.
Here's one that surprises a lot of people, but it's absolutely true. If you think about it for a few minutes, you can probably figure out why:
The purpose for which most corporations are created is to provide jobs, to hire people.
I didn't say that's a common side effect, I said that's the purpose. It's what the shareholders want the corporation to do, as its first priority. I know some readers are about to angrily click the reply button, but think a moment first. That's a fact. You can figure out the details yourself, or you can post an angry reply and then look silly when I explain the details to you.
Nevertheless Google controls internet search, its reputation is steadily goes down.
I'm a contractor.
I would f*cking die if I had to have a permanent job.
I work for three months and then take the rest of the year off.
The idea of going into a job, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year - UNTIL YOU ARE OLD AND YOU NEVER LIVED JUST WORKED THEN YOU DIE -
Who the hell wrote this article *complaining* about contracting?
If they want to work full time for their entire lives, go right ahead.
Don't fuck it up for the rest of us.
healthcare on your own costs thousands. So they're mostly young, healthy people hoping they don't get sick. Most won't. A few will and they'll be screwed. As an added bonus this is an easy and effective way to do age discrimination.
Of course, that completely screws up the insurance pool. That's why folks like Bernie Sanders have been pushing for the biggest possible pool: everyone. Aka Medicare for all aka Single Payer.
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The article forgot to mention the worst part of these contractors' jobs:
The team members with red badges who beam down to uncharted planets rarely make it back alive.
You make it sound like overtime was a thing everyone should be asking for.
I'm really more saying that in software work It is inevitable, contractor or not.
Being a contractor though means at least there is some reward for the loss of personal time.
I personally would rather have more time than money. But more money and less time is still preferable to me than less money AND less time - and more money is always transferrable to more time as a contractor at some point as you can reduce your hourly load for a while to make up for the time you lost, without financial penalty because you were paid extra for the extra hours.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Google is repeating Microsoft's history.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/06/30/ms_casts_its_permatemps_into/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-tries-to-reassure-contractors-about-rule-changes/
https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-permatemp-checks-finally-arrive/
This is the case at all the big tech companies I've seen. I've been stuck in the contractor grind for some time. Some folks seem to like it, I do not. You are treated as a lower class everywhere I've been, you won't be at moral events, you won't get stock, most companies are requiring the hiring agencies that place you to provide some health care and some PTO but it won't be at parity with a "true" employee. You usually will get paid less in the end and at many companies you have a "sell by" date that forces some amount of time off after some interval. At Microsoft it means every 18 months you are out of work for 6 months. So forget any sort of career trajectory. Also expect to be given all the worst of the work while it is assumed the reason you are a contractor is because "you couldn't cut it" as a real full time employee. So these gigs will pay the bills and sometimes there can be actual time and half overtime which is nice (assuming your contract doesn't have a 40 hour a week cap, many do so in that case you just won't get paid). Forget things like health club memberships, access to company specific bus service like the "Connector" buses at Microsoft. Well, I guess you do get out of the horrible review process at some of these companies. Would I rather be a real "full time" employee, yup. Now that I am a lowly contractor do I ever expect to get back to that, not so much, If you really want to go direct employee most folks have to go someplace as a non-contractor first then only consider a direct role with a larger company from that point on to scrub off the contractor stain! :-)
This isn't a "Google" problem, this is an industry-wide problem. What larger tech company ISNT doing this?
This goes beyond even the tech industry to an ongoing global problem . Whether in the United States, Canada, Europe, or East Asia, you have more and more companies opting to use more and more contract labor. It's many of the same reasons: easy to hire and fire / surge, cheaper, etc.
Most contractors in big companies are subcontracted out by "manpower" type umbrella companies which pool together contractors and rent them out to large companies, taking a cut from their hourly wages in exchange for doing HR and sometimes providing benefits. The big companies are invoiced per hour for all contractors, not per person, not 1099 or W2. Think when you go to a shop to fix your car - if you get charged for 30hrs of labour, you are not suddenly required to buy the mechanic health insurance because he worked on your car >29hrs this week.
Contractors have been around as long as Silicon Valley; I took multiple contract positions during the dot-com boom. Sure, I didn't get medical, but I also made quite a bit more per hour than I would have as a salaried employee, more than enough to pay for my own insurance (Nore: 1099 contracts need to pay 50% more than the equivalent W2 hourly contract). Same deal today: There are companies in my area which will only hire you off the street as a contactor, and a lot of employees there who enjoy the time off between contracts.
I have about for dozen friends between high school and college that work at Microsoft, and as far as I know, all of them receive worse benefits than a real Microsoft employee.
but you are not dealing the mechanic week after week. But if you are working w2 for manpower week after week then they must give you health insurance
I'm a conservative, but sometimes you need an American institution like a Union to make things sane again.
For those ignorant of American history, The People formed a Union to protect themselves from the abuses
the British Regency. Lots of much less intelligent people have much better pay, benefits, and job security
because they at least had enough smarts to join a union.
But of course, IT people all think that they are the next Bill Gates (who was independently wealthy).
Stupid is as stupid does.
100% of mine are.
In general, contractors have been involved in staff meetings right alongside full time employees. If it was project related, they needed to know as much as the employees.
The ONLY times I have ever seen contractors excused was when there was bad news to be handed out about the companies situation. And then we were all reminded that this info. had not yet been released publicly, so we were now prohibited from trading the company stock for a period of time. When we all made it back to our desks, the contractors had been on the phone with their brokers, dumping their company stock holdings.
Have gnu, will travel.
Interesting post.
What would you guess is the median net income for US corporations? Just for fun, care to guess the median number of employees?
Would you be surprised to learn that over 80% of US corporations were created primarily to employee specific people? Would your thoughts change if I mention that over 80% employee only one person, or one person and their immediate family? That over 80% of US corporations are people who own their job.
Here are 400 current shareholder resolutions, in which shareholders are directing companies to prioritize various social issues, such as environmental issues:
https://www.greenamerica.org/s...
This is 400 cases this year of shareholders explicitly telling executives "we want you to do this socially responsible thing, even if it cuts into profits".
You're absolutely right that, lacking any other information, the default assumption is that investmentors would generally prefer to make money rather than lose money. That's a default assumption when their is no reason to believe otherwise.
On the other hand, it is well known that Ben & Jerry's stockholders wish to support certain social issues:
https://www.benjerry.com/whats...
The executives at Ben & Jerry's would breach their duty to shareholders if they invested corporate money in an oil company, because there shareholders wouldn't like that - even if it increased profits.
Your citations are specious to the point.
You now desire to disambiguate shareholder rights, as a function of their ownership of a corporation, stock classes held, laws regarding shareholder rights, and more. That's another conversation.
Resolutions, aiding the aims of social justice, are plentiful and find their ways into stockholder resolutions, which may or may not be viable. They're a nice outlet-- should they be able to influence outcomes, but most often, they don't for a number of reasons.
My point remains that large corporations are enslaved to profits, even if that means doing sleazy things like hiring temps, 1099 contractors, or using one corp to optimze the return on another through employee renting, and other schemes. Shareholder return is the goal, not social justice. Social justice is the rare exception, as are themes like environmental-allied goals, and more. Corporations are made to enrichen and reduce liability. This doesn't mean I like how corporations work or the law behind them, or the wall against civic control applies, it's just how it is. It can be changed, but it's very difficult to do when corporations control campaign financing, and therefore, the legal system.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Badges? BADGES? We don't need no stinking badges!
And most contracting companies do provide health insurance. Only mom and pop contracting firms with less than 50 employees dont.
**Life is too short to be serious**
who constantly worries about healthcare, God I'm envious of you. Make sure your right wing doesn't take it away from you though. It's a constant battle to hang on to what little we have over here :(...
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The company I work at is a large automaker. There HR policy to "team members" is so rigid, that they hire out anyone they need to "yell" at. Maintenance, janitorial, security, food services, IT.
You have your upper tier skilled contractors (I suspect a fair few here) who are brought in on very good money to complete a project or do a specialist task. In Australia, they'd make at least 100 to 200k a year. Day rates exceeding $500/700 a day. I'd assume in US / SF, these people would be 200k+ minimum.
Then you have 'normal' IT workers, doing basic work, account creation, service desk, back up and restore teams, desktop support. These guys aren't really specialists (not anymore) and there's a volume of work to keep them compartmentalized in a fairly mundane role which is more like working a conveyor belt than hardcore IT. These guys, probably should be perm, but many places still keep em as contractors, so you can fire them easy and pay them poorly. Once you do the figures on their hourly rate, vs the perm staff, factoring in holiday leave / sick leave / medical (for the USA) 401k and whatever other benefits there are. These guys are OFTEN getting shafted and it's extremely common in the industry. I myself have worked a "contract" gig at a mid level salary at best for 4 years for example. I've seen people do it for 11 years..... We're talking under 70k wages (AUD, like 55k US)
It's fucking the employees. There's no such thing as 'long service leave' anymore, you get close to being eligible and you're accidentally made redundant.
Even if you paid the shop for 1000 hrs of work, you're still not obligated to buy any health insurance for anyone. Some people do pay hundreds of hours of labor to restoration shops or customization shops. The mechanic is not your employee, they perform a service for which you get billed for, just happens that the price of the service depends on hours spent.. Same with contractors, they are not employees of the company for which they do work for - their hours are billed as a service.
Can't speak for Google or employees in the USA - but here in the UK contractors might not get the free perks, but more than make up for it in the additional money they earn.
A FTE project manager on £55k has a day rate of around £211. A bog standard contract project manager can easily earn double that. If you're a really good PM then you can earn three times that amount.
All of the contractors I know wouldn't want to give that up for some free hors d'oeuvres, free beer and the ability to go into a couple of extra offices.
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People in gainful employment are not earning the same gains as people in a different type of gainful employment.
Clearly we need socialism.
> So what?? ... But you wear a different colored badge.
Not just the color is different, but also the shape. Pink and triangular if you have ever slept with the same sex or yellow and doubly triangular if you ever happened to wear a yarmulke. Meanwhile the permanent employees get to wear a red-and-black rotor badge on a brown shirt. We all know how "well" that system worked, after all it lasted just 12 years instead of the promised 1000 years...
They made that choice. If no one worked for peanuts, no one would get paid in peanuts
I work as an engineer for a large semiconductor company as a contractor on W2. The plusses are I'm not exempt, and get overtime. The minuses are no fringe benefits are offered other than what's required by law.
Nice try - I don't want your benefits. Back off gubbmint.
Employers (clients) are required to treat contractors differently to demonstrate that there are perks to being an employee. A contractor may sue for employment if a client is treating them the same as an employee. This is sometimes called the risk of a co-employment lawsuit.