3 ms·

This is why it's so upsetting that companies in Silicon Valley (Google, Facebook, Apple, all of them) hire cooks/janitors/bus drivers/etc from 3rd party compani

by GuiA 9y ago

This is why it's so upsetting that companies in Silicon Valley (Google, Facebook, Apple, all of them) hire cooks/janitors/bus drivers/etc from 3rd party companies and offer them none of the benefits their full employees get. Just doing that would be a huge pipeline, and would play no small part in addressing the diversity problem they all claim to be preoccupied with (but don't do much about).

peoplewindow 9y ago
Google is famous for having made its early cooks and massage therapists into multi-millionaires by giving them stock options. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?mcubz=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?m... Remember that this NY Times article is designed to push emotional buttons. Their entire story revolves around comparing Apple against Kodak. There aren't really any deeper studies or figures provided. You could as well compare a contractor who worked at Kodak with a masseuse at Google and reach the opposite conclusion.
- GuiA 9y ago
  Except I work at such one big company, and talk to its security guards, shuttle drivers, cafeteria cooks, every single day. And what do they tell me? That once this ends, they're headed to Whole Foods for another shift. Or that they'll sleep in their car for a few hours tonight before heading to the next job, not seeing their kids. Or that they're struggling to pay for their mom's medical bills and have no clue how they'll ever get out of it. This NY Times article pushes buttons so well because it resonates deeply with what I, and many others, have been hearing every day since they've set foot in Silicon Valley.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    Yes. Note I referred to early employees. Cooks and massueses got rich off Google in the days when there were only a few of them and the company was run by idealistic founders who weren't responsible to the stock market. Now there are hundreds or thousands of such people globally, and things went back to normal. My point is that "janitor who became CTO" is not really a common story at any company, even at Kodak.
humanrebar 9y ago
I am not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that companies need to treat contractors substantially different from full time employees or get in trouble for basically having full time employees that they don't pay employment taxes on. So the choice is more like: * keep cafeteria workers on the payroll * hire a specialized company to run the cafeteria ...the middle ground would be to require all vendors provide minimum benefits of some sort (vacation, sick days, etc.). But that wouldn't make it feasible to offer a temp event worker a data maintenance role. That would basically be poaching another company's worker.

by GuiA 9y ago

peoplewindow 9y ago

Google is famous for having made its early cooks and massage therapists into multi-millionaires by giving them stock options. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?mcubz=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?m... Remember that this NY Times article is designed to push emotional buttons. Their entire story revolves around comparing Apple against Kodak. There aren't really any deeper studies or figures provided. You could as well compare a contractor who worked at Kodak with a masseuse at Google and reach the opposite conclusion.

GuiA 9y ago
Except I work at such one big company, and talk to its security guards, shuttle drivers, cafeteria cooks, every single day. And what do they tell me? That once this ends, they're headed to Whole Foods for another shift. Or that they'll sleep in their car for a few hours tonight before heading to the next job, not seeing their kids. Or that they're struggling to pay for their mom's medical bills and have no clue how they'll ever get out of it. This NY Times article pushes buttons so well because it resonates deeply with what I, and many others, have been hearing every day since they've set foot in Silicon Valley.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Yes. Note I referred to early employees. Cooks and massueses got rich off Google in the days when there were only a few of them and the company was run by idealistic founders who weren't responsible to the stock market. Now there are hundreds or thousands of such people globally, and things went back to normal. My point is that "janitor who became CTO" is not really a common story at any company, even at Kodak.

humanrebar 9y ago

I am not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that companies need to treat contractors substantially different from full time employees or get in trouble for basically having full time employees that they don't pay employment taxes on. So the choice is more like: * keep cafeteria workers on the payroll * hire a specialized company to run the cafeteria ...the middle ground would be to require all vendors provide minimum benefits of some sort (vacation, sick days, etc.). But that wouldn't make it feasible to offer a temp event worker a data maintenance role. That would basically be poaching another company's worker.