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Googlers Write to CEO Demanding Equal Treatment for Contractors
- baybal2 8y agoWhy wouldn't Googlers make a union? I think Microsoft had one back in days, but it was microscopic.
- duxup 8y agoAt least in the US, unions tend to cover jobs where there is a lot of manual labor and etc. They tend to heavily emphasize seniority over most anything, and in doing so straight up discourage merit based pay. Many have strict rules about what position is offered to who and when (seniority wins again). They're not very effective / desirable for higher skill jobs IMO where merit and skills change rapidly. Granted that's all very general and I'm sure there are exceptions but unions (I hear they're different elsewhere) in the US are kinda wonky, not very agile, and can become an negative entity in many ways as they serve their own interests.
- ForHackernews 8y agoThis isn't strictly true. Professional athletes in major leagues are unionized, and their jobs are highly specialized and well paid. The Writers Guild of America is another union that represents a non-manual labor profession. You could also consider the American Medical Association as a pseudounion guild that restricts entry into the medical field and keeps wages high.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoAs well as the Screen Actor's Guild. "SAG-AFTRA represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other media professionals." https://www.sagaftra.org/home https://www.sagaftra.org/home
- duxup 8y agoMy wife was a part of a union that covered theater workers. Their group medical benefits were "you pay for it and submit each bill individually". It was pretty brutal, they showed no interest in changing it at the time.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 8y agoProgress is a function of effort, not time. Default to action, push whenever feasible to fix what is broken.
- duxup 8y agoI find many union's efforts to be lacking generally.
- santoriv 8y agoAs well as the American Federation of Musicians. When I was a freelance orchestral musician I loved the union. There was a huge difference in how you were treated during union vs non-union gigs.
- duxup 8y agoLike I said it was a general statement, but professional athletes are kinda a different animal considering their "laobr" is in high demand and very rare at their skill level. That's a pretty distant comparison. Same goes for doctors where they're not readily replaceable considering training / licensing requirements.
- samfisher83 8y agoPro Athletes are like 1% of the 1%. Even the 12th guy on the roster was like the best player on his college team. I am not sure if everyone in google was the best coder in their college.
- SilasX 8y ago>Like I said it was a general statement, but professional athletes are kinda a different animal considering their "laobr" is in high demand and very rare at their skill level. Er, what? That was the point. You: Unions are mainly effective for low-skill, manual jobs. ForHackernews: But they have them for professional athletes and actors too. You: Irrelevant, they're a whole different animal. Yes, the point all along was that the union model applies to different animals/worker-types.
- Apocryphon 8y agoAlso, they failed to address screenwriters, who have a creative specialist occupation that is vaguely more similar to software engineers.
- SilasX 8y agoInteresting, never thought about that one. And it's also similar in terms of tons of unqualified people trying to get in, and a low barrier to entry (in terms of producing recognizable work)...
- samfisher83 8y agoAMA is great for doctors. You need a license to practice you don't need a license to code. I don't think it wouldn't really apply to programmers.
- mkirklions 8y agoThe AMA is everything that is wrong with American Healthcare. They have enforced the Physician monopoly to the point where its cronyism. There is a reason Physicians make 300k/yr.
- ryandrake 8y agoBut it’s good for the members of the profession, which is the point of its existence. No doubt a similarly structured “programmers’ guild” would be equally good—for programmers.
- stale2002 8y agoIt would only be good for the programmers who kiss the ring and the already priviledged. It will screw over everyone else. I will never ever support an organization that puts up artificial barriers to what is currently a very open work industry. I would join the group just to sabotage it if they tried to keep out bootcampers or people without a CS degree. Anyone should be allowed to program.
- ForHackernews 8y agoIMO, there should professional licensing gated by an exam, similar to the accounting or actuarial professions. Anyone who can pass the exams gets in. But the flip side of being a real profession is you're liable if you store passwords in plaintext.
- llampx 8y agoOn the other hand, they are the reason a doctor or lawyer trained in India can not come to the US and directly start practicing, aside from the Indian lawyer not knowing US law, which they could potentially learn just as they learn java. No negative sentiment implied here. I am an immigrant myself.
- ryanmercer 8y agoAnd federal government employees have a union, the American Federation of Government Employees, the vast majority of which are office workers. Something like 670,000 members.
- xeromal 8y agoYeah, exactly. In a lot of unions in the states, if you have 5 years experience, you make x amount of money regardless of skill. The benefits are usually VERY nice though.
- duxup 8y agoDepends on the union benefits wise. Teaching ... not so much.
- moate 8y agoThere are plenty of truths in your point, but there are TONS of unions that aren't "manual labor" related. The top 3 US unions by membership are Teachers and Public Servant. There's also entertainment unions (All pro sports, SAG, etc). These represent millions of US workers. There are trade offs to collective bargaining, especially if you feel you're at the top of the skill curve among workers (If you're in the 1% of workers, why would your value be helped by bargaining with the other 99%) but the idea is always that in any negotiation of you vs. "the company" the advantage is typically in favor of the company because of the deferred costs across the entire organization. The larger the company gets, the greater this advantage becomes. Yes, there are other companies competing for top talent, and coding is an exceptionally in demand skill (which BTW, many hiring managers still prioritize seniority/experience over true meritocracy) which helps in the short term but since everyone is pushing coding education initiatives, I can't imagine this will be the state of things in the future. Right now, since there's more Senior Dev job openings than people with Senior Dev skills, there may be a slightly more neutral negotiation table. We'll see how that plays out in 10 years. Any time you have a large group of people, there's going to be disagreements about organizational choices or decisions as to how best to allocate resources. If you're unwilling to buy into the group, it's always going to feel like an albatross instead of a benefit. A coders union could be a good thing in the long term. Right now, the sector is still too chaotic, and lots of people are making stupid amount of money. If that starts changing...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tanilama 8y agoIsn't Unions against the idea of contractors? That takes work away from the union workers?
- gwbas1c 8y agoMake sure you understand the difference between a contractor and an employee. Often people who should be employees are classified as contractors. In this case, a union would advocate that contractors are really misclassified employees.
- aerotwelve 8y agoUnions, in general, aren't monolithic. How the average trade union member may feel about contractors within their field would likely depend on the industry they work in. Further, these groups aren't mutually exclusive in some cases. Many contract electricians are unionized, for example.
- darpa_escapee 8y agoNo, contractor and freelancer unions exist.
- gwbas1c 8y agoUnions are for situations where individual workers can not negotiate well. That's why the term "collective bargaining" is often interchangeable. IT workers are typically considered professionals why can negotiate for themselves. The general rule of thumb is how "replaceable" a worker is. Someone like a doctor or a hard to find engineer is considered professional, and thus a union is not needed. Someone who has a lot of handholding on their job, and can easily be replaced by someone else who will train quickly, is what a union is for. Thus, a union might work for the cleaning crew, foodservice crew, and maybe even Waymo testers. It won't work for software engineers, because engineers should be able to negotiate for themselves.
- nrook 8y agoI'm not sure I quite grasp this argument. Google is a popular, high-demand employer, and lots of people want to work there. But Google still found it useful to conspire with other tech companies[1] in order to hold down wages. The reverse should also be true: The sorts of engineers who can get a job at Google are in high demand. But, if they bargained as a group, they could probably get even more money. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-google-ruling/u-s-judge-approves-415-mln-settlement-in-tech-worker-lawsuit-idUSL1N11908520150903 https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-google-ruling/u-s-judg...
- ryandrake 8y ago> It won't work for software engineers, because engineers should be able to negotiate for themselves. Why? Is there something about software that inherently makes its practitioners shrewd negotiators? Part of what keeps software salaries down is the uncapped supply of talent competing for a small number of jobs. Tough to expect much negotiating power.
- Apocryphon 8y agoNot to mention it flies in the face of many popular “engineers suck at negotiating, let me teach you how to” blog posts on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=negotiation&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=negotiation&sort=byPopularity&...
- tomatotomato37 8y agoIt's not a good idea while CS salaries are so exaggerated next to other engineering salaries: the top 10% of earners complaining about working conditions will come off as a bit entitled to the other 90%. Wait for salaries to normalize or maybe concentrate on creating a trade association instead and steering the industry through that
- stale2002 8y agoUhhh, no thanks. I have no desire to increase the amount of people who have control over my working environment and getting in between my employment contracts that I negotiate with potential employers. Having only one entity that can screw up my working conditions (the employer) is much better than having 2 entities that can screw it up (both the employer and the union.) When dealing with a single entity, the relationship is clear. I negotiate with them, and offer my work in exchange for a contract that we both agree on. It would screw up incentives to have a third party who has significant control over my mutually agreed contracts.
- eaandkw 8y agoCareful what you wish for. You might just get it and it may not be what you want.
- babygoat 8y agoThat's very ominous. Would you care to elaborate?
- AlexandrB 8y agoI think he's implying that Google may resolve the issue by treating the full time employees the same way they treat the contractors.
- tanilama 8y agoI am quite welcome if that happens actually, that is what equality means isn't it.
- YetAnotherNick 8y agoNot if you are Google full time employee.
- babygoat 8y agoAre you saying you want them all to endure "discrimination, racism, and sexual harassment"? I hope I'm reading you wrong.
- jpollock 8y agoWhen I was a contractor (in NZ), there were substantial tax benefits. Not only was my pay higher (to compensate for no-notice termination), I paid less income tax because many expenses were deductible (car, power, house, phone, computers, etc). It turned out to be something like double my typical salary, with health insurance taken care of by taxes. Are the tax rules different in the US?
- duxup 8y agoSome states in the US have moved towards doing the same thing, but the impact hasn't always been positive as contractors don't get the same protections / benefits as employees and often this ends up being a net negative for the individual. Google contracts out a lot of already ... not that great jobs, they're not getting paid more for being contractors already....
- ryandrake 8y agoI think there was once a time in the US, where as a developer you’d (on average) come out ahead financially as a 1090 rather than W2, but I wouldn’t do it anymore. The cost of health care / insurance for a family pretty much forces me to be W2.
- duxup 8y ago>for a family pretty much forces me to be W2 Yup, someone in the family has to have insurance or you're toast if you've got a family sadly :(
- wyldfire 8y ago> Are the tax rules different in the US? AFAIK contractor-style employment (working for a contracting agency at GOOG) is considered no different from working directly for GOOG individual-tax-wise. It would be more like the situation you describe in NZ if you had your own business for which you did contracting.
- TylerE 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throwawayhere1 8y agoShouldn’t this lie on the consulting firms placing them? Equally, are the consultants unaware that they work for the staffing firm doing project for Google? Yes, security communication should go to all. But everything else?
- jonlucc 8y agoI work in pharma, and I was a contractor before I was hired on. It's a similar situation to what's described in the article, where contractors are full-time employees of a third-party company, and that company's rules are the ones that apply to their employees. If I remember correctly, the contract company was mostly concerned with co-employment. As it was explained to me, Microsoft had a similar setup, but contractors were treated exactly the same as employees. Those contractors sued and won all of the additional compensation they had been denied as contractors. For that reason, Google can't have too much control over things like hiring and firing decisions, healthcare offerings, compensation, etc, lest they be considered a co-employer. In the article, it sounds like the Google employees want Google to wield its power to enforce particular HR policies on their contractors, but I'm not entirely sure that's possible. Disclaimer: I'm a biologist, not a lawyer.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThese "contractors" exist solely to create the ability to exclude employees from benefits and rights. It's entirely possible for Google to resolve this: Google can hire it's own employees. From my recollection, Apple Store employees are, in fact, employees of Apple. Whereas if you go to any sort of Google popup retail location, you're going to be working with contractors. The other way Google can control all of these aspects even for contractors is to refuse to work with contractors who do not uphold the standards they set. As these contracting companies exist solely to provide contract work to big tech cos, they will fall in line immediately.
- sultanofswing 8y agoBut you've sort of hit the nail on the head right there. Apple Store employees are likely employees because Apple Stores are a major part of Apple's business. Apple hires hoards of contractors for all sorts of roles internally (experimental projects, kitchen staff blah blah). Google popup locations are not comparable to Apple Stores.
- BinaryIdiot 8y ago> The other way Google can control all of these aspects even for contractors is to refuse to work with contractors who do not uphold the standards they set. As these contracting companies exist solely to provide contract work to big tech cos, they will fall in line immediately. Hmm. But if they try to match (or come close) to Google's standards then Google will likely have to pay more for a contractor than they do for an employee. At that point might as well just hire them.
- misiti3780 8y agohow does google have that many contractors?
- dymk 8y agoGoogle pays competitively enough such that contractors agree to do work for the company. They just don't get the benefits that a FTE get.
- protomyth 8y agoAsk Microsoft how it works out for a company when contractors are treated as employees[1]. What ticks me off is that before that lawsuit, I was really enjoying being a contractor then that happened and companies became really skittish and a bit hostile. 1) https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-dont-treat-c-idUSTRE53063S20090401 https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...
- intopieces 8y agoYep. As someone who hired contractors at a company that competes with Google, I can tell you that this case was slide 1 for our training. Google already treats their contractors the best in the industry by far - free food, free transportation to work, etc. Their hands are tied.
- jasode 8y agoMicrosoft losing that contractors case also had a lot of repercussions affecting legitimate contractors. In the early 1990s before Microsoft lost, I easily got direct-1099 contracting jobs at various companies. Afterwards, every company got scared and overcorrected away from 1099s. It didn't matter if you incorporated as "Joe's Programming Solutions Inc". They insisted you had to go through one of their "approved vendors" which was basically just a middleman company set up to hire you as a W-2 employee. That intermediate company would then contract you to the 1099-averse client. Microsoft's defeat was when all the "W-2 bodyshops" popped up. Instead of me earning $100 directly from a client, I had to find a W-2 shop to "hire" me as an employee and let them skim $30 from my hourly billing so I would only net $70/hour. It wasn't too happy about that but that's the closest I could get to being a freelancer. I really didn't want to be anyone's employee. I believe most contractors share my opinion that the overall effect of the court judgement against Microsoft was a net negative and it didn't improve work conditions for contractors. Instead, it just made it worse by enriching middlemen we never asked for. It's also a net negative for the client company because they pay a somewhat higher bill rate to the W-2 company because they provide the service of "legal cover" to protect against a Microsoft type of lawsuit or IRS reclassification. It's a textbook version of economic inefficiencies.
- izacus 8y agoThis is literally illegal in many European countries which demand that people working at FTE conditions be employed as full-time employees.
- klodolph 8y agoIs this literally illegal? From what I understand, the typical arrangement is that these people are full-time employees, but they are employees of a different company, and the contract is between companies. To delve into hypotheticals, company X has a building and hires company Y to clean it. Company Y employs the janitors full time, and company Y decides the policies for hiring and firing janitors, and decides what their schedules are. The janitors are working at FTE conditions, and therefore they are full-time employees, but they're not employees of company X and don't get the same benefits.
- edanm 8y agoWell obviously it depends on the country. I know that here (in Israel), the are laws around this that say that anyone working in what is effectively FTE in a company, even if they are contractors, had to be treated in various ways like a fte of the company. Eg in vacation days. I'm not sure about any subtleties here- when exactly this kicks in, etc. But there are some real protections.
- klodolph 8y agoTo be clear, these people are FTE in a company, it's "just" a different company. There are various laws here in the US about whether someone is an employee and a contractor and the courts generally seem interested in enforcing them such as they are. The test here comes down to how much control the company has. If the company controls schedules, pays ordinary wages, provides equipment and training, etc. then it's an employee. If the person can set their own schedule, gets paid for work completed, buys their own equipment, and is free to work for other companies then it's likely a contractor. I know that Google has an office in Tel Aviv so it should be easy enough to check if they have the same kind of staffing they do elsewhere. The company I work at mostly uses contractors and vendors for things like janitorial service, catering, etc. At least, as far as I can tell, I'm more of a code monkey.
- fipple 8y agoThese CEO demand letters are always perplexing. Do the authors think this is a representative government? The CEO represents the shareholders, not you. A letter from an employee is like a letter from a RAM stick in a data center.
- mbrumlow 8y agoWhile I agree the CEO works for the shareholders he also has to keep his ship running. So sometimes the CEO will care about what employees say. But I think at this point the CEO failed correct the problem of at hand and now will have to deal with every injustice a few googlers see fit to scream about. From here on out all I can see is it getting worse, and then the shareholders firing the CEO and replacing him with one who will deal with sort of issues appropriately. We can talk all day about what is appropriate, but I think many will agree you can't have your employees hold a company hostage over political beliefs. But then again, Google set themselves up with this problem with their silly hiring practices.
- throwaway1205 8y agoI hope this doesn't make things difficult for those of us who actually prefer being contractors. Becoming a contractor in tech (not at Google) is one of the best decisions I've ever made. 1. I mostly get to choose how much I work, currently around 25 hours per week. 2. Despite fewer hours, I still make more annually than I ever did working full-time. 3. I don't have waste time going to all-hands meetings, mandatory trainings, offsites, etc. 4. I can work on my own side projects without worrying about an employer trying to claim the IP. Maybe you could argue there's less job security, but if you think you have much of that with at-will employment, you're fooling yourself.
- moeamaya 8y agoAgree in a very similar situation and hope to continue this format of working. But that said this equality effort isn't about folks like us, it's about helping out those that need healthcare, holiday pay, etc. I'm on the side of those in need getting the benefits over our privileged lives being mildly altered.
- Consultant32452 8y agoIt amuses me, because a significant percentage of these consultants are foreign workers brought in for the explicit purpose of increasing supply and suppressing domestic wages. Now the domestic workers are fighting to improve the wages of the people brought there to hurt them. I want to be clear I'm not intending to say anything negative about the domestic or foreign workers. It's just an amusing situation imo.
- Consultant32452 8y agoBack when I was consulting I had MORE job security, because I had more than one "employer." If one dried up for some reason I pretty much always had someone else lined up looking to pay me to do some work. My least favorite part of being an employee is goals/reviews. I much preferred just saying, my rate is $X this year, you can pay it or not.
- sjg007 8y agoThese types of contractors are different. They can't dictate their hours. They are basically software engineers hired on contingent status. The IRS frowns upon it but will typically allow 1 year before they convert to full time. A lot of big tech companies use them to hire engineers at lower pay and also to try them out before converting them to full time. People will take the lower pay on the hope that if/when they convert they get their actual value. This however frames the original price decision. Not saying it's evil but it's definitely not 1099.
- sincerely 8y ago>When a shooting happened at YouTube’s campus in San Bruno, California, in April, TVCs didn’t get some communications updating workers on the situation, which left them feeling unsafe, the TVCs said. Wow, that seems like something very hard to argue against. I hope that even if Google keeps them as contractors they improve communications.
- nostrademons 8y agoThat sounds like an oversight. IIRC there are "googlers-<site>" mailing lists that each full-time employee at a site is automatically added to. Whoever was doing comms that day probably assumed it went to everyone in the building, not realizing that it doesn't cover contractors or visiting employees.
- Dylan16807 8y agoIt's easy to argue against! "None of those communications, including the ones to employees, were necessary in the first place."
- sultanofswing 8y agoI have mixed feelings about this as someone who has worked as a contractor at a FAANG company. On the one hand, many of the complaints are absolutely correct. Where I worked contractors were: - Second class citizens - Often worked on teams with other engineers, and ended up being in charge of a major part of the project - Have subpar working conditions but are still required to come to the office (ie crappy working spaces with fewer amenities, often the inability to sit with their actual team) - In worst case scenarios can often end up with abusive manager who at times will explicitly let them know their place as a contractor - Get the runaround when it comes to discussion 'conversion' to full time employment. I've seen this happen only a handful of times From what I've seen the ones most beholden to this crappyness are contractors who are non US citizens (after all if you are a citizen what's stopping you from applying to literally almost any other job... even at a large tech company). Contractors from outside the US are pretty much stuck. On the flipside the bar for contractors and full time employees is VASTLY different. For contractors (at least in engineering) the interview process can be mostly boiled down to about five recruiter style questions on your area of expertise, or something as simple as "build a class that does XYZ, ok you're great for this role". No full day onsite interview loops with multiple whiteboard / architecture questions etc. I'm not saying with proper preparation contractors couldn't do the same roles and aren't qualified, but they are also held do a different standard (for better or for mostly worst). I've also seen many contractors leverage the name-brand of the company they worked for to get interviews that may have been previously inaccessible (yes, even with putting "contracting for X company" on your resume, Google / Apple et all still stand out to recruiters).
- rationalfaith 8y agoI feel like the tyranny of the masses is truer today than ever. There are too many adult children that can't handle life. They have to find someone to blame and cry for free handouts. I have been a contractor in tech companies and have never had these experiences. Healthy work competition exists every where. After all tis the law of the jungle and if you can't handle. Might I suggest you grow up.
- throw2016 8y agoIt's great to see some Googlers stand up for this. Subcontracting is an all around poor practice and encourages exploitation of labour, and whenever this is pointed out the same old false arguments on the lines 'but some slaves had it good' or the 'alternative is starvation' are trotted out, completely defocusing the companies benefiting from this labour and their dependence for it. This subtly shifts and derails discussion. But the bigger problem having this discussion in a tech context is the tech community is also made of up many who derive near religious identity from their jobs and conflate their jobs with success and identity, and logical arguments cannot appeal to emotion and this need for hierarchy.
- callinyouin 8y agoYMMV, but where I work (non-tech company) contractors are treated quite well. I think the general feeling from most of the company is that contractors are hired to do specific project work, so their domain knowledge is narrow and specialized and thus are better/more knowledgeable than the in-house developers. This leads to people within the company going straight to contractors for questions/discussions/planning/etc, leaving in-house devs out of the loop. In the end you're left with over-engineered solutions and scope creep among other dysfunctions. Really frustrating.
- jiveturkey 8y ago> One contractor, who works 50 to 60 hours a week in Google’s marketing division, said TVCs are treated as “collateral damage” who can be hired and fired on short notice to help the company achieve business goals quickly and cheaply. well yeah, that is the point of contractors ...
- tareqak 8y agoI recently watched "Requiem for the American Dream" (the documentary is included with Prime Video, and there is also a book of the same name) [0]. One of the points that Noam Chomsky made near the end was about undermining solidarity (I don't remember the exact phrase, but it had solidarity its name). I found the why in which Chomsky portrayed the accomplishments of unions and how the political elite dealt with unions afterwards (e.g. McCarthyism) both enlightening and depressing. Workers regardless of profession were all united towards better conditions for all. The gradual exaltation of selfishness and self-interest has become a silent but effective tool in pitting people against each other. I highly encourage others here to watch it should they have 72 minutes to spare. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWD8Wksx_zI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWD8Wksx_zI
- vadym909 8y agoThe genie is out of the bottle. No company can afford to hire it's contractors as fulltime. Their cost would double. There's 2 things that can happen 1. Move to automate or offshore these jobs 2. Bring parity to fulltime or contract employee pay and benefits so its indistinguishable whether you work fulltime or contract- its just a choice for both. Just like do you want PPO or HMS for healthcare.
- sokoloff 8y agoMaybe I'm missing something, but why should contractors have access to company-wide emails to staff, townhall staff meetings, or Google health care and benefits? Some of those seem very much the essence of the difference between working for Google as an employee vs not working for Google as an employee.
- gundmc 8y agoIsn't "Googlers Write..." misleading? The letter linked in the article says it was written by TVCs (Temps, Vendors, and Contractors). I guess "Contractors Write to CEO Demanding Equal Treatment for Contractors" is less exciting?