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You got hooked up with someone bad, which is a shame. I had a great health plan as a contractor (through my agency) and they were great about finding fun jobs.

You got hooked up with someone bad, which is a shame. I had a great health plan as a contractor (through my agency) and they were great about finding fun jobs. I do know a lot of agents didn't tell folks what rate they were being billed out at (I suspect that $30/hour would mean you are not getting good value), but my pay was a % of the bill rate.

bsimpson 8y ago
I actually negotiated my pay with the hiring manager. I have no idea what the agency was paid. I got the invitation directly from the large company I was consulting for. They explained to me that they didn't work directly with freelancers; they had processes in place to prevent TVCs from being retroactively deemed FTEs (and compensated for withheld benefits). Therefore, they put me in touch with an agency whose only function was to hire freelancers as W2 employees and rent them back out to the company. I don't recall exactly: I think the agency's only client was the firm I was consulting for. They might have had 1 or 2 more. The whole we-only-exist-because-bureaucracy was pretty transparent. Funny story: one of the TVC restrictions was that you could only be one for a year. (At the end of the year, you had to either convert to full-time or take 6 months off.) Partway through the year, my client decided they wanted to switch agencies. Thousands of us got an email that basically said "As of next week, you legally work for Other Agency. Your day-to-day work will be the same."
- protomyth 8y ago
  Uhm.... that sounds really, really shady. If you do the negotiating then they've failed at 90% of their job, and I suspect you most certainly didn't get your full value.
  - bsimpson 8y ago
    They chose an inaccurate job title for me to justify my salary. Maybe I could have made more freelancing somewhere else, but I think I was at the top of what this role was willing to pay. I was making $100 per hour with a guaranteed 40 billable hours per week.
    - protomyth 8y ago
      Well, I'm glad you got something decent out of it. I have a bit of a visceral reaction to bad actors in agencies since their actions had consequences. It was very informative at one place I worked where a ticked off employee released a spreadsheet with all of the hourly rates for all the consultants. I was rather amused to lean how many bad actor agencies there were (although gratified that I worked with the honest sort). It was a bit amazing to me that people were baffled that I didn't really want to look at the spreadsheet. I knew my rate, was pretty happy, and was a bit worried it would impact how I viewed others.

bsimpson 8y ago

I actually negotiated my pay with the hiring manager. I have no idea what the agency was paid. I got the invitation directly from the large company I was consulting for. They explained to me that they didn't work directly with freelancers; they had processes in place to prevent TVCs from being retroactively deemed FTEs (and compensated for withheld benefits). Therefore, they put me in touch with an agency whose only function was to hire freelancers as W2 employees and rent them back out to the company. I don't recall exactly: I think the agency's only client was the firm I was consulting for. They might have had 1 or 2 more. The whole we-only-exist-because-bureaucracy was pretty transparent. Funny story: one of the TVC restrictions was that you could only be one for a year. (At the end of the year, you had to either convert to full-time or take 6 months off.) Partway through the year, my client decided they wanted to switch agencies. Thousands of us got an email that basically said "As of next week, you legally work for Other Agency. Your day-to-day work will be the same."

protomyth 8y ago
Uhm.... that sounds really, really shady. If you do the negotiating then they've failed at 90% of their job, and I suspect you most certainly didn't get your full value.
- bsimpson 8y ago
  They chose an inaccurate job title for me to justify my salary. Maybe I could have made more freelancing somewhere else, but I think I was at the top of what this role was willing to pay. I was making $100 per hour with a guaranteed 40 billable hours per week.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Well, I'm glad you got something decent out of it. I have a bit of a visceral reaction to bad actors in agencies since their actions had consequences. It was very informative at one place I worked where a ticked off employee released a spreadsheet with all of the hourly rates for all the consultants. I was rather amused to lean how many bad actor agencies there were (although gratified that I worked with the honest sort). It was a bit amazing to me that people were baffled that I didn't really want to look at the spreadsheet. I knew my rate, was pretty happy, and was a bit worried it would impact how I viewed others.