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Google's 'two-tier' workforce training document
- sharemywin 8y agoAfter reading some of the details that sounds a lot like government tax law issues rather than with google itself. gifts are taxable income. The contracting company has no mechanisms for collecting the tax.
- sharemywin 8y agoI'm not sure I understand the issue. Hiring contractors is pretty standard practice at most large organizations.
- JeremyBanks 8y ago“Don’t be evil” was coined in response to the perceived evilness of other actors in the industry.
- mkirklions 8y agoUpvotes=/= correctness. HN whales notoriously upvote anti-corporate posts. It reminds me of slacktivism.
- coldtea 8y agoWhy shouldn't they? Is it expected that everybody should agree with your politics and views on corporations? What proves "correctness" in this sense?
- writepub 8y agoIt's a rather disappointing truth that HN whales, and HN in turn, are left leaning, socialist Democrats. You'd think a tech focused forum would be more diverse, but there's only one viewpoint kosher here. Unfortunate that the very people screaming for diversity lack basic tolerance for diversity of thought.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoYou don't have to be a "left leaning, socialist Democrat" to disagree with the comment. It is rather worthless as an argument since it just a classic appeal-to-popularity fallacy.
- lovich 8y agoAs one someone I think you'd count in that group, I can say that you are unequivocally wrong. I am fairly active on this forum and I don't really reply to people who say things I agree with because its already been said. There is a surfeit of libertarians on this forum that give me opposing viewpoints to debate, as well as a minority of corpratists
- TeMPOraL 8y agoUpvotes here may != correctness, but they are a pretty good proxy. I've been here for a while, and most comments on policy/law really are downvoted for being dumb, not for whatever political label can be pattern-matched to it. If a suggestion presented in your comment correctly accounts for first-order effects and at least pretends to account for second-order effects, you can argue things that match pretty much any political ideology out there, as I've seen done here many times. (Related, classifying things by political labels doesn't lead to correct answers in general.)
- writepub 8y agoTrue that upvotes!=correctness. But the idea of karma and incentivizing those with higher karma with more privileges on HN basically means Upvotes=correctness for purposes of being heard on and being able to mould HN. For all practical purposes on HN, a politically left leaning viewpoint is more likely to incentivize the op, and turn HN more left in a vicious cycle of Upvotes/Downvotes
- thriwaway 8y agoIt is well known that people with higher IQ and higher education lean left, and you'd expect HN's demography to be significantly biased that way. Also, conflating "Democrat" and "socialist" would get you laughed out of any non-American room. Perhaps this mistake is due to a lack of education about the world? ;)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoJust because it’s standard practice doesn’t mean it’s ethical. In my experience, the perma-contractors were always getting ripped off when it came to benefits and job security to the maximum extent of California law by some of the most profitable companies in the world, companies that could trivially afford to pay. I found it abhorrent.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThe solution is not to bandaid it by forcing a handful of companies to pay more generously, but to affect legislation that will provide everyone with the benefits and job security, regardless of employer. This would remove the inherent competitive advantages that large employers versus small businesses, and be easier to implement in the long run.
- sharemywin 8y agoUnless somethings changed sense like the law not on google side. The assignment length issue became a serious topic of conversation in the late 1980s when the IRS announced their intent to re-class Microsoft contractors as common law employees and ultimately make them eligible for the same stock option and retirement benefits offered to regular MS employees. The length of time Microsoft’s temporary and contract employees had been on assignment was part of that argument. The employees in question had all surpassed the ERISA “year of service” rule, which requires that once an” employee” works 1000 hours they are automatically eligible for ERISA governed benefits.
- gerbilly 8y agoLots of unethical practises are 'Standard practice' these days. So what?
- tanilama 8y agoHiring contractor doesn't entirely speak unethical to me
- gerbilly 8y agoOf course not, but that's just it, when engaged in as a practise to deprive long term workers of benefits, it is unethical, at least to me.
- mruniverse 8y agoCertain jobs aren’t as valued as others. Hence less pay and benefits. Is there something unethical about that?
- gerbilly 8y agoProbably yes, but aside from that, this tactic is moving upmarket and starting to affect the 'more valuable' jobs too.
- benologist 8y agoThe risks Google appears to be most concerned about [...] the risk of being found to be a joint employer, a legal designation which could be exceedingly costly for Google in terms of benefits. If they paid their lower-caste 49.5% of 'not employees' properly instead of accounting their benefits away, their vast fortune would drop from $106,000,000,000 savings in the bank to $105,xxx,xxx,xxx this year then continue climbing next year.
- nell 8y agoYou hit on a good point. Some companies effectively have a caste system, and I have worked in a couple of those situations. - “You can work with us in our fields, but can’t dine with us.”
- turtlecloud 8y agoThat’s what happens when your CEO is Indian. They understand the caste system very deeply. What might seem outrageous to Americans is quite natural to them.
- eli_gottlieb 8y agoLook, there's nothing more American than exploitation of the working masses. Don't try to blame this on nationality.
- s3r3nity 8y ago~50% of their employees are TVCs? That sounds crazy high - anyone else have knowledge on wether or not that’s unusual for tech / the Valley specifically?
- gpapilion 8y agoIt seems high. That said kitchen staff, custodial, physical security, ... etc are likely counted in this group for google. Add in some portion on IT staff, tech support, and finance contractors which are more or less normal for many companies.
- shubb 8y agoAlso probably quite a big chunk of Google's workforce are doing 'manual' tasks like reviewing DMCA requests, ad complaints, responding to customer tickets etc. Those folks are probably low skill / low pay / not direct employees.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> kitchen staff, custodial, physical security, ... etc are likely counted in this group What happened to the culture that made its chef a millionaire [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Ayers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Ayers
- mikestew 8y agoThey made sure that will never happen again, is what.
- zhte415 8y ago> kitchen staff, custodial, physical security These would not be contracted staff, but by a vendor providing a package. 100 staff or 1 person, as a vendor provided service the staff member of the vendor has no link to the employer.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
- sureshv 8y agoMy guess is this goes all the way back to the Microsoft Permatemp case (you could tell by by email a-/v-). The IRS sets the line as to how you can treat temp staff and what benefits they can can get.
- outside1234 8y agoYup!
- adrianmonk 8y agoYou can have onsite contract employees who are permanent. I was one for several years. You just start a contract with a separate company, then they are full employees of that company.
- jordache 8y agowhy is this news? intern writer at guardian?
- Hello71 8y ago> G+, the social network used internally at Google Ouch.
- anticensor 8y agoIs it the same instance as https://plus.google.com https://plus.google.com?
- 1024core 8y agoSwag, bonuses, and other gifts are considered taxable income to the individual (which Alphabet cannot report since we are not the TVC employer) That's a valid reason. Why the faux outrage?
- lovich 8y agoBecause for all intents and purposes these workers appear to be Google employees, but they've structured their agreements in a way to say "no they are not", retain the benefit of having said employees, and don't pay back to society in the form of taxes. This sort of circumvention of the spirit of the law is only really doable by large corporations, which means large corporations get to shirk their societal responsibilities while everyone else has do more or society loses out. That's where the outrage comes from, which I do not believe is faux
- kjeetgill 8y agoI'm unfamiliar with the tax law around contractors. What tax is missing? Whatever taxes google doesn't pay will be paid by the employer right?
- lovich 8y agoOn income tax, but these rules around what gifts are allowed to go to TVCs are there because that is happening already and going untaxed. Other additional points for anger around these sorts of faux employee setups is that they make it easier for companies to get around employee protections when it comes to firing/laying off because they've turned it into a contract with another company, and that traditional growth from low skill jobs inside a company has disappeared by this artificial barrier. You no longer hear stories about a janitor or secretary who worked their way up into executive ranks by seeing unfulfilled needs in the company and learning to solve them. You are either over the arbitrary skill value from the beginning, or you are kept in the lower ranks of second class citizen
- joshuamorton 8y ago
- illnewsthat 8y agoThe best part of the training is the suggestion that instead of recognizing people with Google swag, they send them a note on G+.
- dsr_ 8y ago95% of the problem is in this quote: "Temps, vendors and contractors are an important part of our extended workforce, but they are employed by other companies, not Google." This is completely incorrect in every way except legally. Google employs them, and pretends that they don't by inserting another company in between. When you find yourself doing something simple in a complicated way because the law gives you additional advantages, that's a great sign that the law is bad.
- Daishiman 8y agoYes, and in many civilized countries courts have seen this farce for what it is. Unfortunately that's not the case everywhere.
- CPLX 8y ago> When you find yourself doing something simple in a complicated way because the law gives you additional advantages, that's a great sign that the law is bad. Not really. It's usually a sign that you're trying to evade the plain meaning of the law with technicalities.
- graedus 8y agoDoesn't it follow that if you're able to evade the plain meaning of the law, then the law as written (or its enforcement) is ineffective, or "bad"?
- eropple 8y agoOn some axes, sure. On others: there is a basic social contract that underpins...well...society. And it's telling, to me, that Google is conflating "following the law" and "what might possibly cost us rounding errors in additional benefits" in the documentation quoted in the Guardian piece, to be honest: they're tipping their hand here. And I don't think it's nearly as murky as some folks want it to look. Let's be real: more often than not, when somebody's doing something dirty, they know it's dirty.
- wycy 8y ago
- at-fates-hands 8y agoMost of the article jives with how contractors are treated here in the Midwest. The upside is you don't have yearly goals, you're not held to the higher standards of the FTE's, you don't have to attend boring "all company" meetings. The only thing which popped out at me was the lower pay. When I contracted, I didn't have benefits (I had them through a third party provider) so my hourly rate was based on a 15-20% bump because of that. At not time was I ever getting paid less than my FTE counterparts when you took everything into consideration. Having said this, is there a big pay gap between regular Google employees and contractors?
- CydeWeys 8y agoMost of these TVCs are kitchen staff, janitors, security guards, receptionists, call center employees, etc. So to the extent that there is a pay gap, it's usually because of the difference in average pay for those jobs themselves. Actual contracted engineers are quite the rarity; I've never worked with one.
- lovich 8y agoThe large groups of contractors at tech firms like Google are usually doing work the company has identified as not their core business. Where companies used to have janitorial staff, or cooks, or other administrators, they now put all those relationships onto contracting firms so they don't have to provide the same quality of benefits as they do to their FTEs and also have a much easier time firing them en masse then they would if they were legal employees of the tech firm. As such, most of these people would be getting paid less than the software engineers if they were legal employees anyway, but they do lose out on benefits unless the contracting firm provides benefits on par with Google
- gadders 8y agoI'm a contractor in the UK, and would actively like to be treated differently than an employee so that I can continue to fall outside of IR35 and thus not be taxed like an employee.
- chillydawg 8y agoSensible. Not paying income tax >>>> a few free shitty tshirts and invites to propaganda all hands meetings, IMHO.
- ashelmire 8y agoHow does the current state of things stand in light of the recent Dynamex (https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/09/07/california-supreme-court-independent-contractors/ https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/09/07/california-suprem...) decision? According to that ruling (https://cbssacramento.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/dynamex-operations-west-v-superior-court-of-los-angeles.pdf https://cbssacramento.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/dynamex-op...), workers are considered to be independent contractors only if all of the following conditions are met, employees otherwise: (A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of such work and in fact; (B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and (C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity. It seems like tvcs doing software engineering at Google would not count as independent contractors (failing, in fact, to meet even one of the three conditions). Edits for clarity.
- SpicyLemonZest 8y agoThe TVCs definitely don't count as independent contractors. They're employees of a contract firm.
- ashelmire 8y agoThe Dynamex ruling does seem to touch on this; Dynamex, in fact, seemed to claim that California wage orders would only apply to joint employers as the core of their appeal (this ruling seems to take that as a given; and extend it beyond that). This appears to be coemployment question that is raised in the original article. I don't think the courts (especially CA ones) will look fondly on companies using intermediate corporations as veils to obfuscate the employment relationship in any case.
- adrianmonk 8y agoYou know all the fantastic, off the chart benefits that all Google employees get? It encourages outsourcing less skilled / lower ranking roles to vendor companies. Jobs like customer support, manual QA, facilities, etc. end up being vendors instead of direct employees. This doesn't mean they aren't FTEs of the vendor company. They can be permanent employees with benefits. They just aren't full time employees of Google. Of course Google is going to have some temp and limited term contractors, but this category isn't just that. Hence why the article refers to "TVC": temp, vendor, and contractor.
- njstraub608 8y agoThis really isn't that outrageous, at most of the F500 companies I've consulted at they all have massive contractor workforces (including consultants) that don't have the same benefits as anyone else and are generally treated like second-class citizens. News like this that directs outrage at a specific company is just clickbait bullshit written by an amateur who doesn't understand how the broader workforce operates.
- eli_gottlieb 8y agoA lot of us don't like "how the broader workforce operates", and since Google is basically a monopolist/oligpolist, they make a fine target.
- mondoshawan 8y agoThey're the wrong target, though. If you don't like it, fix the laws!
- miketery 8y agoFixing laws starts with awareness. This is it, were more aware and discussing as a result.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jrhurst 8y agoObviously you got to be quite and not complain and then magically fix the laws. Quitely. Shhh.
- eli_gottlieb 8y agoBecause obviously sending polite petitions to change.org is how class struggle works /s.
- 8y ago
- BeetleB 8y agoI can't speak for Google, but I work in a big company that has a lot of contractors. And ... there's not much "wrong" here. The real engineering work is done by employees. Contractors are for: - Kitchen - Security - Maintenance & Repairs - IT support (the regular IT are still employees) - Engineers The first 3 being contractors are standard in many companies. The "engineers" category is not for cost cutting. In fact, often (most?) of the times, the company is paying a lot more per head for one of them than they pay for their own employees. I recall one case where the company was easily paying double what they pay their own engineers. The manager was upset because that contractor did not care for the company's deadlines, etc (one of the perks of being a contractor). The manager felt the company should just kill the agreement and hire a regular engineer - save money and get work done on time. But he was overruled. The only category I think are royally getting screwed are the IT support staff. I spoke to one to get an idea of their pay, and it was abysmal. For his skills and the work he did, he was definitely more useful to the company than many of our FTE's. At least in my company, this isn't a case of perma-temps.
- rbanffy 8y agoI see it is sometimes used to circumvent equal-pay or labor laws to some extent, but this practice is so widespread that I find it hard to point a finger to Google on this one. Every large company, on every field, does it to some extent. I was using that in Brazil a couple years back, inside a portal part of a telco. We paid a company to provide us with an elastic workforce that could grow, change and be reduced as we needed it to be. The company was hired (and paid) to absorb the risks of hiring, retention and to, sometimes, provide working space, and it did so for many other clients.
- bsimpson 8y agoI've heard NASA does this too. Because headcount is effectively set in Congress, they rely on TVCs to do most of the work. Only a small share of NASA are "civil servants," who are actually employed by NASA.
- Ericson2314 8y agoIn this and other examples of Google's memos to FTEs, I've noticed they tend to lump together actually following the law with doing something perfectly legal that exposes them to higher taxation. I get the whole market-based "everything is just an incentive" logic, and that the US legal code is so, so far from being a coherent moral document. But still, this seems like a coldly utilitarian stance use in the propaganda, vs confine to executive meetings where there's no reason to be sunny.
- kerng 8y agoThe reason for this is probably that if they treat vendors the same way, then they are not justified temp or vendor positions but should be FTE. Which of course Google wouldn't wont. I'm sure there is also a time box on how long they can be a vendor, e.g. a max of a year or two before they have to move on. Microsoft got into trouble I heard because they treated vendors "too nice" a couple years back if I remember right.
- vanderZwan 8y agoI've shared this before, but it's worth sharing again: Andrew Norman Wilon's Workers Leaving the Googleplex from 2011[0]. It's a performance piece (he used to do this live) retelling his experience as an intern at Google, and why he was fired. (In the live version I saw he drew parallels to Brave New World, which felt quite apt) [0] http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/WorkersGoogleplex.html http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/WorkersGoogleplex.html
- llampx 8y agoIf he told Google Legal that there were no other copies of the tape in existence, where is the video on that page coming from?
- CydeWeys 8y agoHe lied?
- vanderZwan 8y agoThose are just livestreams from the Google campus that Google streamed on-line by itself.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 1-6 8y agoHere's a great podcast with the leaders of the walk-out: https://www.recode.net/2018/11/21/18105719/google-walkout-real-change-organizers-protest-discrimination-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast https://www.recode.net/2018/11/21/18105719/google-walkout-re...
- honkycat 8y agoCompletely disgusted by a lot of these comments. It is outrageous. It is unfair. People citing the "tax law" excuse are either willfully ignorant or they just do not care. Why does Google not give them gifts, invite them to the company Christmas party, or let them in on celebratory team meetings? It is not because "the temp agency will handle it". It is not because "a shirt makes taxes complicated." Google and it's ilk make sure these people are on the outside to dehumanize them. To make it clear they are not a part of the company so, when TVCs are abused other workers do not speak up. It normalizes treating these people like shit. "Just a contractor." A lot of these TVCs do not get decent healthcare. They can, and often do, get 0 vacation time. They sit along with the full time employees but everybody knows "they are the expendable ones." They can be fired for any reason, including bringing up the fact that they were sexually harassed. TVCs are employees deprived of their rights through a loophole.
- TheMagicHorsey 8y agoYou have no idea what you are talking about and clearly have never headed a company. The issue is that if you hire temporary contractors and treat them like your employees, then you have to extend the status of employment to them, including withholding payroll taxes, otherwise the government will come after you. Google doesn't give two shits about giving people t-shirts and access to their gyms. The issue is, if they do these things for temp contractors, then the temps become employees. You hire temps in situations where you don't actually need a full-time worker for a long period of time. If you are not allowed to hire temps, the choice then becomes should we hire anyone at all? When Google does need a full-time worker, they do hire them, and they do pay them as full employees. If you have a problem with the casteism developing between full time employees and contractors, go see your Congressman and ask them to change the laws that make it so companies have to distinguish between temps and full-time in their hiring.
- honkycat 8y ago> You have no idea what you are talking about and clearly have never headed a company. I actually have but whatever. I do not have to run a company to have opinions about a loophole in modern labor laws. Also, the aggression isn't necessary. Maybe having empathy and wanting better benefits for the people you take advantage of is an "Unknown World" to you. But for me, the rise permatemp has an effect on the people around me. > The issue is that if you hire temporary contractors and treat them like your employees, then you have to extend the status of employment to them, including withholding payroll taxes, otherwise the government will come after you. > Google doesn't give two shits about giving people t-shirts and access to their gyms. The issue is, if they do these things for temp contractors, then the temps become employees. A lot of these workers are permatemps, who they keep on as temps in order to not have to give them full employee benefits. So yes, what you say is exactly correct but does not refute my assertion that these policies serve to dehumanize the parts of the workforce Google considers expendable. > You hire temps in situations where you don't actually need a full-time worker for a long period of time. If you are not allowed to hire temps, the choice then becomes should we hire anyone at all? Except for the fact that they do hire them as long-term full time employees, but they keep them on as independent contractors hired through an external agency to abdicate responsibility for providing them with benefits. > If you have a problem with the casteism developing between full time employees and contractors, go see your Congressman and ask them to change the laws that make it so companies have to distinguish between temps and full-time in their hiring. I clearly do have a problem with the casteism developing between full time employees and contractors. And what else should I do? Oh, maybe advocate for workers right's on social media and tell the other side of the story. Which is what I am doing and apparently have triggered you. The founder doth protest too much, methinks.
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