The 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

The 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