6 ms·

You seem to be taking this all at face value. Temp agencies are a pretty nontrivial force in the employment world. If you work at a temp agency, they pay you r

by tylerl 8y ago

You seem to be taking this all at face value. Temp agencies are a pretty nontrivial force in the employment world. If you work at a temp agency, they pay you regardless of whether you're bringing money, they do technical training and career advancement work, all the while you're "on deck" not actually being useful. Then a company like Google or Boeing or Joe's Game Studio comes along and says "we need 3 highly skilled C++ programmers in two weeks, for 6 months", and the temp agency sends you off to work there. You relocate, you work on some internal project for 6 months, and then you're back "on deck" at the temp agency, and then off to somewhere else. The company does not have the option to hire you permanently unless the temp agency put that into the agreement (probably for a price), the agency charged something like 2x or even 3x your salary to the company while you were working there, but your wage and benefits stay the same throughout, working or not. So, who's your real employer? Looking at this from an armchair, it's easy to miss that there's more going on than just, "Tim is on the team for the next few months." Whether or not you like the fact that this kind of agency exists and this kind of work is possible is another question.

nroach 8y ago
But when "temps" can be employed for 10+ years in the same role with the same host company, is that model still true?
- noobiemcfoob 8y ago
  Yes. Having the option of being redeployed elsewhere or called back but not doing so is not the same thing as not having that option.
chaosite 8y ago
But that's not how red/green/$color badges work at Google/Intel/Facebook/$company. They're not "3 highly skilled C++ programmers", they're usually slotted into some kind of not as appreciated but still required role, like QA or data entry, and they're not "in two weeks, for 6 months", they're basically at a single host company for the entire time, but they renew the contract in 6 month increments until such time when the host company decides it doesn't need them anymore. Which is basically a form of downsizing. They aren't some form of highly skilled consultants that drop to aid a project in a pinch. Usually they're basically indistinguishable from FTEs.
- chaosite 8y ago
  P.S. "3 C++ programmers for 6 months", in the context of adding developers to a team, is usually a sign of horrible project management. Software development just doesn't work like that, c.f. The Mythical Man Month.
  - nitrogen 8y ago
    If you have an understaffed team with a list of clearly defined tech debt, a temporary addition to the team to address the tech debt could ease pressure on the core team and allow them to "catch up" and work more efficiently.
- jpollock 8y ago
  This is fixed through tax legislation, where there are "bright line" tests for whether or not someone is an employee. When I was a contractor in New Zealand, I had an external office, my contract allowed me to subcontract, I used my own equipment and I didn't go to the parties. When they wanted to send me overseas? We negotiated a new contract which included paying me hourly rates for the flight hours. Unmentioned in the Canadian and New Zealand documents, they also typically consider length of service as a hint. If the contractor is with a single company for more than 2 years, that's a hint that they're not really a contractor. USA [3]: 1 Behavioral Control (instructions, when, rules, evaluation) 2 Financial Control (equipment, expenses, profit) 3 Relationship (contracts, benefits, permanency) Canada [1]: 1 Control 2 Tools and Equipment 3 Ability to subcontract 4 Financial Risk 5 Outside office and/or staff 6 Able to increase profit New Zealand [2]: 1 Intention test (what both parties intend?) 2 Control vs independence test (who sets the rules?) 3 Integration test (are they part of the team? uniforms/parties) 4 Fundamental/economic reality test (who pays what?) [1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/rc4110/employee-self-employed.html https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publi... [2]: https://www.employment.govt.nz/starting-employment/who-is-an-employee/difference-between-a-self-employed-contractor-and-an-employee/ https://www.employment.govt.nz/starting-employment/who-is-an... [3]: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contractor-designation https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contr...
dsr_ 8y ago
" If you work at a temp agency, they pay you regardless of whether you're bringing money" That's never been a thing I've seen. Cite? "they do technical training and career advancement work" I've only seen that in the sense of "we'll test your MS Office proficiency and offer you generic resume tips" The temp agency model exists solely to enable large corporations to avoid having layoffs and reorgs: firing 49% of Google's staff would have a terrible effect on the stock price, and telling the temp agencies that they won't have contracts next quarter boosts the bottom line, instead.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Cite: every technical consulting firm that W2s its employees and invoices its clients.
  - chaosite 8y ago
    Sure, these exist, but that's not really the same line of business. You have your technical consulting firm and general IT contractors that sell services to companies whose main competence is not software developers. Then you have contractors go on-site, develop some software, and go back once the project is over. But those aren't red badges in the sense we're talking about. We're talking about a company whose core competence is software development taking on contractors as members in existing software dev teams. The companies employing these contractors tend to be more like shell companies then technical consulting firms, and most of the training given to the contractor is the same as that given to FTEs, by the host company, since they have to work on the same code base and contractors and FTEs need to be in lock-step.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      I ran a firm like this, and we had vendor badges. We weren't a "shell company", but even if we had been, the underlying idea would be the same: we W2'd our employees and invoiced our clients. We were on the hook for paying for employee downtime. I'm responding to the claim above, about "that never being a thing they've seen", which seems silly to me because it's the basic way every staff-aug firm works.
zulrah 8y ago
A lot of guys have their own businesses that they use for contracting
- chaosite 8y ago
  Yeah, and that's what, a fraction of a percent of the contractors? They're not who we're talking about right now.

by tylerl 8y ago

nroach 8y ago

But when "temps" can be employed for 10+ years in the same role with the same host company, is that model still true?

noobiemcfoob 8y ago
Yes. Having the option of being redeployed elsewhere or called back but not doing so is not the same thing as not having that option.

chaosite 8y ago

But that's not how red/green/$color badges work at Google/Intel/Facebook/$company. They're not "3 highly skilled C++ programmers", they're usually slotted into some kind of not as appreciated but still required role, like QA or data entry, and they're not "in two weeks, for 6 months", they're basically at a single host company for the entire time, but they renew the contract in 6 month increments until such time when the host company decides it doesn't need them anymore. Which is basically a form of downsizing. They aren't some form of highly skilled consultants that drop to aid a project in a pinch. Usually they're basically indistinguishable from FTEs.

chaosite 8y ago
P.S. "3 C++ programmers for 6 months", in the context of adding developers to a team, is usually a sign of horrible project management. Software development just doesn't work like that, c.f. The Mythical Man Month.
- nitrogen 8y ago
  If you have an understaffed team with a list of clearly defined tech debt, a temporary addition to the team to address the tech debt could ease pressure on the core team and allow them to "catch up" and work more efficiently.
jpollock 8y ago
This is fixed through tax legislation, where there are "bright line" tests for whether or not someone is an employee. When I was a contractor in New Zealand, I had an external office, my contract allowed me to subcontract, I used my own equipment and I didn't go to the parties. When they wanted to send me overseas? We negotiated a new contract which included paying me hourly rates for the flight hours. Unmentioned in the Canadian and New Zealand documents, they also typically consider length of service as a hint. If the contractor is with a single company for more than 2 years, that's a hint that they're not really a contractor. USA [3]: 1 Behavioral Control (instructions, when, rules, evaluation) 2 Financial Control (equipment, expenses, profit) 3 Relationship (contracts, benefits, permanency) Canada [1]: 1 Control 2 Tools and Equipment 3 Ability to subcontract 4 Financial Risk 5 Outside office and/or staff 6 Able to increase profit New Zealand [2]: 1 Intention test (what both parties intend?) 2 Control vs independence test (who sets the rules?) 3 Integration test (are they part of the team? uniforms/parties) 4 Fundamental/economic reality test (who pays what?) [1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/rc4110/employee-self-employed.html https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publi... [2]: https://www.employment.govt.nz/starting-employment/who-is-an-employee/difference-between-a-self-employed-contractor-and-an-employee/ https://www.employment.govt.nz/starting-employment/who-is-an... [3]: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contractor-designation https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contr...

dsr_ 8y ago

" If you work at a temp agency, they pay you regardless of whether you're bringing money" That's never been a thing I've seen. Cite? "they do technical training and career advancement work" I've only seen that in the sense of "we'll test your MS Office proficiency and offer you generic resume tips" The temp agency model exists solely to enable large corporations to avoid having layoffs and reorgs: firing 49% of Google's staff would have a terrible effect on the stock price, and telling the temp agencies that they won't have contracts next quarter boosts the bottom line, instead.

tptacek 8y ago
Cite: every technical consulting firm that W2s its employees and invoices its clients.
- chaosite 8y ago
  Sure, these exist, but that's not really the same line of business. You have your technical consulting firm and general IT contractors that sell services to companies whose main competence is not software developers. Then you have contractors go on-site, develop some software, and go back once the project is over. But those aren't red badges in the sense we're talking about. We're talking about a company whose core competence is software development taking on contractors as members in existing software dev teams. The companies employing these contractors tend to be more like shell companies then technical consulting firms, and most of the training given to the contractor is the same as that given to FTEs, by the host company, since they have to work on the same code base and contractors and FTEs need to be in lock-step.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    I ran a firm like this, and we had vendor badges. We weren't a "shell company", but even if we had been, the underlying idea would be the same: we W2'd our employees and invoiced our clients. We were on the hook for paying for employee downtime. I'm responding to the claim above, about "that never being a thing they've seen", which seems silly to me because it's the basic way every staff-aug firm works.

zulrah 8y ago

A lot of guys have their own businesses that they use for contracting

chaosite 8y ago
Yeah, and that's what, a fraction of a percent of the contractors? They're not who we're talking about right now.