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Google’s Shadow Work Force: Temps Who Outnumber Full-Time Employees
- Manjuuu 7y agoIt would be interesting to know the ratio of employee/contractors working as FTE (very common somewhere else) among software engineers.
- jsty 7y agoI guess it would depend quite heavily on location - particularly re. tax and employment regulation. For example, in London, a lot of the good people historically went the contracting route due to much higher rates and lower taxes. Big banks were (and are) staffed with a lot of contractors who were very happy not to be on payroll.
- dcl 7y agoSame with contractors working for banks in Australia.
- baud147258 7y agoIt was the same thing in Fintech in Paris when I was working there a few years ago.
- baud147258 7y agoI was working as an intern in a team developing a tool for the traders, there was two FTE, the boss and one senior dev; the rest (5 devs) were all consultants, all independents
- Spooky23 7y agoDepends on project work vs. ops. Big institutions will hire an army of contractors to complete the task. In one case I was in, the project had about 350 people, probably 75% contractor. At the midpoint of the project (year 2/5) they started attrition of contractors, and landed at around 100 people (10-15% contractor) at the end. Why? It’s hard to hire at the levels you need and then get rid of them in a big company.
- CydeWeys 7y agoIt may vary by team, but I've never seen a contracted out SWE, SRE, or any other highly technical position -- unless you want to count the web developer employees of design agencies who are contracted to make one-off marketing websites (i.e. not core products), but their jobs seem pretty cushy. They don't even come onsite anyway.
- avefilip 7y agoI was always wondering about similar thing with interns
- bsimpson 7y agoWhat are you wondering? Interns usually work for small periods of time between school cycles. They get interesting projects, because internships are effectively a recruiting tool for new grads. With the amount of prep work and oversight/mentorship that goes into an internship, it's not obvious that they benefit the company outside of recruiting. If the argument is "TVCs tolerate more because they fear retribution/loss of access to a full-time role," that might happen for interns too. (I haven't studied either group, so I'm not qualified to say.) If the argument is that "TVCs are being exploited to minimize the number of full-time roles," that definitely doesn't apply to interns.
- MichaelMoser123 7y agoIs it possible for a temporary employee to be promoted to full time status, or is that impossible? What is the average length of employment for a temporary employee vs that of a full timer? Just asking.
- luckylion 7y agoThey aren't part timers, they are full time, but employed by temp agencies.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoSure, why wouldn't it be? Part time is not a status, it's just a different contract. Maybe you're confusing temps with employees though; in that case, it is possible but the temp agency will demand a fee. It works the same with consultants, for who the fee will be much higher (think 2-3x their annual wage).
- drcross 7y agoI was a contract worker for a similar scale web company and I was offered a full time role after 12 months of working there. I declined it because the day rate that I was on was more than the full time salary. The perks (stock, parental leave and other benefits) were significant but I didn't want them as they didn't apply to me. I preferred to keep my own autonomy and didn't think the future was going to work out well for the team I was in. The team had constant squabbles and moral was low. If you're willing to accept risk like that you can make good money as a senior contracting engineer. Full timers heads exploded when I declined the offer but I hated the self created heirarchy that the contractor/FTE relationship posed. It seemed like there were two set of rules, one for ftes and one for contractors. I think it's a really toxic way to run your company.
- xav0989 7y agoFrom what I've been told, you cannot treat contractors/temps the same way that you treat your employees, otherwise they can claim that they were in fact employees the whole time (which usually comes with an expensive lawsuit and a visit from the IRS). In order to ensure that contractors/temps can't claim to be employees, it's not enough to not offer benefits. You have to effectively create a two tier system with FTEs at the top and contractors/temps at the bottom. Not arguing whether it's good/bad, but it comes with the territory in the current landscape. You gain in flexibility/autonomy but loose in benefits/treatment.
- m3nu 7y agoAnother anecdote: Local friend works for Google in Asia. She is basically forced to relocate to SF for 1-3 years and work at a rather low salary (for SF standards) there on something unrelated to her current job. I would suspect that part of the reason for such a "program" is to save on wages, which would be much higher for locally-hired staff. Her field is admin/marketing. Should be easy enough to find local talent for that. At a higher price. I'm sure there are upsides to this exchange program, but having no real choice (except quitting) and working at a lower salary don't leave the best impression.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoIs your friend a Googler or a contractor? Can you expand on how she was "forced"?
- m3nu 7y agoHired directly by Google and works in their office. Forced means it's compulsory if she wants to keep her job.
- will4274 7y agoSo, basically, she got a job offer in a certain city and choose to take it?
- gbil 7y agoAs the OP wrote, this is only for 1-3 years, not a job offer. What usually happens in such big companies is that you might have to work in another country for the same company of a couple of years. Big but is that you go there as an employee of the source country taking with you the respective salary and not that of the destination country. They usually pay for the fixed expenses, eg. accommodation and even might have an allowance for the daily expenses but depends on the company and still it might not be enough to make it with your salary. Also you don't really have an option to decline, you are up next then for dismiss and in many countries it is not that easy to find a similar job etc. etc.
- plinkplonk 7y agoWhy is this newsworthy? Genuine question. The article (I did read it!) doesn't seem to articulate why exactly this is a problem. I think (happy to be convinced otherwise) it is ok for a company to have more temps than employees or vice versa. What does it matter? Is there a US cultural/social nuance that I'm missing?
- dao- 7y agoIt matters to the workers? I guess there is a cultural aspect, then, playing into this question: (How much) do you care about worker rights?
- locopati 7y agoThere was a significant lawsuit in the 90s that Microsoft lost over hiring permatemps, temps who did the same work as employees, weren't really temporary, weren't going to be hired, and weren't receiving benefits like stock options or health insurance. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1297250.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1297250.html
- r3bl 7y agoLower paychecks (75-80% of hourly rate of full-time workers), little to no benefits (like healthcare coverage), harder to keep track of for taxation purposes, harder to object to inhumane conditions like exploitative working hours or sexual harassment (since you're seen as a "guest" instead of an employee, complaining to the HR will usually result in you simply being discarded and replaced by someone else who won't complain) etc. Note: I wrote this as a general trend, which does not mean this applies to Google specifically.
- AmericanChopper 7y agoWhen I was contracting, I was making significantly more than my usual salaried rate. Using contractors doesn’t mean you must be exploiting them somehow.
- brianwawok 7y ago
- huffmsa 7y agoSounds like they're taking a page from the Federal Governments books. Staffing firms had better wise up and start jacking up prices.
- jamesfe 7y agoIt seems really similar to an article from March of 1998 about Microsoft: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/30/business/equal-work-less-equal-perks-microsoft-leads-way-filling-jobs-with-permatemps.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/30/business/equal-work-less-...
- Bucephalus355 7y agoThe issue with that at the time was that Microsoft was using temps to avoid paying payroll taxes. Ironically the IRS wised up to this tactic because of just how good Microsoft was treating their temps, i.e. the same as regular employees. Now the issue is a company is using temps to hold down the market rate for salary. Less about tax avoidance, and more about wage suppression. Of course it’s also a valid argument to say the Supreme Court decision at the time made it more likely for companies to choose this route.
- jamesfe 7y agoTrue in that sense. Also true that the two-tier system existed in one of the big tech giants and with it many of the same symptoms. It is interesting to see it again with Google, although I wonder if Amazon/Netflix/Amazon have a similar situation.
- vadym909 7y agoMost large tech companies- think FB, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco are similar. Amazon surprisingly has a low ratio of contractors (they say under 10%)- probably because their fulltime benefits are so cheap it doesn't make a difference or maybe they don't count warehouse workers in that ratio.
- tssva 7y agoThe article itself acknowledges that the ratio of contractors to employees at Google isn't out of the ordinary for SV companies and my personal experience is that it isn't unusual for large companies outside of SV. Even in the unfortunate case sited in the article of the contract employee that was sexually harassed once a complaint was filed Google fired the FTE responsible for the harassment and negotiated a settlement with the contract employee. So my question is why was the article written? If it were to highlight the use of contract employees vs FTEs, why write it just about Google when it is an issue affecting the workforce across industries? Why throw out the case of the harassed employee but leave the information that Google fired the harasser when a complaint was filed until much further in the article when many readers will have stopped reading? This article strikes me as a Google hit piece.
- nova22033 7y agoEver since the Damore thing blew up, any article that portrays google in a negative light gets a lot of play..
- acdha 7y agoIt started many years before Damore’s tantrum. I think it mostly goes back to the image Google enjoyed for years as this amazing place with crazy benefits, and then reality caught up that it’s a big company and will do things like most other big companies such as aggressively cost-optimizing its workforce or canceling beloved products (Reader was very popular with journalists). Companies which never had that kind of image don’t get dispelling stories.
- povertyworld 7y agoGoogle's notorious whiteboard hazing gives off a toxic smell. I'm sure it only gets stronger once you're in.
- wutbrodo 7y agoYeesh, I know it's popular to dump on the fact that their recruiting process (perhaps unduly) is tilted towards CS grads, but this is the first time I've seen someone go full conspiracy theory and assume it's part of some nefarious tendency to treat employees poorly in general.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tjpnz 7y agoWhat's the induction process like for a temp at Google? I'm curious as I've heard stories of temps becoming subject matter experts on teams and carrying projects across the line. If said individuals couldn't get into Google as a full-time employee what would that then say about the way Google interviews?
- gumby 7y agoThey interview the temps the same way they interview a FTE but if the project has no open req they pay a temp agency to actually employ the person. Temps are technically not permitted to supervise actual FTEs but in practice some do so. Temps don’t make as much as FTEs. So there’s an incentive to do this and also to terminate the contract (legal reasons) rather than hire them, which means the institutional knowledge goes elsewhere.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoWhy would any "professional level" self employed person take less than the FTE rate?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y agoThe “prestige” of saying you worked at google, even as a temp, is why Google can get away with paying less.
- gumby 7y agoMost people over 50 find it hard to get a job.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoWell I didn't last year - but SV maybe more ageist and I am lucky to look younger than my real age.
- iancmceachern 7y agoI worked as a contractor on a Google backed company on the Google campus. My interview consisted of a short meeting at the gentleman who ran the agency's house. I found the opportunity through an online consulting marketplace. I then and showed up to the Google site the next week and began working. I also applied directly, but have never heard back from them. My most striking memory was the complete lack of connection to the outdoors. Every single window and skylight was covered with light blocking coverings, you never knew if it was night, day, sunny or stormy outside. Other than that it was fascinating work with great people.
- oldjokes 7y agoTo be fair to Google every company in every industry is doing this more and more. It's one of the first things that happens when a merger or private equity takeover happens- aggressively purge full time and move to temp workers for all non-core services to save some money. Of course the companies that pay more attention to data do this more extensively and aggressively, why wouldn't they? The army of temp workers/janitors/contractors/uber drivers convene and sleep in the same parking lots at night. It's a whole community of a semi-permanent underclass drifting around, saving the spreadsheets a few points here and there. In related news, I'm not sure I want to be an American anymore. This is not the country I grew up in.
- bkor 7y agoThe big company I work for isn't doing what you said. They acquired a big company last year. They also have multiple business units which are being merged. Still not aggressively changing full time employees, nor changing roles into temp ones. They have recently starting to insource some of the IT again (less IBM).
- joshuamorton 7y agoGoogle doesn't do this either. As discussed elsewhere in the thread, most of the vendors at Google are in nontech roles like food service, security, and maintenance/facilities.
- matz1 7y agoGood. In the future everyone should be a contractor anyway.
- amelius 7y agoGiven the whole problem with platform economies (e.g. Uber drivers), perhaps it's better if the distinction between contractor and employee becomes smaller. E.g. healthcare benefits, separate them from the employer and make them the same for everybody.
- funkjunky 7y agoI was a contractor at Google and I thought they treated me VERY well, with most of the perks that come with the office (food, activities, music room, gym, etc). They even let me work on a 20% project during office hours. Then I got a new manager, new policies were enacted, they canned my project, and they took away my access to Memegen. Memegen was the last straw, so I left. Anyway, Google had good reason to use contractors. Their hiring standards and policies makes it extremely difficult and costly to hire people, and many jobs there typically only have a retention rate of about 9-12 months, or just isn't "involved" enough to demand a FTE position, or needs to be scaled up more quickly than they can hire for. It just isn't worth it to go through the full Google process for jobs like that.
- CydeWeys 7y agoWhat was your role/job title?
- funkjunky 7y agoI worked as developer support for Google cloud (for Platinum/gold customers). I worked alongside their FTE support staff (called TSEs) and the SWEs and SREs on many GCP projects like App Engine and Spanner. I loved it, learned a lot, met a lot of great people, etc. But customer support burns you out after a while, and I figured I learned enough for a proper engineering job elsewhere, so that's what I did. Also they took Memegen away from me. WTF.
- bitcoinmoney 7y agoWhat’s memegen?
- babaganoosh89 7y agohttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/reyhan/inside-googles-internal-meme-generator https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/reyhan/inside-googles-i...
- beezlebubba 7y ago"(Insert any big corporation here)'s Shadow Work Force: Temps Who Outnumber Full-Time Employees" With few exceptions, you'll do the same job as a FTE but for 40% to 60% less salary, garbage benefits and zero job security. Most "staffing" companies are little more than parasites.
- dfilppi 7y agoIt's remarkable that such a fine institution as the New York Times would publish unsubstantiated allegations that could ruin someones career.
- AJ007 7y agoAm I the only one who is shocked that Google has 223,000 people working for them? What are all of these people doing?
- ThrustVectoring 7y agoThis is a natural and expected consequence of tax law - specifically provisions in ERISA, which sets out the rules for 401(k) plans. Google wants their 401(k) to be as efficient and useful as possible for their employees, which tend toward being highly-paid engineers and other professionals. ERISA has some fairness provisions, which means that all employees must be subject to the same plan rules, and the plan must pass certain tests of "highly-compensated" employee participation limits compared to non-highly-compensated ones. So if you have a bunch of engineers and some janitors, and you offer a large 401(k) match that engineers use and value and janitors don't, you wind up having to unwind some of the engineer contribution and matching in order to keep things "fair". But, crucially, ERISA doesn't have say anything about who has to be an "employee" versus hired on as a contractor. So all the janitors and cafeteria workers become contractors, and now your 401(k) plan counts junior developers as the "non highly-compensated" comparison class, and your 401(k) plan passes muster again. This affects Google a lot because their retirement plan is highly optimized for allowing highly-paid employees to save a ton of money in a tax efficient manner. It'd be difficult to craft a better plan, and from what I've heard they've even automated using a niche tax loophole as well ("mega-backdoor Roth" - after-tax 401(k) contribution followed by immediate Roth conversion, basically allows an extra $20k/yr or so in Roth contribution room).
- firemancoder 7y agoLots of companies do this (SV and others), if it makes good business sense for them to do so why do we care?
- kdot 7y agoI'm going through this process right now, I have a contract for a SWE role at Google through a contracting company. Interestingly enough I was offered no benefits.