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I 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

I 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 ago
From 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.
- tylerrobinson 7y ago
  I’ve definitely seen the tiered system you’re describing. For example, contractors aren’t given the same training or professional development opportunities as FTEs. But do you know if there are actually legal reasons for this, or is it just pragmatic to give fewer opportunities or privileges to employees you know won’t be around long?
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    There is legal precedent for it. The most famous and precedent-setting case in this area occurred with Microsoft in 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsof... That set the framework for all contracting that has followed since.
    - tylerrobinson 7y ago
      Interesting, thanks for the reference. In the Microsoft case it looks like the decision hinged on the definition of a common law employee. Wikipedia notes that benefits eligibility can be formally defined. Employers don’t have to treat their contractors badly just to imply a tiered system, in other words, as the parent comment suggests.
bsimpson 7y ago
That nuance is too often lost in the temp/vendor/contractor (TVC) conversation. There are a whole lot of different situations that get swept under the TVC umbrella: - Qualified to work at a firm in their core competency, but bureaucracy makes hiring you hard (e.g. hiring freezes, long interview periods, etc.) You can often make more than an FTE in this position. - Trying to get your foot-in-the-door and taking any job you can get, regardless of pay. This is the situation you hear about in articles like this one. The pay's probably not great, and you spend all your time working harder than anyone else there to become a "real boy" (FTE). - Jobs that the company won't admit are valuable, but needs anyway (like testers). You get yo-yoed (in for 2 years; out for 6 months) because the company won't offer these roles to full-time employees, and doesn't want you retroactively deemed one. - Food/security/massage staff - people who work on-site, but not in a core competency. These jobs are often blue-collar in the outside world, so access to perks like free food and regular clientele who you can form personal relationships with (e.g. other staff) might make these jobs nicer than alternatives serving the public. At the same time, many of these jobs used to be full-time. Moving non-sales, non-product jobs to vendors feels like a regression in treating people like humans, and a thinly-veiled exploitation of a loophole in employment policy. - Totally external vendors - people like financial auditing, network operations, etc. They have access to internal systems, but operate in clearly defined roles-of-responsibility offsite. I presume the granularity for these roles is whole agencies, rather than individual workers. They fall under the TVC umbrella, but workers have a more clear working relationship with the agency than the other scenarios.

xav0989 7y ago

From 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.

tylerrobinson 7y ago
I’ve definitely seen the tiered system you’re describing. For example, contractors aren’t given the same training or professional development opportunities as FTEs. But do you know if there are actually legal reasons for this, or is it just pragmatic to give fewer opportunities or privileges to employees you know won’t be around long?
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  There is legal precedent for it. The most famous and precedent-setting case in this area occurred with Microsoft in 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsof... That set the framework for all contracting that has followed since.
  - tylerrobinson 7y ago
    Interesting, thanks for the reference. In the Microsoft case it looks like the decision hinged on the definition of a common law employee. Wikipedia notes that benefits eligibility can be formally defined. Employers don’t have to treat their contractors badly just to imply a tiered system, in other words, as the parent comment suggests.

bsimpson 7y ago

That nuance is too often lost in the temp/vendor/contractor (TVC) conversation. There are a whole lot of different situations that get swept under the TVC umbrella: - Qualified to work at a firm in their core competency, but bureaucracy makes hiring you hard (e.g. hiring freezes, long interview periods, etc.) You can often make more than an FTE in this position. - Trying to get your foot-in-the-door and taking any job you can get, regardless of pay. This is the situation you hear about in articles like this one. The pay's probably not great, and you spend all your time working harder than anyone else there to become a "real boy" (FTE). - Jobs that the company won't admit are valuable, but needs anyway (like testers). You get yo-yoed (in for 2 years; out for 6 months) because the company won't offer these roles to full-time employees, and doesn't want you retroactively deemed one. - Food/security/massage staff - people who work on-site, but not in a core competency. These jobs are often blue-collar in the outside world, so access to perks like free food and regular clientele who you can form personal relationships with (e.g. other staff) might make these jobs nicer than alternatives serving the public. At the same time, many of these jobs used to be full-time. Moving non-sales, non-product jobs to vendors feels like a regression in treating people like humans, and a thinly-veiled exploitation of a loophole in employment policy. - Totally external vendors - people like financial auditing, network operations, etc. They have access to internal systems, but operate in clearly defined roles-of-responsibility offsite. I presume the granularity for these roles is whole agencies, rather than individual workers. They fall under the TVC umbrella, but workers have a more clear working relationship with the agency than the other scenarios.