Contractors for large companies[1] in the US almost always goes through staffing firms - direct contracts with independent contractors are comparatively rare. A

Contractors for large companies[1] in the US almost always goes through staffing firms - direct contracts with independent contractors are comparatively rare. And even when you do want to bring on an independent contractor, you usually still have to route them through some designated third party staffing firm so that the contractual relationship is IC <-> Staffing Firm <-> Client. This is all due to fact that there are huge liability[2] concerns related to classifying someone as an IC but treating them as an employee. As such, there's almost always an intermediate taking a cut of the actual rate, even if you're a contractor to the staffing agency. Then you've got agency relationships, like where I work at now. I'm a salaried, full time employee for the agency I work for and I make about the regional median for my role. But I'm contracted out to clients (including Google) and bill hourly. Depending on the client and the specific roles I'm billing as for a given project, an hour of my time gets billed out anywhere from 2x - 6x what my fully loaded hourly cost is to my employer (salary + benefits + payroll taxes). So the cost to the client is certainly in line with your expectations, but it doesn't come back to me. [1] You don't see this as frequently at the SME end of the market for many reasons, not least of which is the deliberate inefficiency and increased costs of such a structure. [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-dont-treat-c/dont-treat-contractors-like-employees-idUSTRE53063S20090401 https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...