5 ms·
You're getting a little mixed up. People with red badges (like the author) are contractors. The article is about people with yellow badges, who receive far fe
by dspeyer 15y ago
You're getting a little mixed up. People with red badges (like the author) are contractors. The article is about people with yellow badges, who receive far fewer perquisites and are kept separate from the general googler population.
Who are the people with yellow badges? The author never found out. And Google does not appear to have made the information public.
- yanw 15y agoThey might be contracted by another company with shittier terms. And Google doesn't have to make it's inner workings public.
- KirinDave 15y agoNo, they don't. But things have a way of squeaking out anyways. For better or worse, Google bears the burden of being characterized as a geek Shangri-La; where justice and intelligence reign supreme and everyone gets richer. Is it fair? No. But Google's used that perception a lot in the past and their justifiably worried about losing that good reputation, given their increasing difficulties with retention and hiring. A scandal about 3rd class workers with untouchable status is the last thing Google needs right now. They should have handled this better.
- yanw 15y agoIt's hardly a scandal.
- dspeyer 15y agoI never meant to imply that they did. My point was that we don't know the story. For all we know, they could be super-top-secret humanoid robots that Google is developing!
- Ugarte 15y agoMy understanding--and I'm an engineer, not a lawyer--is that many companies segregate contractors as a response to labor laws. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp. The important point here is that if temporary employees are working alongside full timers doing very similar work for long periods of time, the employer (Google, not the agency) runs the risk of a suit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsoft. Microsoft now (and I suspect this lies in part behind Google's various segregations of different classes of employees) makes an effort to restrict contractor access to various full-timer activities (like ski trips and such, as the author complains) and to ensure that contractors don't do full-timer work. So this isn't some sort of evil conspiracy; it's an honest attempt to comply with US labor laws.