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Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors
- flatiron 5y agoi just left a 3+ year stint as a contractor at Apple. Some of the stuff from the article rings a bit true to my experience (we get "sad grey apple badges" and apple employees get colored apple badges, we don't get to go to any corporate events (even though we get the e-mails to attend with the asterik at the bottom loljk) but on the whole i always didnt really feel like a second class citizen too much. that being said, every 3 years wondering if my contract was going to get resigned was a bit nerve wracking. im much happer in the past 3 weeks being fulltime somewhere else :).
- mr_o47 5y agoI can totally understand what it feels to miss out while seeing others enjoy at the same time.
- flatiron 5y agotrue. 99% of the time i wasn't on campus so "come to the friday afternoon austin beer bash" e-mails didn't bother me as I wasn't in austin :). its more the silent power dynamic that i felt. if a full time apple employee is just spouting nonsense on a call, i was not going to make too much of a peep. but if they had a disagreement with me or one of my coworkers we usually just had to grin and bear it and "ohh yes of course we can do it that way". but thats life i guess.
- mr_o47 5y agoSad to see this practice. I wonder why can’t google hire them as regular data center employees and pay them better wages.
- briffle 5y agoI have friends that have the same setup at their jobs at Intel in Portland. Its not just Google.
- jsisto 5y agoAnd Intel in Folsom California
- monkeybutton 5y agoI don't think there is any reason why they can't, they certainly have the money for it, they simply don't want to.
- mr_o47 5y agoYup I totally agree this why I was a little surprised they make huge profits why not hire them as employees
- ct0 5y agoUnfortunately there just isn't enough of an intensive to pay more for the same labor. If contractors stop making them self available for the work, they may have butter luck becoming employees.
- mschuster91 5y ago> If contractors stop making them self available for the work, they may have butter luck becoming employees. There will always be a steady supply of people willing to work in shitty conditions because either the employer is a big name (Google) or they have no other alternative to put food on the table. The latter aspect is why government regulation and minimum standards are the only way to prevent exploitation.
- tyingq 5y agoDoes anyone know if Google uses these folks via a "services" type contract or a "staff augmentation" contract? That is, is the data center floor 100% from one company, with someone from that company directing work? The 2 year limit suggests "staff aug", as that's a tactic to avoid them being classed as employees. If it were run like a service, there's no need to roll them off every 2 years.
- the_jeremy 5y agoUnlike Uber, Google has proactively taken steps to ensure contractors are not able to be considered employees. If Google wants to use contractors, for one reason or another, lawyers have told them they need to take these sort of steps. This whole article is basically complaining that being a contractor sucks because the law forces Google to follow these sorts of practices, but then blames Google for following these sorts of practices.
- bushbaba 5y agoThat’s cause they were sued and lost. Google then added trainings to avoid future issues. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/11/google-tvc-full-time-employees-training-document https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/11/google-tv...
- sixothree 5y agoThe law forces google to choose contractors instead of hiring employees?
- username90 5y agoContractors are easy, you just throw money at a contracting firm and they solve your problem. Doing it inhouse means they have to hire managers and all other support personnel needed to hire and keep employees, that is a lot more complicated. The law makes it more complicated to throw money at contracting firms to make them solve your problems, hence why they get fired every 2 years etc.
- pydry 5y agoExcept they actually have managers and if they've been there two years it's easy as pie to just hire them. This is Google cheaping out on medical insurance and PTO.
- username90 5y agoIf Google wanted to be cheap they could just hire them and pay them less, but they don't.
- donkeyd 5y ago> Love the good pay. > It pays relatively well ($15 per hour for most contract workers). How is that relatively well? Compared to McDonald's employees, probably. Compared to other actual technical jobs, like electrician, I can't imagine. Compared to Google devs, not at all. Working 40 hours a week with no vacation that's about 31k. Being a contractor means no sick leave, vacation days, pension, insurance, etc. The US is such an odd country.
- the_only_law 5y ago> Compared to other actual technical jobs, like electrician, FWIW, these people seem to be people who otherwise have no skilled work experience. To compare I’ve seen electrician apprenticeships paying less than that.
- sct202 5y agoSo in the context of this article, contract means that Google hires a company (Modis) for specific work, and Modis hires workers who Google considers to be from the contract company. Modis workers get benefits (healthcare, retirement, vacation) from Modis if they are eligible based on Modis's policies and if they're full time. This is different than an independent contractor, who would have to self fund all benefits.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago"other actual technical jobs, like electrician," have barriers to entry. Ms Wait would have to break her back schlepping spools around a jobsite for a few years before she could get onto the actual electrician career track. Before they took away the light at the end of the tunnel schlepping batteries around for Google was just as good.
- pessimizer 5y ago> Ms Wait would have to break her back schlepping spools around a jobsite for a few years before she could get onto the actual electrician career track. Ms Wait would be paid >=$15 to do this.
- jasode 5y ago>Contractors love the good pay and engaging work in Google's data centers. They resent that Google and its staffing firm, Modis Engineering, make them quit every two years. >[...] But those two-year contracts are written in stone. Workers like Wait are not usually allowed to apply either to renew their contracts or to do the same job as a Google employee. If they want to keep working in the same job, they have to leave the data center for six months and then come back and apply again — but neither Google nor Modis will tell workers why. >[...] Google likely requires the six-month leave due to federal employment law, Barbara Figari, an employment attorney in California, told Protocol. Yes. All companies got rattled by Microsoft losing their lawsuit with permatemp contractors in 2000: https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+contractors+lawsuit+settle https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+contractors+lawsui... Before the Microsoft settlement, I was able to sell my services directly to the client company as a 1099 freelance contractor because I did not want to be an employee. But after that, all companies got paranoid about contractors and I then had to go through a middleman bodyshop as a "fake" W-2 employee. The programming bodyshop then skims a fee from my hourly rate to provide a "lawsuit shield" for the client that wants to pay for my services.
- taurath 5y agoThe right thing for the company to do would be to hire people as employees, but it appears that worker protections are too strong for them to want to financially. Universal healthcare/dental/paid leave would allow for companies who’s employees currently are the only receivers of these “benefits” to not require companies to hold onto people so long. Worker protections are supposed to be so that catastrophic job loss is less catastrophic and companies can’t just arbitrarily decide they need 20000 people one month and 0 the next. But we should definitely look into a better deal for the workers and give companies less power over their livelihood.
- dannyw 5y agoSome people, like the grandparent or me, don't want to be employees.
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- mraza007 5y agoAren’t data center employees crucial as they are making sure your services are running perfectly even in an event of emergency. Why not hire them and pay them better wages
- capableweb 5y ago> Why not hire them and pay them better wages You would have to search a lot to find any big, international conglomerates with shareholders who would willingly pay higher wages for workers without a fight.
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoTo be blunt: Because they don’t have to. If they were struggling to find or retain talent or if they weren’t getting the caliber of employee required, they would certainly increase wages as they did with engineers. When I was tangentially involved with a datacenter company several years ago, they had hundreds of qualified applicants for every job opening. It’s a job that a lot of people want but with few openings.
- yanderekko 5y agoA lot of the workers are FTEs, hence the "class system". Those FTEs are likely the ones that would handle such emergencies.
- aparsons 5y agoBecause Google turned the computers into a commodity. These employees swap out broken machines for the most part, but the software stack is so redundant that you can pull out a machine running a key job and the scheduler will simply retry it somewhere else. Similarly for files with GFS. All machines have their own battery so the possibility of the whole thing going down is slim. It’s beautiful how they’ve evolved from running on Sun mainframes in the early part of the century. The workers at the datacenters basically do mindless labour, so aren’t paid like a typical sysadmin.
- comeonseriously 5y agoWhy do that when you can, instead, return more money to investors?
- randomifcpfan 5y agoThis is all due to Microsoft contractors (who were treated like regular employees in the 80s and 90s) winning a lawsuit that retroactively forced Microsoft to give them a ton of stock. Companies now have to be rude to contractors to avoid a similar lawsuit. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/business/technology-temp-workers-at-microsoft-win-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/business/technology-temp-...
- dx034 5y agoOr they could hire them as employees. This is not temporary work, they only use agencies to save money and circumvent workers protections. I get that there are freelancers who like not being employees but that's not the case here. I bet most Temps at Google would love getting employee status and there's no reason most of them shouldn't. It's not like Google couldn't afford the extra payroll.
- randomifcpfan 5y agoOr they could not hire them at all. This is a version of a minimum wage, and runs into the same tradeoffs between economic growth and social fairness.
- scoopdewoop 5y agoAnd who would keep the data centers running? The invisible hand of the market? Labor does stuff.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cloche 5y agoI know someone who works as a contractor for Google (not through Modis). It's quite odd. They had to go through a lot of Google specified training, they only work for Google, their manager is someone from Google, the computer was supplied from Google, they're doing work that is directed by Google, they receive performance feedback from Google. But at the day, they're officially employed by this vendor company. I just don't see how it can be argued that people like this are not really employed by Google. If Google doesn't need this job anymore, this staffing company isn't going to retain them. It's not like they have other clients where they can redirect the person to as far as I can tell. Why is it that Google uses these staffing firms? I get that they don't want to provide the same benefits to lower skilled workers but then why not just have 2 sets of benefits? One for higher skilled employees and one for lower skilled employees? I suppose the other answer is when it comes to layoffs, it won't be in the news because these types of workers are not officially employed by Google.
- dx034 5y agoAlso looks nicer on the balance sheet. Basically Workers as a Service. Makes Google look much more efficient (in terms of revenue per employee) than it actually is.
- wombat-man 5y agoYeah I think it's basically that. If push comes to shove financially you're less safe at modis then at Google. Google has few, if any, layoffs. It's a part of their brand and their value proposition to potential employees. Plus I don't think the two tiers of benefits thing would go over as well as you think it might. Either you're in and you have their great, expensive benefits, or you're out.
- enragedcacti 5y agoThere are laws against providing different tiers for some benefits (I'm pretty certain healthcare is one). So if Google were to hire them, it has to decide if its worth lowering the standard of healthcare for their six-figure engineers or giving these datacenter employees a really expensive healthcare plan.
- PaulHoule 5y agoOne time I met one of these guys on a flight that was delayed out of PHL airport. We were in a little ERJ-135 and never got a clear view of the line we were in because we kept turning corners, but when we were second-in-line for takeoff we broke out of the line and I could see a long line of big and small airplanes waiting behind us close to sunset. I thought was a miracle, like a scene out of a science fiction movie. He said "I can't believe I paid $1000 for this!" I started asking him questions and found out he worked as a contractor running fiber for data centers operators by Google and Facebook and I picked his brain for 45 minutes about how a modern datacenter is wired up.
- slt2021 5y agoalmost all high tech software companies hire firms like Modis/Experis/Manpower to do menial labor tasks related to hardware: mostly racking and stacking, responding to hardware incidents, wiring up stuff, etc. the reason is because every process is very documented and almost any high schooler can follow the steps and replace and wire up server/firewall (power and backbone is all ya need). Configuration is usually done by full time well paid experts (or even done automatically by software)
- airhead969 5y agoI think the term is "precariat."
- alistairSH 5y ago"Don't be evil (unless it's profitable)." These contract workers should be employees.
- decafninja 5y agoSeems very different to the story in the legacy financial tech world (i.e. tech in old school investment banks and hedge funds) - often times contracting is preferred to being a full time employee. As a contractor you can get paid 1.5-2x+ what a FTE might get, albeit without insurance or vacation days. For insurance, many who are young and healthy (knock on wood) just shrug it off, while those who are married often times rely on their spouse's employer's plan. I've seen contractors at IBs and hedge funds decline the offer to be converted to employees because it would mean a big paycut for them. The 18 month period limit could be seen as a downside, but in this day and age when spending too much time at one company is ironically seen as a bad thing (unless maybe you're at a FAANG tier org), maybe it's not really a big downside either. Other than that, at least in the legacy financial world, you don't get to put on a fancy but utterly meaningless (and quite frankly, stupid) "Vice President" or "Director" title the employees have.
- IncRnd 5y ago> "The only complaint I have is the fact that I have to leave for six months. I don't feel that's right that TVCs get recycled like this," he said. "I've never gotten a real answer as of why." This is likely done so Google doesn't need to classify TVPs as regular working employees. The six month wait enforces this commoditization upon the people.
- robertlagrant 5y ago> He knows he would be reprimanded if he gave a contractor a Google t-shirt handed out for free during an event. "But there's no issue if they go on the Google merchandise store and buy it themselves," he said. Yes, because one of those makes them look like a perm for tax reasons, and the other does not.
- plank_time 5y agoI’m getting tired of these low-value workers complaining they should be paid as well as high-value workers. They were hired with no skills, and were trained from the ground up. They are getting a livable wage but now they want more. If they want more, they need to elevate their worth and become high value employees or find a better job that values them better. They are contractors. Because of their particular life experiences and life choices, they were unable to come as a more valuable employee. Google doesn’t owe them anything except the job they offered them. If they want better terms they can ask, but Google will refuse. So it’s on them to find a better job. But please stop complaining about it and think you’re more valuable than you actually are. They can be replaced by someone who has no skills and can be trained from scratch, just like they were. The pay is fair, the conditions are good. That’s better than many jobs out there.
- advisedwang 5y agoRead the article - they aren't complaining about pay, they are complaining about job security. They are doing work that is going to be needed for the foreseeable future but can only work 2 years before they have to leave (for a period).
- plank_time 5y agoThey are low value workers. They don’t get job security. That’s the reality of it. They are replaceable with people with no experience. They have to understand that. There’s no job security to waiters either or Uber drivers. Just because they work in a datacenter doesn’t mean they deserve more money for a low value job. If they want a full time job, they need to elevate themselves. Educate yourself, get a degree, find a new job, become management etc. Lots of paths to job security. Just because people want job security doesn’t mean they deserve it.
- thethethethe 5y agoWhy do you have so little compassion for people? Just because a person has "low value" skills doesn't mean we _have_ to treat them like they are disposable. These "low skill" jobs are critical to the function of society and the people that do them deserve respect, security, and acknowledgment.
- moron4hire 5y agoThis arrangement also helps Google maintain the illusion that they "only hire the best and brightest" and that onerous technical interviews are "necessary" for the sort of work Google does "at scale".
- superkimchi 5y agoTLDR: If you're considering working for a staffing company like the one mentioned in the article don't do it. You can do better and are capable of much more. I worked for a couple of staffing companies in the Washington D.C. area in my twenties and reflecting back I view it as a mistake (or at least tough learning experience for a naive college grad). Ultimately, dead-end jobs like these prolonged my journey to landing a job as a developer with a company that actually valued me and treated me with respect. I ground through contractor jobs because I told myself two lies: #1. “This is not an ideal situation, but I’m an optimist and will make the best of it.”. Wrong, the truth is that I approached the company and took the job. I may have been a little inexperienced in the ways of the world but I knew full well that these were dead-end jobs. The limitations for potential personal growth, or professional advancement, were clearly documented in the onboarding process. Finding a good job is a real undertaking, requires some luck, and doesn’t have a fixed timeline. Something I also didn’t consider is the impression I would give to future employers later down the road when I listed a staffing company on my resume. It’s funny that a less confident version of myself found so much optimism when considering powering through a bad situation, but I couldn’t spare any of that optimism if I dreamed of reaching for something higher. #2. “I’m a hard worker and I’ll survive the layoffs through merit”. Wrong, the truth is that the vast majority of the contractors I worked with were eventually laid off (or resigned) and I don’t think poorly of them for it. In fact, the few buddies that I have kept in touch with all eventually moved on to better things. I found the paths they chose after leaving to be inspiring. They took on more challenging jobs, started graduate school, moved to another city, etc. I on the other hand quietly worked off the clock on nights and weekends to mitigate my chances of being laid off. At the time, I told myself that I was acting out of virtue, but really it was fear. My strategy carried me for a long time, but eventually the psychological impact of being treated as a second rate human being caught up to me. Just sharing my own personal reflections on a very specific set of experiences in case someone finds themselves with similar thoughts.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoQuite a few people here are bemoaning the MS lawsuit result as some sort of bad call or unnecessary burden on businesses. That's not the root problem, and misunderstands the scale of what was going on at MS. I have personal friends that joined MS during this era. They were told by their managers, off record of course, exactly how to game WA unemployment during their 6 months on, 3 months off, contracting years. They were doing stuff like flying to Mexico for 3 months, then filing false job application progress notifications to unemployment from their laptop on the beach. The root problem here is that sophisticated businesses can game what should be straight forward worker protections. The MS case is a bandaid. The problem is the erosion of labor rights and negotiating power that's been a decades long trend in the US.
- jeffbee 5y agoThese contractors should be preparing for another line of work anyway, since Google has been working for years on making their data center equipment completely hands-off with robots swapping out the machines and parts. Recently Joe Kava said in a public interview: "As far as robotics, our hyperscale data centers are more like warehouses and most of the processes require a robot to navigate to a specific location to perform a task. Some of these technologies are in development right now – things like robot navigation, computer vision, motion planning and device tooling for what the robot will employ to do that operation… These have advanced exponentially over the last few years..." There are job postings on Google's site right now for technical program managers to "Work with Roboticists, Control Engineers and Hardware Lab staff to lead the concept, planning, and development of Data Center Automation System programs with an end-to-end responsibility". In the near future they will still need the skilled trades for power, water, and air, but it's clear that they'll ultimately get rid of them, too.
- glsdfgkjsklfj 5y agoThis fake headcount doesn't work only on lowest tier 1 jobs. Internationally Google et all hides headcount from shareholders by employing the entire office (sales, engineering, etc) as contractors in the exact same terms described in the article, but under the foreign country terms (which always have better terms for the worker than the US)
- jakub_g 5y agoDev in France, sounds very familiar, except the force-quit bit. As a fresh graduate in bigcorp world, especially foreigner who doesn't know on arrival how this works: You get hired by SSII (Société de services et d'ingénierie en informatique), and do same work as regular staff employees of bigcorp, in the same building etc., except you get sad contractor badge, and no yearly bonuses and perks. The promise is to become staff after 2 years but the bigcorp has arbitrary quotas (per department) on how many people get converted, "hiring freezes" etc.; some people remain contractors for years and years, in the same team (which is pretty much illegal as far as I can tell) as the bigcorp likes to have a bunch of contractors that can be fired quickly in case shit happens (like covid). It's not _too bad_ because the job at middleman company is typically "CDI" aka "unfirable" due to French labor law, but when all the people around you doing same job as you get a juicy yearly bonus and you don't, it gets you really angry. I was super glad when I found a better company which doesn't do that bullshit and hires everyone as staff.
- throwitaway1235 5y agoThis article is a great example of "essential journalism", which is quite rare overall.
- unreal37 5y ago"Sensational journalism". Asking questions that are clearly answered by an expert in the article, but then continuing to pretend that the answer is unclear.
- PurpleFoxy 5y agoIt’s ok. Google banned the terms “first class” and “second class”. Problem solved.
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