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This article is referring to data centers that hire relatively small numbers of temporary contractors, not actual FAANG offices popping up and offering long-ter

This article is referring to data centers that hire relatively small numbers of temporary contractors, not actual FAANG offices popping up and offering long-term engineering jobs. Its a stretch to argue that these additional jobs, even if they are time-limited contracts through a contracting company that services FAANG, are a bad thing. The contracting companies aren’t misleading candidate when they’re hired - These are clearly contract jobs. They may not be great jobs, but they’re not displacing other jobs either. They’re just additional jobs. Calling them “big tech” jobs is almost as misleading as claiming that the construction workers and electricians who built the data enter were “big tech” construction workers. The general public is often confused about the difference between data center technicians and software/hardware engineers. I remember when I was younger and a FAANG company considered building a data center near my home town. Many of my extended family members thought I could move home, get a FAANG job working at the data center, and be set for life in my home town. I spent a lot of time explaining to people that my work didn’t resemble physically servicing data centers at all. This article plays off of that same idea.

mountainb 5y ago
Right, it's precisely like calling an FBA warehouse employee a "Big Tech" employee. They might be good jobs in a general sense, but they are not fat turkey jobs from the perspective of politicians like a junior executive making half a million dollars a year in a low cost of living state.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Right, it's precisely like calling an FBA warehouse employee a "Big Tech" employee. Amazon hires warehouse employees directly, though, so in a sense they are employees of a Big Tech company even if they’re not doing tech work. The situation in this article would be more like the contracted electricians who work on Amazon warehouse buildings complaining about their electrician employer company and then the journalist trying to pin those complaints on Amazon because that’s where the work was done.
  - jschwartzi 5y ago
    That would only be a reasonable analogy if the electricians did all their work in one facility for one company. One can argue that Google is the employer in this case because the contractors have never worked for Modis in the same capacity in any other facility. Trade contractors ply their trade for many different clients on different projects. It’s distinguishable from this type of arrangement. The “contractors” in question here have a supervisor at Google, and the pay they receive is from Google via Modis. If Modis didn’t exist to be the contracting party the employees would be indistinguishable from full time employees under Google’s employ. Arguing that the contracting relationship is all that is needed to justify this is like arguing that I can form an LLC to hold my assets and receive my salary to avoid personal income tax.
solitus 5y ago
I disagree, these contractors do the exact same job as some Google employees. They are directly part of "big tech", if they weren't there FAANG companies would grind to a halt.
harimau777 5y ago
In situations where the work is not inherently temporary (e.g. a construction project) or seasonal, it seems to me that employing people as contractors without any job security is itself part of the problem. That is on top of the sexual harassment and other mistreatment that the article discusses as well as the fact that the corps are cutting political deals to avoid paying taxes.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Would you also insist that these companies hire and manage their own janitorial staff to clean the building every night? That work is neither temporary nor seasonal either, but no one thinks twice when every small and medium sized company contracts with a cleaning company.
  - ecshafer 5y ago
    I do insist that the companies should hire and manage their own janitorial staff, maintenance workers, mail room (so far as that still exists), food workers, etc. A major part of American capitalism that worked was the fact that you could be poor, get a job at a company "at the bottom" and work your way up to the top. The transition to contracting out the bottom, and then an over-reliance on credentialism is a huge mistake.
    - m-watson 5y ago
      That is a real interesting point, contracting out limits your ability to "work your way up," a big company. I am a huge proponent of mobility, especially inter-organizational mobility rather than intra-organizational mobility, but your point stands. Having the ability to move up in your organization and up outside of your organization gives the worker more choices and makes organizations actually work harder to do right by the worker. I think contracting out still can fit in this, but I am glad I read your point. It will be interesting to think through.
      - zsmi 5y ago
shadowgovt 5y ago
They're good additions to a local economy, but they won't, in general, substitute for the manufacturing or mining jobs that some of these towns have lost. There's simply a different scale of labor needed between maintaining and servicing the physical plant for data transformers and operating a manufacturing system that turns matter into differently-shaped matter or an extraction project to pull tons of material out of the ground and sift it. Data centers don't maintain themselves, but they don't have nearly as many high-maintenance moving mechanical parts as an automotive plant, for example.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  They are worse additions to the local economy than stable warehouse jobs. They offer similar wages but no stability. That's what big tech has to offer here in flyover country in return for our cheap utilities and available land and some stunning tax avoidance.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Calling them “big tech” jobs is almost as misleading as claiming that the construction workers and electricians who built the data enter were “big tech” construction workers. It is called clickbait, and is the nature of “journalism” these days due to compensation coming from articles that evoke as much emotion as possible.
rory 5y ago
> Calling them “big tech” jobs is almost as misleading as claiming that the construction workers and electricians who built the data enter were “big tech” construction workers. To be fair, an excavator is a fairly large piece of technology.
endisneigh 5y ago
> Calling them “big tech” jobs is almost as misleading as claiming that the construction workers and electricians who built the data enter were “big tech” construction workers. I'm confused by this statement. If not constructor workers employed by "big tech", what exactly would a "big tech constructor worker" be?
- foobar2021 5y ago
  By the same that says logic, Elon musk is a federal employee because spaceX has government contracts.
- vaidhy 5y ago
  They would just be construction workers
- mc32 5y ago
  It's like calling a gasoline station attendant a petrochemical company worker.
  - swader999 5y ago
    No, they are petroleum transfer engineers.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    If the gas station attendant is one of the few who works for a gas station owned directly by the gas company, is that not the case?
- milesskorpen 5y ago
  I think that's the point - there aren't big tech construction workers, they're just construction workers.
ksec 5y ago
Thanks. I saw the word "Big Tech" and immediately think it is some clickbait headlines. Read the HN comments first and now saves me time to even read the article.
briffle 5y ago
The funny thing is I have a friend of the family that has worked 7 years now at the prineville facebook datacenter, and has not had to worry about 2 year lay-offs, he's an electrician, his company in contracted to build/expand the datacenter there, with a full job with benefits that have only increased over time. Because of expansion the 'temporary' construction jobs have turned out to be almost better than the actual jobs that actually work in there.
walshemj 5y ago
No its actually a result of a case MS lost decades ago - there are plenty of Big Tech workers on this sort of contract.

mountainb 5y ago

Right, it's precisely like calling an FBA warehouse employee a "Big Tech" employee. They might be good jobs in a general sense, but they are not fat turkey jobs from the perspective of politicians like a junior executive making half a million dollars a year in a low cost of living state.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Right, it's precisely like calling an FBA warehouse employee a "Big Tech" employee. Amazon hires warehouse employees directly, though, so in a sense they are employees of a Big Tech company even if they’re not doing tech work. The situation in this article would be more like the contracted electricians who work on Amazon warehouse buildings complaining about their electrician employer company and then the journalist trying to pin those complaints on Amazon because that’s where the work was done.
- jschwartzi 5y ago
  That would only be a reasonable analogy if the electricians did all their work in one facility for one company. One can argue that Google is the employer in this case because the contractors have never worked for Modis in the same capacity in any other facility. Trade contractors ply their trade for many different clients on different projects. It’s distinguishable from this type of arrangement. The “contractors” in question here have a supervisor at Google, and the pay they receive is from Google via Modis. If Modis didn’t exist to be the contracting party the employees would be indistinguishable from full time employees under Google’s employ. Arguing that the contracting relationship is all that is needed to justify this is like arguing that I can form an LLC to hold my assets and receive my salary to avoid personal income tax.

solitus 5y ago

I disagree, these contractors do the exact same job as some Google employees. They are directly part of "big tech", if they weren't there FAANG companies would grind to a halt.

harimau777 5y ago

In situations where the work is not inherently temporary (e.g. a construction project) or seasonal, it seems to me that employing people as contractors without any job security is itself part of the problem. That is on top of the sexual harassment and other mistreatment that the article discusses as well as the fact that the corps are cutting political deals to avoid paying taxes.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Would you also insist that these companies hire and manage their own janitorial staff to clean the building every night? That work is neither temporary nor seasonal either, but no one thinks twice when every small and medium sized company contracts with a cleaning company.
- ecshafer 5y ago
  I do insist that the companies should hire and manage their own janitorial staff, maintenance workers, mail room (so far as that still exists), food workers, etc. A major part of American capitalism that worked was the fact that you could be poor, get a job at a company "at the bottom" and work your way up to the top. The transition to contracting out the bottom, and then an over-reliance on credentialism is a huge mistake.
  - m-watson 5y ago
    That is a real interesting point, contracting out limits your ability to "work your way up," a big company. I am a huge proponent of mobility, especially inter-organizational mobility rather than intra-organizational mobility, but your point stands. Having the ability to move up in your organization and up outside of your organization gives the worker more choices and makes organizations actually work harder to do right by the worker. I think contracting out still can fit in this, but I am glad I read your point. It will be interesting to think through.
    - zsmi 5y ago

shadowgovt 5y ago

They're good additions to a local economy, but they won't, in general, substitute for the manufacturing or mining jobs that some of these towns have lost. There's simply a different scale of labor needed between maintaining and servicing the physical plant for data transformers and operating a manufacturing system that turns matter into differently-shaped matter or an extraction project to pull tons of material out of the ground and sift it. Data centers don't maintain themselves, but they don't have nearly as many high-maintenance moving mechanical parts as an automotive plant, for example.

drewcoo 5y ago
They are worse additions to the local economy than stable warehouse jobs. They offer similar wages but no stability. That's what big tech has to offer here in flyover country in return for our cheap utilities and available land and some stunning tax avoidance.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

> Calling them “big tech” jobs is almost as misleading as claiming that the construction workers and electricians who built the data enter were “big tech” construction workers. It is called clickbait, and is the nature of “journalism” these days due to compensation coming from articles that evoke as much emotion as possible.

rory 5y ago

> Calling them “big tech” jobs is almost as misleading as claiming that the construction workers and electricians who built the data enter were “big tech” construction workers. To be fair, an excavator is a fairly large piece of technology.

endisneigh 5y ago

> Calling them “big tech” jobs is almost as misleading as claiming that the construction workers and electricians who built the data enter were “big tech” construction workers. I'm confused by this statement. If not constructor workers employed by "big tech", what exactly would a "big tech constructor worker" be?

foobar2021 5y ago
By the same that says logic, Elon musk is a federal employee because spaceX has government contracts.
vaidhy 5y ago
They would just be construction workers
mc32 5y ago
It's like calling a gasoline station attendant a petrochemical company worker.
- swader999 5y ago
  No, they are petroleum transfer engineers.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  If the gas station attendant is one of the few who works for a gas station owned directly by the gas company, is that not the case?
milesskorpen 5y ago
I think that's the point - there aren't big tech construction workers, they're just construction workers.

ksec 5y ago

Thanks. I saw the word "Big Tech" and immediately think it is some clickbait headlines. Read the HN comments first and now saves me time to even read the article.

briffle 5y ago

The funny thing is I have a friend of the family that has worked 7 years now at the prineville facebook datacenter, and has not had to worry about 2 year lay-offs, he's an electrician, his company in contracted to build/expand the datacenter there, with a full job with benefits that have only increased over time. Because of expansion the 'temporary' construction jobs have turned out to be almost better than the actual jobs that actually work in there.

walshemj 5y ago

No its actually a result of a case MS lost decades ago - there are plenty of Big Tech workers on this sort of contract.