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Every example of contract work at Google I've been given has shown clear separation between contract work and FTEs. At google maps, contractors are driving arou

Every example of contract work at Google I've been given has shown clear separation between contract work and FTEs. At google maps, contractors are driving around taking street photos or identifying roads on satellite imagery. FTEs are writing software for Google Maps that uses this data. Even media outlets that are negative towards Google's use of contractors highlight that these contractors are used for specific needs outside of what FTEs do [1]: > Google does not directly employ the workers who collect or create the data required for much of its technology, be they the drivers who capture photos for Google Maps’ Street View, the content moderators training YouTube’s filters to catch prohibited material, or the scanners flipping pages to upload the contents of libraries into Google Books. > Having these two tiers of workers – highly paid full-time Googlers and often low-wage and precarious workers contracted through staffing firms – is “corrosive”, “highly problematic”, and “permissive of exploitation”, the employees said. While some may be disgusted with the segregation between the two "tiers" of FTEs doing software development and contractors doing manual labor, the fact that the workforce is starkly separated into two different tiers goes to show just how separate these two segments of the workforce really are. Most of the coverage of Google's contracting emphasizes these points: how separate and unequal the contract and full-time workers are. Now there's an anonymous internet commenter claiming to work at Google insisting that this is not the case - but unwilling to actually specify what team or organization is actually using contract workers for the same functions at FTEs. Is it really "frightening" and "aggressive" that I don't find these anonymous, non-specific allegations more compelling than the writings by people with their real names attached to their claims? 1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/28/a-white-collar-sweatshop-google-assistant-contractors-allege-wage-theft https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/28/a-white-c...

refulgentis 3y ago
I'm not anonymous at all lol. And you're right that the news articles you read are about more tangential contractors that might just be doing low rent data collection. Me and a dozen other people have repeatedly told you it's not just those functions. I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them. There is no limit and they are literally on every team doing what you and I can agree to call "real work" in shorthand. Code in Google products. Figma designs used to make Google products. There's no slight of hand, no trickery, no limit. I don't know what else to tell you.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  > I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them. Yet you can't list even one specific example. If you really are seeing this happen, go contact the NLRB or the media and get your observations out there and into the public discussion. If all you're willing to say is "trust me, it happens, but I can't even list any one example of this happening" is it really surprising that you're being met with skepticism?
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    I don't have an actionable NLRB complaint, I wasn't a TVC, and the media knows, hence TFA lol. Why am I picking a fight with a trillion dollar company and why are they publishing it? I did name em btw. Count the asterix. Also its literally every single team. Every single team has TVCs. There's a smol iOS app (think Arts and Culture, but not) I almost took the lead role for that would have had all the contributors be TVCs and I did code review.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      > Me and a dozen other people have repeatedly told you it's not just those functions. I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them. There is no limit and they are literally on every team doing what you and I can agree to call "real work" in shorthand. This isn't actually naming anything, you're just insisting it's happening everywhere without actually making a specific allegation. An example of this would be, "full-time employees were being tasked with running performance regression tests for the Google Drive backend, and in 2019 this started to be done by both FTEs and contractors". A pattern that really engenders skepticism is when people insist that something is incredibly pervasive and common, yet fail to list even one example of it happening. If contract workers are being used to do the same work as FTEs on all teams, you should have a wealth of examples of "X team used FTEs to do Y, and starting at such and such a time they started using contractors to do Y as well".
      - refulgentis 3y ago

refulgentis 3y ago

I'm not anonymous at all lol. And you're right that the news articles you read are about more tangential contractors that might just be doing low rent data collection. Me and a dozen other people have repeatedly told you it's not just those functions. I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them. There is no limit and they are literally on every team doing what you and I can agree to call "real work" in shorthand. Code in Google products. Figma designs used to make Google products. There's no slight of hand, no trickery, no limit. I don't know what else to tell you.

Manuel_D 3y ago
> I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them. Yet you can't list even one specific example. If you really are seeing this happen, go contact the NLRB or the media and get your observations out there and into the public discussion. If all you're willing to say is "trust me, it happens, but I can't even list any one example of this happening" is it really surprising that you're being met with skepticism?
- refulgentis 3y ago
  I don't have an actionable NLRB complaint, I wasn't a TVC, and the media knows, hence TFA lol. Why am I picking a fight with a trillion dollar company and why are they publishing it? I did name em btw. Count the asterix. Also its literally every single team. Every single team has TVCs. There's a smol iOS app (think Arts and Culture, but not) I almost took the lead role for that would have had all the contributors be TVCs and I did code review.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    > Me and a dozen other people have repeatedly told you it's not just those functions. I'm talking core work in core functions on core products. All of them. There is no limit and they are literally on every team doing what you and I can agree to call "real work" in shorthand. This isn't actually naming anything, you're just insisting it's happening everywhere without actually making a specific allegation. An example of this would be, "full-time employees were being tasked with running performance regression tests for the Google Drive backend, and in 2019 this started to be done by both FTEs and contractors". A pattern that really engenders skepticism is when people insist that something is incredibly pervasive and common, yet fail to list even one example of it happening. If contract workers are being used to do the same work as FTEs on all teams, you should have a wealth of examples of "X team used FTEs to do Y, and starting at such and such a time they started using contractors to do Y as well".
    - refulgentis 3y ago