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I feel like there's a general shift away from contractors happening though, which is weird because at least in tech, it's often a strictly better situation for

I feel like there's a general shift away from contractors happening though, which is weird because at least in tech, it's often a strictly better situation for both employees and employers. Contractors get paid a lot more than FTEs in the same position, employers save on lots of overhead for healthcare and stuff. At least for younger people without chronic illness, this is often a way better deal. Employers can not only have the truly elastic work force that they seem want, but they can also actually remove staff where it's not working out without facing some kind of lawsuit. And without waiting for huge rounds of general layoffs while they keep useless/ignorant folks for years and task more productive people with trying to minimize the damage they cause. And yet.. if you want part-time or contract work, it's crickets when it comes to find/filter. The increasingly monolithic staffing empires at big websites like Indeed apparently have so few of these jobs listed that they just ignore the filter and show all the full-time positions anyway. I don't have a great theory about why. Could be the economy in general, could be AI removing the 1% of actually thoughtful recruiters from the loop recently, or changing tax laws, or employers just enjoying leverage while they use the classic healthcare/employment situation in the US as a cudgel in negotiations, or it could be the perverse incentives to engage in arbitrary hiring/firing to manipulate hype and stock-prices. If anyone can speak to this from the perspective of an employer (or better yet an economist..) it's probably an interesting story. Whatever the reason, this is all so stupid. Why vacuum up huge numbers of people who are actually looking for stability and disappoint them, and refuse to engage with people who are looking for more casual employment? I will probably live to regret this, but I have wished there was a actually functioning market for gig-work in tech. More and more small/boutique consultancies are shutting down, staffing agencies still barely understand the domain they try to serve, companies usually don't want to talk to people angling for contracts showing up to FTE positions, and the scammy little ecosystem for temp-work in tech is probably little better than hustling on craigslist in the early 2000's. What's up with that?

NomDePlum 2y ago
I can really only talk about the UK but I'd agree there has been a move away from better paid technical contract positions. Mostly this has been due to policy change to remove tax advantages that can come with contracting. For large scale organisations or government organisations navigating these sort policies just isn't worth it so they simplify it and apply the same policy to everyone, which means the risk/reward isn't quite as balanced as it used to be. Ironically, for me at least this has increased what I make as I have years of navigating the landscape, but for others it's definitely less attractive. The more insidious side of contracting is that there has been an enormous expansion in "outsourcing" contracts that are entirely about lowering organisational costs and employer responsibilities and are exploitative without any real benefits to those employed. The majority of those contracted in these cases are almost certainly made up of outsourced ex-employees or those that would in the past have been recruited directly by organisations. In the UK and local government departments are one of the worst, having been forced to make cuts to cope with diminishing budgets.
- disgruntledphd2 2y ago
  > I can really only talk about the UK but I'd agree there has been a move away from better paid technical contract positions. Mostly this has been due to policy change to remove tax advantages that can come with contracting. To be fair, the pre IR35 situation was super dodgy. To counterpoint that, I live in Ireland where there's absolutely no tax advantage to being a contractor (slightly less NI equivalent, way less benefits and a special dividend tax to prevent those kinds of shenanigans) and yet there appears to be a thriving contractor market, so it feels like there's more going on here. Now a bunch of those contract positions are far too low in terms of day rate, so maybe it's just an attempt to cut costs while giving naive people what looks like a good deal, because they don't account for all the costs.

NomDePlum 2y ago

I can really only talk about the UK but I'd agree there has been a move away from better paid technical contract positions. Mostly this has been due to policy change to remove tax advantages that can come with contracting. For large scale organisations or government organisations navigating these sort policies just isn't worth it so they simplify it and apply the same policy to everyone, which means the risk/reward isn't quite as balanced as it used to be. Ironically, for me at least this has increased what I make as I have years of navigating the landscape, but for others it's definitely less attractive. The more insidious side of contracting is that there has been an enormous expansion in "outsourcing" contracts that are entirely about lowering organisational costs and employer responsibilities and are exploitative without any real benefits to those employed. The majority of those contracted in these cases are almost certainly made up of outsourced ex-employees or those that would in the past have been recruited directly by organisations. In the UK and local government departments are one of the worst, having been forced to make cuts to cope with diminishing budgets.

disgruntledphd2 2y ago
> I can really only talk about the UK but I'd agree there has been a move away from better paid technical contract positions. Mostly this has been due to policy change to remove tax advantages that can come with contracting. To be fair, the pre IR35 situation was super dodgy. To counterpoint that, I live in Ireland where there's absolutely no tax advantage to being a contractor (slightly less NI equivalent, way less benefits and a special dividend tax to prevent those kinds of shenanigans) and yet there appears to be a thriving contractor market, so it feels like there's more going on here. Now a bunch of those contract positions are far too low in terms of day rate, so maybe it's just an attempt to cut costs while giving naive people what looks like a good deal, because they don't account for all the costs.