My department used contractors like myself to support legacy software. I think there are a few reasons for it. 1. I know that hiring contractors was significan

My department used contractors like myself to support legacy software. I think there are a few reasons for it. 1. I know that hiring contractors was significantly easier than hiring full-timers. Fewer interviews, less setup time, less coordination with HR or internal recruiters. 2. The other contractors used were supporting legacy software. 1-6 months onsite of full-time work and then limited remote support afterward. 3. If you're paying top dollar and working for you has a large amount of prestige then you want to make sure that your engineers are working on the hard problems. Anything that's not related to that can and should be given to contractors. To make sure this isn't abused, I think Google only keeps contractors on for 1 year with only a few exceptions