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Comment by user5994461 | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the BBC a company where the only senior positions are as a contractor, charging 3 times the amount of their permanent counterpart for much less hassle?

I am not sure if the author is trying to write a nice PR piece or is so inexperienced that he believes in all this corporate bullshit he's repeating. ^^

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I'm not the author, but I recently joined the BBC as a software engineer and haven't found all that many contractors at all, the ones I have are in regular non-senior positions.

It may be the case for 'talent' and management of TV projects (for example), but in the tech departments - your assertion, in my experience seems to be far from true.

I've been here 14 years which is just about long enough to not be a newbie any more. I now plenty of contractors, most are useless. After 5 years one of the few good ones has taken a staff job.

We do seem to be getting better, the recent IR35 rules helped, but we still have contractors employing contractors. At a high level they're typically there to implement some bad idea and the fuck off so everyone can blame them afterwards.

One of your major contractors are the organisation that runs the TV and radio transmitters, Arqiva. An organisation absolutely bloated with middle management and contractors employing subcontractors.

The BBC would have been better off keeping transmission in-house.

Oh yes, we outsource many departments that used to be in house, from transmitters to cleaning, I was referring to contractors working alongside full time staff - usually because we don't pay staff enough to fill the roles with the right people.

Well many parts of the BBC (tech wise) got outsourced/tuped circa 2003, saw lots of good people go and the whole of new media (web aspect) got decimated back then with cuts.

I know this as I worked for the BBC at the time.

Tuped? I'm unfamiliar with the term, so I googled it and came up with TUPE. Is this correct:

https://www.out-law.com/en/topics/employment/business-sales-...

Yep TUPE is what Zenst means.

> charging 3 times the amount of their permanent counterpart

As one of these people (but not at BBC), I would rephrase this. BBC offers contractors 3 times the amount, and contractors graciously accept it.

I was headhunted for BBC in London. The salary on offer was honestly laughable for a senior position. I declined.

>Isn't the BBC a company where the only senior positions are as a contractor, charging 3 times the amount of their permanent counterpart for much less hassle?

Not really, no.

Digital do seem to have sorted this out, with clear job titles and stuff, at least for programmers, and tech jobs upto band 10. Elsewhere it's not so clear cut. Support have no way to progress past band 8 without going into a terrible management structure. Good engineers are rarely good managers.

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