Google's 'two-tier' workforce training document
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Believe me, I'm not writing this because I like Google or the way IT hiring works right now. I'm writing this because I dislike bad journalism.
Many of the things the article complains about are entirely normal practices if you have contractors/temps. In fact, you can get legally punished if you don't do some of those things. The real question is why there are so many of CVTs (nearly half) at Google.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...
Every F500 company does it because they're cowards who don't want to pay the full cost of labor. Let's not praise cowardly behavior or make excuses for them.
I think what we're seeing in tech broadly is that a lot of idealistic people with great intentions are starting to run into the "real world" outputs of business and law without fully groking what is behind it.
All they see is this person is treated different than that person and want to fix an apparent inequity. Thats commendable to some degree and we need that as a voice if there is something that should be changed, but I think better informed, more experienced people should put the brakes on this stuff becoming overblown. Otherwise we risk real concerns being ignored because people see crying Wolf too often.
In some cases that might be the sentiment, in others it might not be.
I think the primary disconnect here is that Google's amenities and benefits look lavish when compared to a subcontracted companies, but Google is held to the same rules as other companies with less lavish benefits.
So for example let's say I work for company x and we have normal corporate benefits. If we take a consulting contract with a small company or startup with no employee benefits, our 401k and health care benefits look great in comparison. So I don't care if I don't get a swag bag after a good production push. If the same company contracts with Google, then the 401k and health look paltry in comparison.
So it seems like people want different rules for these major companies, which is not how the law works.
The majority of the contractors at the large tech firms are all the low paid jobs that aren't in software like custodial staff, cafeteria workers, physical security guards, etc. For those contractors, the contracting firm is effectively a legal fiction to say they aren't employees of a company like google even when they go to work their every day, take orders from google management, and they are usually let go by the contracting firm once google stops employing them. The contracting firms get around costs for layoffs by just closing up shop and reopening under a new LLC or other entity.
The fact that these people are being treated as lesser by the rich tech firms, solely for the benefit of rich tech firms, is what is making people upset at this arrangement
I was at my last job for over 15 years. For almost all of those 15 years, I saw the same van from a local electrical contractor in the parking lot pretty much every day. The same electrician was on site daily doing one installation or maintenance job or the other.
Now, I would imagine that the same guy was there every day because he knew our systems and the people he was working for/with very well so there was no benefit to us or the contracting company to send out a different electrician every day.
This is pretty much the same situation you describe, but there is no reason for the company to have electricians on staff, so it's contracted out. Likewise, the cafeteria staff, the security and the mailroom/office staff were all employees of Sodexho, Ricoh and some unknown security company.
Hell, even the tiny 6-person company that I started my career with, had an outside person come in twice a week to clean the place. It was a welcome change to the employees to having to do it ourselves. Should we have kept someone on staff simply to keep the office clean? No, that's what contractors are for!
It's really not. The work agreement is precisely what expresses how you are treating people. If the work agreement provides less to the worker, the worker is being treated as lesser.
Sometimes people decide to become family for life. Sometimes they associate for as long as necessary to complete a transaction. Sometimes something in between.
This really isn't that outrageous
are generally treated like second-class citizens
I think I understand the sentiment here, that in the context of the workforce, it's ethical to treat people in certain roles like second-class citizens because they'd ideally be able to transition from full-time to contractor, and vice versa, based on their needs. Or maybe I'm wrong here, you tell me. But one thing is certain: step outside of yourself for a minute, and read those two comments in series. You really don't think there will be outrage when people are treated like second-class citizens? Like, ever? It seems to be a human constant, across history, that people don't like to be treated as lesser-than, and will muster up a lot of outrage if they are.
I mean, to be really honest, I feel like I'm trying to convince you that the sky is blue.
For all you know the subcontractor gives way better work arrangements and benefits than they would get as a Google FTE. It may not be likely in the specific case of Google but it's unknown.
For example, maybe I don't want to move to CA full time and I'd rather have some other benefit that Google doesn't have, like a flexible living or work arrangement. So the contract company has those perks, and I only do the Google contract for 4 months. Why should I prefer Google benefits over that? That's not a second class citizen.
Because Google is required to abide by the same contract law as every other company they have to abide in the same way.
So it's just wrong to characterize it that way and you can't have a different set of laws for Google than you have for every other company.
But this is Google, the company that was not supposed to be typical, wasn't supposed to engage in penny-pinching corporate bean counting, wasn't supposed to reward a perpetrator of sexual harassment -- wasn't supposed to be "evil."
Google is a standard-bearer for the leading edge, prosperous, tech economy. It's the heart of the sector that is supposed to be saving us, creating abundant high-paying jobs for the people. It's the company of glorious benefits, 10% projects and enlightened employees. And California, that bright and shining star of democracy, that leading-edge progressive state, has pinned its hopes for the future (and its tax revenue and employment growth) on the likes of Google. Google is the one corporate monopoly we can all love.
But cracks are appearing. More and more we see that Google is a hell of a lot like a typical corporation. Our hopes for a prosperous enlightened, well-employed, tax-revenue rich future are dashed against the rocks of common corporate reality. And it's ugly.
That's the story here.
This is pretty much never the case, and certainly isn't the case here. This hypothesis strains credulity.
you can't have a different set of laws for Google than you have for every other company.
While I agree with the sentiment, the reality is a bit different. This issue seems to be prompted mostly by contractors who are doing the same work for less pay, basically. Like, sure, in a walkout, you’re going to get a lot of support staff, cleaning staff, etc., but in the day-to-day, it seems like this issue has been made into a big deal because you might have a team of 15 people, where 8 are contractors, doing the same work, and being payed less. This helps the company’s bottom line immensely, where you don’t have to give equity to half of the people doing real work.
Again, I get your sentiment, but I don’t think that it captures the reality of what goes on.
There's actually a rather complex wrinkle here. Failing to treat contractors as sufficiently different from employees can incur liability as if they are employees. This is not speculation, and has bitten large software companies - https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...
In order to treat contractors as equal with employees, any company would have to essentially make them employees. While I'm absolutely certain this would be better for many people! I'm also certain that some would wind up unemployed. Not to mention that some people prefer contracting for their own reasons.
Perhaps there's cause for a careful examination of some subtlety here?
Microsoft’s problem was that it failed to treat them like ICs — that is, like people running their own independent businesses. Instead, Microsoft integrated the workers into its workforce: They often worked on teams along with regular employees, sharing the same supervisors, performing identical functions and working the same core hours. Because Microsoft required that they work on site, they received admittance card keys, office equipment and supplies from the company.
From the information made public in the grievance letter, it seems that a significant portion of Google's TVCs (their name for ICs) would fall into this bin - workers doing the same work at a different level of compensation.
It'll be interesting to see this unfold as time goes on. People were out for blood even back in the 90s, and Bill Gates didn't even set out to create a walled garden for Ivy leaguers (and Stanford). Seems like Google may find itself at the forefront of another national conversation, this time about the growing class divide.
Looking at it a bit, Google is using a different structure than Microsoft did. Microsoft had direct contracts with ICs. Google has contracts with vendors or contracting agencies, and TVCs are employees or contractors with those companies. I realize this seems like a distinction without difference, but in legal terms I suspect it's probably very different.
It's certainly a common arrangement for a company to have a series of teams that they contract out to other companies. I know some people in Sofia who make locally-spectacular wages doing this that they would struggle to access other ways.
As for a "conversation", I'd rather Teh Grauniad had no part of it. You can't have a conversation if you're wearing earplugs and using a megaphone, and that's really their MO.
Had to look up Teh Grauniad, thanks for the laugh!
I can't tell for many F500 companies, but IT contractors in large Canadian banks in Toronto are typically paid at a significantly higher hourly rate (sometimes 70-100% higher) than equivalent FTEs. It outweighs the lack of FTE benefits up to the point where some FTEs deliberately switch to contracting.
I guess the labor market here has been able to balance demand/supply and pricing.
"Temps, vendors and contractors are an important part of our extended workforce, but they are employed by other companies, not Google."
This is completely incorrect in every way except legally. Google employs them, and pretends that they don't by inserting another company in between.
When you find yourself doing something simple in a complicated way because the law gives you additional advantages, that's a great sign that the law is bad.
Not really. It's usually a sign that you're trying to evade the plain meaning of the law with technicalities.
And I don't think it's nearly as murky as some folks want it to look. Let's be real: more often than not, when somebody's doing something dirty, they know it's dirty.
Or does IBM sell development services to the customer, hire the workforce, turn over day-to-day management to the customer and fire the engineers when the setup job is done? That looks like the customer hired IBM as a cut-out.
I’d agree that the rest of it is a good test, but I think it’s also a test the vast majority of Google contractors would pass. Temp agencies don’t typically fire people at the end of every project, and certainly the janitorial services don’t.
So hard to imagine that a codebase needs janitors too?
Temp agencies are a pretty nontrivial force in the employment world. If you work at a temp agency, they pay you regardless of whether you're bringing money, they do technical training and career advancement work, all the while you're "on deck" not actually being useful. Then a company like Google or Boeing or Joe's Game Studio comes along and says "we need 3 highly skilled C++ programmers in two weeks, for 6 months", and the temp agency sends you off to work there. You relocate, you work on some internal project for 6 months, and then you're back "on deck" at the temp agency, and then off to somewhere else. The company does not have the option to hire you permanently unless the temp agency put that into the agreement (probably for a price), the agency charged something like 2x or even 3x your salary to the company while you were working there, but your wage and benefits stay the same throughout, working or not.
So, who's your real employer?
Looking at this from an armchair, it's easy to miss that there's more going on than just, "Tim is on the team for the next few months." Whether or not you like the fact that this kind of agency exists and this kind of work is possible is another question.
They're not "3 highly skilled C++ programmers", they're usually slotted into some kind of not as appreciated but still required role, like QA or data entry, and they're not "in two weeks, for 6 months", they're basically at a single host company for the entire time, but they renew the contract in 6 month increments until such time when the host company decides it doesn't need them anymore. Which is basically a form of downsizing.
They aren't some form of highly skilled consultants that drop to aid a project in a pinch. Usually they're basically indistinguishable from FTEs.
When I was a contractor in New Zealand, I had an external office, my contract allowed me to subcontract, I used my own equipment and I didn't go to the parties.
When they wanted to send me overseas? We negotiated a new contract which included paying me hourly rates for the flight hours.
Unmentioned in the Canadian and New Zealand documents, they also typically consider length of service as a hint. If the contractor is with a single company for more than 2 years, that's a hint that they're not really a contractor.
USA [3]:
1 Behavioral Control (instructions, when, rules, evaluation)
2 Financial Control (equipment, expenses, profit)
3 Relationship (contracts, benefits, permanency)
1 Control
2 Tools and Equipment
3 Ability to subcontract
4 Financial Risk
5 Outside office and/or staff
6 Able to increase profit
1 Intention test (what both parties intend?)
2 Control vs independence test (who sets the rules?)
3 Integration test (are they part of the team? uniforms/parties)
4 Fundamental/economic reality test (who pays what?)
[2]: https://www.employment.govt.nz/starting-employment/who-is-an...
[3]: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contr...
That's never been a thing I've seen. Cite?
"they do technical training and career advancement work"
I've only seen that in the sense of "we'll test your MS Office proficiency and offer you generic resume tips"
The temp agency model exists solely to enable large corporations to avoid having layoffs and reorgs: firing 49% of Google's staff would have a terrible effect on the stock price, and telling the temp agencies that they won't have contracts next quarter boosts the bottom line, instead.
You have your technical consulting firm and general IT contractors that sell services to companies whose main competence is not software developers. Then you have contractors go on-site, develop some software, and go back once the project is over.
But those aren't red badges in the sense we're talking about. We're talking about a company whose core competence is software development taking on contractors as members in existing software dev teams. The companies employing these contractors tend to be more like shell companies then technical consulting firms, and most of the training given to the contractor is the same as that given to FTEs, by the host company, since they have to work on the same code base and contractors and FTEs need to be in lock-step.
I'm responding to the claim above, about "that never being a thing they've seen", which seems silly to me because it's the basic way every staff-aug firm works.
Its all hourly paid work with the contracting firm only acting as a legal shield for the hiring company to be able to add/remove what are effectively their employees, without being beholden to the political or legal ramifications of layoffs
Regardless: I was responding to a point upthread about the supposed rarity of these arrangements. I'm less interested in litigating other things.
The question from the top of the thread is whether staff-aug firm employees get paid even when Google doesn't need them. And the answer to that question, in general, is yes: they're W2 employees, not 1099s.
I'm sure Matasano did a number of things better than a large body shop firm. But paying for bench time is a norm, not an exception.
>But paying for bench time is a norm, not an exception
Having worked at a temp firm for a low skilled job, call center and data entry, you don't get paid for downtime. They have you on an agreement where you get paid hourly and just aren't scheduled. Or they let you go and call you back if there's more work later. The negotiating power isn't there for employees to have the companies shoulder that risk
Also, since I know who you are, did your firm supply highly specialized engineers in fields such as security or cryptography? Or were you involved in general software development?
I negotiated my pay directly with the company. They basically told me "we can only hire TVCs now, and the vetting process for new vendors is exhausting. If you want to start right away, join this agency." The client was the agency's primary (or maybe only) customer. I was paid an hourly rate and expected to fill out a timesheet. If I wasn't working (e.g. if I was at the end of the client's max 1 year TVC policy), I wouldn't be paid. The agency took some commission on top of my hourly rate, but I never knew what it was.
The whole thing was a very thin veil to dissuade TVCs from going for back benefits like the famous Microsoft case. Both companies were upfront about that.
Google hires people full time as employees and the laws for them require some things. Google also hires companies to provide services on a contract basis and the laws for them require others.
Is your contention that Google shouldn't subcontract labor for anything because Google is somehow different than every other company?
That's a valid reason. Why the faux outrage?
This sort of circumvention of the spirit of the law is only really doable by large corporations, which means large corporations get to shirk their societal responsibilities while everyone else has do more or society loses out. That's where the outrage comes from, which I do not believe is faux
Other additional points for anger around these sorts of faux employee setups is that they make it easier for companies to get around employee protections when it comes to firing/laying off because they've turned it into a contract with another company, and that traditional growth from low skill jobs inside a company has disappeared by this artificial barrier. You no longer hear stories about a janitor or secretary who worked their way up into executive ranks by seeing unfulfilled needs in the company and learning to solve them. You are either over the arbitrary skill value from the beginning, or you are kept in the lower ranks of second class citizen
Income tax is still paid for the employees income though, its just that Google pays a vendor firm, and that vendor firm pays the employment tax, and the vendor pays income tax on their income from the vendor firm.
Jobs like customer support, manual QA, facilities, etc. end up being vendors instead of direct employees.
This doesn't mean they aren't FTEs of the vendor company. They can be permanent employees with benefits. They just aren't full time employees of Google.
Of course Google is going to have some temp and limited term contractors, but this category isn't just that. Hence why the article refers to "TVC": temp, vendor, and contractor.
The risks Google appears to be most concerned about [...]
the risk of being found to be a joint employer, a legal
designation which could be exceedingly costly for Google
in terms of benefits.
The only thing which popped out at me was the lower pay. When I contracted, I didn't have benefits (I had them through a third party provider) so my hourly rate was based on a 15-20% bump because of that. At not time was I ever getting paid less than my FTE counterparts when you took everything into consideration.
Having said this, is there a big pay gap between regular Google employees and contractors?
As such, most of these people would be getting paid less than the software engineers if they were legal employees anyway, but they do lose out on benefits unless the contracting firm provides benefits on par with Google
gifts are taxable income. The contracting company has no mechanisms for collecting the tax.
Every large company, on every field, does it to some extent.
I was using that in Brazil a couple years back, inside a portal part of a telco. We paid a company to provide us with an elastic workforce that could grow, change and be reduced as we needed it to be. The company was hired (and paid) to absorb the risks of hiring, retention and to, sometimes, provide working space, and it did so for many other clients.
The real engineering work is done by employees.
Contractors are for:
- Kitchen
- Security
- Maintenance & Repairs
- IT support (the regular IT are still employees)
- Engineers
The first 3 being contractors are standard in many companies.
The "engineers" category is not for cost cutting. In fact, often (most?) of the times, the company is paying a lot more per head for one of them than they pay for their own employees. I recall one case where the company was easily paying double what they pay their own engineers. The manager was upset because that contractor did not care for the company's deadlines, etc (one of the perks of being a contractor). The manager felt the company should just kill the agreement and hire a regular engineer - save money and get work done on time. But he was overruled.
The only category I think are royally getting screwed are the IT support staff. I spoke to one to get an idea of their pay, and it was abysmal. For his skills and the work he did, he was definitely more useful to the company than many of our FTE's.
At least in my company, this isn't a case of perma-temps.
That said kitchen staff, custodial, physical security, ... etc are likely counted in this group for google. Add in some portion on IT staff, tech support, and finance contractors which are more or less normal for many companies.
What happened to the culture that made its chef a millionaire [1]?
These would not be contracted staff, but by a vendor providing a package. 100 staff or 1 person, as a vendor provided service the staff member of the vendor has no link to the employer.
HN whales notoriously upvote anti-corporate posts. It reminds me of slacktivism.
What proves "correctness" in this sense?
I've been here for a while, and most comments on policy/law really are downvoted for being dumb, not for whatever political label can be pattern-matched to it. If a suggestion presented in your comment correctly accounts for first-order effects and at least pretends to account for second-order effects, you can argue things that match pretty much any political ideology out there, as I've seen done here many times.
(Related, classifying things by political labels doesn't lead to correct answers in general.)
For all practical purposes on HN, a politically left leaning viewpoint is more likely to incentivize the op, and turn HN more left in a vicious cycle of Upvotes/Downvotes
This is the hostile media effect: ideological users see the platform as dominated by their enemies. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18671955, where HN is "the techno-libertarian norm around here".
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=13110004&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...
Though perceptions may vary, there certainly is one ideology that can be scientifically proven to exist among HN whales. It may or may not be the one I perceive, but to pretend like HN whales carry no ideological baggage in their voting is inaccurate.
Maybe a poll, or sentiment analysis of the most Up-voted and down-voted comments can reveal this.
Thanks
The assignment length issue became a serious topic of conversation in the late 1980s when the IRS announced their intent to re-class Microsoft contractors as common law employees and ultimately make them eligible for the same stock option and retirement benefits offered to regular MS employees. The length of time Microsoft’s temporary and contract employees had been on assignment was part of that argument. The employees in question had all surpassed the ERISA “year of service” rule, which requires that once an” employee” works 1000 hours they are automatically eligible for ERISA governed benefits.
(A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of such work and in fact;
(B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and
(C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity.
It seems like tvcs doing software engineering at Google would not count as independent contractors (failing, in fact, to meet even one of the three conditions).
Edits for clarity.
I don't think the courts (especially CA ones) will look fondly on companies using intermediate corporations as veils to obfuscate the employment relationship in any case.
People citing the "tax law" excuse are either willfully ignorant or they just do not care.
Why does Google not give them gifts, invite them to the company Christmas party, or let them in on celebratory team meetings? It is not because "the temp agency will handle it". It is not because "a shirt makes taxes complicated."
Google and it's ilk make sure these people are on the outside to dehumanize them. To make it clear they are not a part of the company so, when TVCs are abused other workers do not speak up. It normalizes treating these people like shit. "Just a contractor."
A lot of these TVCs do not get decent healthcare. They can, and often do, get 0 vacation time. They sit along with the full time employees but everybody knows "they are the expendable ones." They can be fired for any reason, including bringing up the fact that they were sexually harassed.
TVCs are employees deprived of their rights through a loophole.
The issue is that if you hire temporary contractors and treat them like your employees, then you have to extend the status of employment to them, including withholding payroll taxes, otherwise the government will come after you.
Google doesn't give two shits about giving people t-shirts and access to their gyms. The issue is, if they do these things for temp contractors, then the temps become employees.
You hire temps in situations where you don't actually need a full-time worker for a long period of time. If you are not allowed to hire temps, the choice then becomes should we hire anyone at all?
When Google does need a full-time worker, they do hire them, and they do pay them as full employees.
If you have a problem with the casteism developing between full time employees and contractors, go see your Congressman and ask them to change the laws that make it so companies have to distinguish between temps and full-time in their hiring.
I actually have but whatever. I do not have to run a company to have opinions about a loophole in modern labor laws. Also, the aggression isn't necessary.
Maybe having empathy and wanting better benefits for the people you take advantage of is an "Unknown World" to you. But for me, the rise permatemp has an effect on the people around me.
> The issue is that if you hire temporary contractors and treat them like your employees, then you have to extend the status of employment to them, including withholding payroll taxes, otherwise the government will come after you.
> Google doesn't give two shits about giving people t-shirts and access to their gyms. The issue is, if they do these things for temp contractors, then the temps become employees.
A lot of these workers are permatemps, who they keep on as temps in order to not have to give them full employee benefits.
So yes, what you say is exactly correct but does not refute my assertion that these policies serve to dehumanize the parts of the workforce Google considers expendable.
> You hire temps in situations where you don't actually need a full-time worker for a long period of time. If you are not allowed to hire temps, the choice then becomes should we hire anyone at all?
Except for the fact that they do hire them as long-term full time employees, but they keep them on as independent contractors hired through an external agency to abdicate responsibility for providing them with benefits.
> If you have a problem with the casteism developing between full time employees and contractors, go see your Congressman and ask them to change the laws that make it so companies have to distinguish between temps and full-time in their hiring.
I clearly do have a problem with the casteism developing between full time employees and contractors. And what else should I do?
Oh, maybe advocate for workers right's on social media and tell the other side of the story. Which is what I am doing and apparently have triggered you. The founder doth protest too much, methinks.
I get the whole market-based "everything is just an incentive" logic, and that the US legal code is so, so far from being a coherent moral document. But still, this seems like a coldly utilitarian stance use in the propaganda, vs confine to executive meetings where there's no reason to be sunny.
(In the live version I saw he drew parallels to Brave New World, which felt quite apt)
[0] http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/WorkersGoogleplex.html
Ouch.