<i>>Contractors love the good pay and engaging work in Google's data centers. They resent that Google and its staffing firm, Modis Engineering, make them quit every two years.</i><p><i>>[...] But those two-year contracts are written in stone. Workers like Wait are not usually allowed to apply either to renew their contracts or to do the same job as a Google employee. If they want to keep working in the same job, they have to leave the data center for six months and then come back and apply again — but neither Google nor Modis will tell workers why.</i><p><i>>[...] Google likely requires the six-month leave due to federal employment law, Barbara Figari, an employment attorney in California, told Protocol.</i><p>Yes. All companies got rattled by Microsoft losing their lawsuit with permatemp contractors in 2000: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+contractors+lawsuit+settle" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+contractors+lawsui...</a><p>Before the Microsoft settlement, I was able to sell my services directly to the client company as a 1099 freelance contractor because I <i>did not</i> want to be an employee. But after that, all companies got paranoid about contractors and I then had to go through a middleman bodyshop as a "fake" W-2 employee. The programming bodyshop then skims a fee from my hourly rate to provide a "lawsuit shield" for the client that wants to pay for my services.
This is all due to Microsoft contractors (who were treated like regular employees in the 80s and 90s) winning a lawsuit that retroactively forced Microsoft to give them a ton of stock.<p>Companies now have to be rude to contractors to avoid a similar lawsuit.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/business/technology-temp-workers-at-microsoft-win-lawsuit.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/business/technology-temp-...</a>
I know someone who works as a contractor for Google (not through Modis). It's quite odd. They had to go through a lot of Google specified training, they only work for Google, their manager is someone from Google, the computer was supplied from Google, they're doing work that is directed by Google, they receive performance feedback from Google. But at the day, they're officially employed by this vendor company. I just don't see how it can be argued that people like this are not really employed by Google. If Google doesn't need this job anymore, this staffing company isn't going to retain them. It's not like they have other clients where they can redirect the person to as far as I can tell.<p>Why is it that Google uses these staffing firms? I get that they don't want to provide the same benefits to lower skilled workers but then why not just have 2 sets of benefits? One for higher skilled employees and one for lower skilled employees? I suppose the other answer is when it comes to layoffs, it won't be in the news because these types of workers are not officially employed by Google.
Unlike Uber, Google has proactively taken steps to ensure contractors are not able to be considered employees. If Google wants to use contractors, for one reason or another, lawyers have told them they need to take these sort of steps.<p>This whole article is basically complaining that being a contractor sucks because the law forces Google to follow these sorts of practices, but then blames Google for following these sorts of practices.
> Love the good pay.<p>> It pays relatively well ($15 per hour for most contract workers).<p>How is that relatively well? Compared to McDonald's employees, probably. Compared to other actual technical jobs, like electrician, I can't imagine. Compared to Google devs, not at all.<p>Working 40 hours a week with no vacation that's about 31k. Being a contractor means no sick leave, vacation days, pension, insurance, etc.<p>The US is such an odd country.
Seems very different to the story in the legacy financial tech world (i.e. tech in old school investment banks and hedge funds) - often times contracting is preferred to being a full time employee. As a contractor you can get paid 1.5-2x+ what a FTE might get, albeit without insurance or vacation days. For insurance, many who are young and healthy (knock on wood) just shrug it off, while those who are married often times rely on their spouse's employer's plan.<p>I've seen contractors at IBs and hedge funds decline the offer to be converted to employees because it would mean a big paycut for them.<p>The 18 month period limit could be seen as a downside, but in this day and age when spending too much time at one company is ironically seen as a bad thing (unless maybe you're at a FAANG tier org), maybe it's not really a big downside either.<p>Other than that, at least in the legacy financial world, you don't get to put on a fancy but utterly meaningless (and quite frankly, stupid) "Vice President" or "Director" title the employees have.
i just left a 3+ year stint as a contractor at Apple. Some of the stuff from the article rings a bit true to my experience (we get "sad grey apple badges" and apple employees get colored apple badges, we don't get to go to any corporate events (even though we get the e-mails to attend with the asterik at the bottom loljk) but on the whole i always didnt really feel like a second class citizen too much.
that being said, every 3 years wondering if my contract was going to get resigned was a bit nerve wracking. im much happer in the past 3 weeks being fulltime somewhere else :).
One time I met one of these guys on a flight that was delayed out of PHL airport.<p>We were in a little ERJ-135 and never got a clear view of the line we were in because we kept turning corners, but when we were second-in-line for takeoff we broke out of the line and I could see a long line of big and small airplanes waiting behind us close to sunset.<p>I thought was a miracle, like a scene out of a science fiction movie.<p>He said "I can't believe I paid $1000 for this!"<p>I started asking him questions and found out he worked as a contractor running fiber for data centers operators by Google and Facebook and I picked his brain for 45 minutes about how a modern datacenter is wired up.
Dev in France, sounds very familiar, except the force-quit bit.<p>As a fresh graduate in bigcorp world, especially foreigner who doesn't know on arrival how this works:<p>You get hired by SSII (Société de services et d'ingénierie en informatique), and do same work as regular staff employees of bigcorp, in the same building etc., except you get sad contractor badge, and no yearly bonuses and perks. The promise is to become staff after 2 years but the bigcorp has arbitrary quotas (per department) on how many people get converted, "hiring freezes" etc.; some people remain contractors for years and years, in the same team (which is pretty much illegal as far as I can tell) as the bigcorp likes to have a bunch of contractors that can be fired quickly in case shit happens (like covid).<p>It's not _too bad_ because the job at middleman company is typically "CDI" aka "unfirable" due to French labor law, but when all the people around you doing same job as you get a juicy yearly bonus and you don't, it gets you really angry. I was super glad when I found a better company which doesn't do that bullshit and hires everyone as staff.
Aren’t data center employees crucial as they are making sure your services are running perfectly even in an event of emergency.<p>Why not hire them and pay them better wages
> He knows he would be reprimanded if he gave a contractor a Google t-shirt handed out for free during an event. "But there's no issue if they go on the Google merchandise store and buy it themselves," he said.<p>Yes, because one of those makes them look like a perm for tax reasons, and the other does not.
Does anyone know if Google uses these folks via a "services" type contract or a "staff augmentation" contract? That is, is the data center floor 100% from one company, with someone from that company directing work?<p>The 2 year limit suggests "staff aug", as that's a tactic to avoid them being classed as employees. If it were run like a service, there's no need to roll them off every 2 years.
Quite a few people here are bemoaning the MS lawsuit result as some sort of bad call or unnecessary burden on businesses. That's not the root problem, and misunderstands the scale of what was going on at MS.<p>I have personal friends that joined MS during this era. They were told by their managers, off record of course, exactly how to game WA unemployment during their 6 months on, 3 months off, contracting years. They were doing stuff like flying to Mexico for 3 months, then filing false job application progress notifications to unemployment from their laptop on the beach.<p>The root problem here is that sophisticated businesses can game what should be straight forward worker protections. The MS case is a bandaid. The problem is the erosion of labor rights and negotiating power that's been a decades long trend in the US.
TLDR: If you're considering working for a staffing company like the one mentioned in the article don't do it. You can do better and are capable of much more.<p>I worked for a couple of staffing companies in the Washington D.C. area in my twenties and reflecting back I view it as a mistake (or at least tough learning experience for a naive college grad). Ultimately, dead-end jobs like these prolonged my journey to landing a job as a developer with a company that actually valued me and treated me with respect.<p>I ground through contractor jobs because I told myself two lies:<p>#1. “This is not an ideal situation, but I’m an optimist and will make the best of it.”. Wrong, the truth is that I approached the company and took the job. I may have been a little inexperienced in the ways of the world but I knew full well that these were dead-end jobs. The limitations for potential personal growth, or professional advancement, were clearly documented in the onboarding process. Finding a good job is a real undertaking, requires some luck, and doesn’t have a fixed timeline. Something I also didn’t consider is the impression I would give to future employers later down the road when I listed a staffing company on my resume. It’s funny that a less confident version of myself found so much optimism when considering powering through a bad situation, but I couldn’t spare any of that optimism if I dreamed of reaching for something higher.<p>#2. “I’m a hard worker and I’ll survive the layoffs through merit”. Wrong, the truth is that the vast majority of the contractors I worked with were eventually laid off (or resigned) and I don’t think poorly of them for it. In fact, the few buddies that I have kept in touch with all eventually moved on to better things. I found the paths they chose after leaving to be inspiring. They took on more challenging jobs, started graduate school, moved to another city, etc. I on the other hand quietly worked off the clock on nights and weekends to mitigate my chances of being laid off. At the time, I told myself that I was acting out of virtue, but really it was fear. My strategy carried me for a long time, but eventually the psychological impact of being treated as a second rate human being caught up to me.<p>Just sharing my own personal reflections on a very specific set of experiences in case someone finds themselves with similar thoughts.
almost all high tech software companies hire firms like Modis/Experis/Manpower to do menial labor tasks related to hardware: mostly racking and stacking, responding to hardware incidents, wiring up stuff, etc.<p>the reason is because every process is very documented and almost any high schooler can follow the steps and replace and wire up server/firewall (power and backbone is all ya need). Configuration is usually done by full time well paid experts (or even done automatically by software)
These contractors should be preparing for another line of work anyway, since Google has been working for years on making their data center equipment completely hands-off with robots swapping out the machines and parts. Recently Joe Kava said in a public interview:<p>"As far as robotics, our hyperscale data centers are more like warehouses and most of the processes require a robot to navigate to a specific location to perform a task. Some of these technologies are in development right now – things like robot navigation, computer vision, motion planning and device tooling for what the robot will employ to do that operation… These have advanced exponentially over the last few years..."<p>There are job postings on Google's site right now for technical program managers to "Work with Roboticists, Control Engineers and Hardware Lab staff to lead the concept, planning, and development of Data Center Automation System programs with an end-to-end responsibility". In the near future they will still need the skilled trades for power, water, and air, but it's clear that they'll ultimately get rid of them, too.
> "The only complaint I have is the fact that I have to leave for six months. I don't feel that's right that TVCs get recycled like this," he said. "I've never gotten a real answer as of why."<p>This is likely done so Google doesn't need to classify TVPs as regular working employees. The six month wait enforces this commoditization upon the people.
This arrangement also helps Google maintain the illusion that they "only hire the best and brightest" and that onerous technical interviews are "necessary" for the sort of work Google does "at scale".
I’m getting tired of these low-value workers complaining they should be paid as well as high-value workers.<p>They were hired with no skills, and were trained from the ground up. They are getting a livable wage but now they want more. If they want more, they need to elevate their worth and become high value employees or find a better job that values them better.<p>They are contractors. Because of their particular life experiences and life choices, they were unable to come as a more valuable employee. Google doesn’t owe them anything except the job they offered them. If they want better terms they can ask, but Google will refuse. So it’s on them to find a better job.<p>But please stop complaining about it and think you’re more valuable than you actually are. They can be replaced by someone who has no skills and can be trained from scratch, just like they were. The pay is fair, the conditions are good. That’s better than many jobs out there.