Google’s Shadow Work Force: Temps Who Outnumber Full-Time Employees

The article itself acknowledges that the ratio of contractors to employees at Google isn&#x27;t out of the ordinary for SV companies and my personal experience is that it isn&#x27;t unusual for large companies outside of SV. Even in the unfortunate case sited in the article of the contract employee that was sexually harassed once a complaint was filed Google fired the FTE responsible for the harassment and negotiated a settlement with the contract employee.<p>So my question is why was the article written? If it were to highlight the use of contract employees vs FTEs, why write it just about Google when it is an issue affecting the workforce across industries? Why throw out the case of the harassed employee but leave the information that Google fired the harasser when a complaint was filed until much further in the article when many readers will have stopped reading? This article strikes me as a Google hit piece.

I was a contractor at Google and I thought they treated me VERY well, with most of the perks that come with the office (food, activities, music room, gym, etc). They even let me work on a 20% project during office hours.<p>Then I got a new manager, new policies were enacted, they canned my project, and they took away my access to Memegen. Memegen was the last straw, so I left.<p>Anyway, Google had good reason to use contractors. Their hiring standards and policies makes it extremely difficult and costly to hire people, and many jobs there typically only have a retention rate of about 9-12 months, or just isn&#x27;t &quot;involved&quot; enough to demand a FTE position, or needs to be scaled up more quickly than they can hire for. It just isn&#x27;t worth it to go through the full Google process for jobs like that.

Why is this newsworthy? Genuine question. The article (I did read it!) doesn&#x27;t seem to articulate why exactly this is a problem.<p>I <i>think</i> (happy to be convinced otherwise) it is ok for a company to have more temps than employees or vice versa. What does it matter? Is there a US cultural&#x2F;social nuance that I&#x27;m missing?

Another anecdote: Local friend works for Google in Asia. She is basically forced to relocate to SF for 1-3 years and work at a rather low salary (for SF standards) there on something unrelated to her current job.<p>I would suspect that part of the reason for such a &quot;program&quot; is to save on wages, which would be much higher for locally-hired staff. Her field is admin&#x2F;marketing. Should be easy enough to find local talent for that. At a higher price.<p>I&#x27;m sure there are upsides to this exchange program, but having no real choice (except quitting) and working at a lower salary don&#x27;t leave the best impression.

This is a natural and expected consequence of tax law - specifically provisions in ERISA, which sets out the rules for 401(k) plans.<p>Google wants their 401(k) to be as efficient and useful as possible for their employees, which tend toward being highly-paid engineers and other professionals. ERISA has some fairness provisions, which means that all employees must be subject to the same plan rules, and the plan must pass certain tests of &quot;highly-compensated&quot; employee participation limits compared to non-highly-compensated ones.<p>So if you have a bunch of engineers and some janitors, and you offer a large 401(k) match that engineers use and value and janitors don&#x27;t, you wind up having to unwind some of the engineer contribution and matching in order to keep things &quot;fair&quot;.<p>But, crucially, ERISA doesn&#x27;t have say anything about who has to be an &quot;employee&quot; versus hired on as a contractor. So all the janitors and cafeteria workers become contractors, and now your 401(k) plan counts junior developers as the &quot;non highly-compensated&quot; comparison class, and your 401(k) plan passes muster again.<p>This affects Google a lot because their retirement plan is highly optimized for allowing highly-paid employees to save a ton of money in a tax efficient manner. It&#x27;d be difficult to craft a better plan, and from what I&#x27;ve heard they&#x27;ve even automated using a niche tax loophole as well (&quot;mega-backdoor Roth&quot; - after-tax 401(k) contribution followed by immediate Roth conversion, basically allows an extra $20k&#x2F;yr or so in Roth contribution room).

To be fair to Google every company in every industry is doing this more and more. It&#x27;s one of the first things that happens when a merger or private equity takeover happens- aggressively purge full time and move to temp workers for all non-core services to save some money.<p>Of course the companies that pay more attention to data do this more extensively and aggressively, why wouldn&#x27;t they?<p>The army of temp workers&#x2F;janitors&#x2F;contractors&#x2F;uber drivers convene and sleep in the same parking lots at night. It&#x27;s a whole community of a semi-permanent underclass drifting around, saving the spreadsheets a few points here and there.<p>In related news, I&#x27;m not sure I want to be an American anymore. This is not the country I grew up in.

What&#x27;s the induction process like for a temp at Google? I&#x27;m curious as I&#x27;ve heard stories of temps becoming subject matter experts on teams and carrying projects across the line. If said individuals couldn&#x27;t get into Google as a full-time employee what would that then say about the way Google interviews?

It seems really similar to an article from March of 1998 about Microsoft: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;1998&#x2F;03&#x2F;30&#x2F;business&#x2F;equal-work-less-equal-perks-microsoft-leads-way-filling-jobs-with-permatemps.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;1998&#x2F;03&#x2F;30&#x2F;business&#x2F;equal-work-less-...</a>

Given the whole problem with platform economies (e.g. Uber drivers), perhaps it&#x27;s better if the distinction between contractor and employee becomes smaller. E.g. healthcare benefits, separate them from the employer and make them the same for everybody.

Am I the only one who is shocked that Google has 223,000 people working for them? What are all of these people doing?

Sounds like they&#x27;re taking a page from the Federal Governments books. Staffing firms had better wise up and start jacking up prices.

Is it possible for a temporary employee to be promoted to full time status, or is that impossible? What is the average length of employment for a temporary employee vs that of a full timer? Just asking.

I&#x27;m going through this process right now, I have a contract for a SWE role at Google through a contracting company. Interestingly enough I was offered no benefits.

It&#x27;s remarkable that such a fine institution as the New York Times would publish unsubstantiated allegations that could ruin someones career.

It would be interesting to know the ratio of employee&#x2F;contractors working as FTE (very common somewhere else) among software engineers.

Lots of companies do this (SV and others), if it makes good business sense for them to do so why do we care?

Good. In the future everyone should be a contractor anyway.

I was always wondering about similar thing with interns