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Google Businesses Technology

Google Rescinds Offers To Thousands of Contract Workers (nytimes.com) 26

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers. From a report: "We're slowing our pace of hiring and investment, and are not bringing on as many new starters as we had planned at the beginning of the year," Google said in an email to contracting agencies last week that was seen by The New York Times. The company told the firms that it "will not be moving forward to onboard" the people that the agencies had recruited to work at Google. The move affected more than 2,000 people globally who had signed offers with the agencies to be a contract or temp worker, according to three people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly on the matter. Google employs more than 130,000 contractors and temp workers, a shadow work force that outnumbers its 123,000 full-time employees. Google's full-time staff are rewarded with high salaries and generous perks, but temps and contractors often receive less pay, fewer benefits and do not have the same protections, even though they work alongside full timers.
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Google Rescinds Offers To Thousands of Contract Workers More

Google Rescinds Offers To Thousands of Contract Workers

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  • I wonder if you can sue the contact agency for breach of contract. After all, there are so many such suits around if things go the other way?

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 29, 2020 @01:53PM (#60121844)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Lowly contractors (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Friday May 29, 2020 @02:43PM (#60122082) Homepage Journal
      Well, to be a good and prosperous contractor, you gotta know how to negotiate your bill rate, etc...

      You take this into consideration when you become a contractor.

      This ain't rocket surgery, people have been doing 1099 contracting for a LONG time....not sure what happened to folks going into contracting these days and apparently not knowing how to play the game.

      It can be VERY lucrative, but you gotta put on your big boy pants and learn how to do it properly.

      • A lot of companies won't do 1099 anymore since the IRS cracked down on it. I find most full time contractors these days will go S-Corp and work it that way. That can work too but has more overhead and requires greater knowledge to leverage it fully.

        • A lot of companies won't do 1099 anymore since the IRS cracked down on it. I find most full time contractors these days will go S-Corp and work it that way. That can work too but has more overhead and requires greater knowledge to leverage it fully.

          Yep that's the way I did it, sure it takes a bit more paperwork...but, it's not rocket surgery.

          It is good advice to hire a CPA tho...makes it SO much easier at EOY....and those fees are tax deductible too.

          ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      In this case, the reality, people spending money on advertisements are realising that Google ads are not what they are cracked up to be, in fact the only Google ads that really worked, were the ones targeted at those spending money on advertisements. How to make a Google advertising caimpagn look like it is dominating, target those people, the actual individuals spending money on ads, with their own ads (from the perspective they see their ads dominating, where as in reality, they disappear into morass of G

    • The tradeoff is that contractors get paid twice as much. Or at least, if they know what they are doing, they do.

  • I've been an FTE through my entire career in IT. I've also been in the orbit of many many consultants and contractors. "Join us! You're wasting your talent as an FTE! You'll make 5x what you're making!" they say.

    I think it's a good move for the first part of your career, if you're totally unattached and have no responsibilities to anyone. I know consultants who live in hotels and don't have a fixed address because they're flying around the country/world. However, during COVID my company fired 95% of its con

    • I've done both, contractor and FTE. As you mentioned being a contractor early on was great. Good money, and good experience in a wide range of industries. Travel eventually got tiring.

      I think it sucks that we still have this FTE/contractor gulf. All this is predicated on some 19th century ideas. And the recent stuff from CA (SB50) just make things worse. IMHO every job should be hourly (0-40hrs, + overtime), no such thing as exempt, FTE wouldn't mean anything . The one thing all jobs have in common is

  • What are they supposed to do? Keep them all on staff despite not having work?

    Not a fan of Google, but they have to roll with the economic punches just like any other company. And just like almost all companies, payroll is the biggest expense.
    • Google has been keeping plenty of people employed for years on projects that clearly weren't working out. They were hoarding talent in case they needed it later. These layoffs are simply a calculation on their end that they don't need to do that anymore. It seems they believe there is a glut of talent even at the high end.

  • At least in the US, contractors are legally distinct entities from employees. Simply put, employees work for a company, contractors bill a company. Employees are paid by payroll, contractors are paid by accounts payable.

    If I take an Uber, that driver isn’t my employee, no matter than he’s doing something for me, it’s still only a job contract. The job is done and the contract is completed. All moral issues aside, should I offer that drive unemployment benefits when I get dropped off? If

  • At a time when the national unemployment rate is just under 15%, and the unemployment rate in California hovers around 25%, Google has... chosen to not hire more people.

    From TFA:

    The move affected more than 2,000 people globally who had signed offers with the agencies to be a contract or temp workers

    TFA explicitly states that they are "would-be workers".

    None of these people actually worked for/with Google in any capacity.

    On the other hand (from TFA):

    Google has taken some steps to help its temp and contract

  • We've seen this before with tech booms. The market becomes red-hot and gets flooded with people. Then the bubble bursts and lots of people are forced out and move onto other fields. The number of incoming people start to drop off until we have another shortage and the cycle starts again.

    • I don't know. The market for software developers has been brutally in favor of developers lately. When I tried to hire one, I was regularly competing against 2-3 other offers simultaneously. Most companies have been quite short-staffed, and simply can't find the people they need.

      The pandemic will reduce demand, but in reality it may just balance demand with supply. I can personally attest to demand still bbeing alive. I'm 53, and just today landed a new role within two months of starting to look.

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