Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Top-level
astroPug

@Stegosaur @yogthos

Yes, this outsourcing/staffing firms model is a big problem.

They are not at all how we imagine traditional employers, and to the detriment not only of their workers but also the projects they work on and the health of the industry they participate in overall.

For example: staffing firms are not really experts in the domain, and they do not have the knowledge to mentor workers, the way a normal team anywhere else would.

1/2

2 comments
astroPug

@Stegosaur @yogthos

Furthermore, the people who do have the knowledge to mentor those workers are the people from the big corporation. And those guys are very strongly discouraged from doing so, by their own corporate training, to maintain the legal distinction between employee and “contractor”.

Now, there are better and worse contract gigs. My grapevine has had a low opinion of google for a while based on their experiences.

Stegosaur

@astroPug @yogthos I have done the contracting sphere multiple times. Government Contracting, Contract-to-Hire, Uncapped/no-length contract, as well as worked for multiple Managed Service Providers (who, in turn, function off contracts).

Contracting has zero redeeming values to it. Every single contract gig I was on - save one - would have seen lower costs for the contracting entity (company/gov) and higher quality of life for the contractor (staffer) if it had been a permanent hire instead of outsourced, simply by removing the middle man parasite layer.

The sole exception was a contract for a pharmaceutical company that had made grave staffing errors during their growth phase and needed help cranking through basic support ticket backlogs ("reset my password" and "I need Lotus Notes access" stuff). It lasted ~6mo, we crushed the queue, and that was that.

That's what contracting is: temporary help for temporary problems, not replacing or offshoring FTE workers.

@astroPug @yogthos I have done the contracting sphere multiple times. Government Contracting, Contract-to-Hire, Uncapped/no-length contract, as well as worked for multiple Managed Service Providers (who, in turn, function off contracts).

Contracting has zero redeeming values to it. Every single contract gig I was on - save one - would have seen lower costs for the contracting entity (company/gov) and higher quality of life for the contractor (staffer) if it had been a permanent hire instead of outsourced,...

Go Up