Isn't the title a bit misleading? It's not the end of employees, it's allowing other entities to specialize in the 'HR' side of things - staffing, payroll, etc, and then contracting with those entities. There are still 'employees' in that sense, they are just 'employees' of the contracting firm.
If I'm contracting a company to do X, who they get to do it could change day by day. So I can hire an agency to outsource something to for like a three year contract. That company then churns employees every 6 months under some slightly sketchy practices.
Not as worrisome with certain skilled jobs, but for unskilled jobs, it's kind of a rough deal.
Drives wages down while the contractor can still charge decent fees. That and the contractee can terminate at any time basically.
The idea of "employment" is actually an aberration in history. For most of time, we had peasants and landlords. The peasants would work the land and would maybe get some food and a place to sleep.
Then industrialization came, and those who were skilled were contractors. They would do work for someone and get paid for the work they did. Then they would hustle for more work.
Even in factories, you would show up at the door each day and hope they had enough work for you, and then get paid as you left.
It was only very recently that factory owners thought about offering steady pay in exchange for not having to hire a staff every morning.
I don't really agree with this. Regular employment was definitely not available for a large number of people, but it did exist. Specifically, to run States (i.e. bureaucracies). Just take a look at how China has been governed for the past couple of thousand years. They had a well defined examination system to get into civil service etc.
_Private_ regular employment was certainly less common, just because private enterprises (as we understand them now) have been a relatively new invention.
Industrialization was the opposite of that, people used to do piece work but with the advent of industrial looms you needed paid workers who understood how to use your equipment.
A rather large portion of factory work was carried about by unskilled children who only needed to do some very specific thing and could be paid far less than skilled craftsman.
The idea of employment also brings more stability to workers, to focus on their families and other stuff. Worker's rights on the beginning of the industrial revolution was terrible, no wonder communism rose to power in a country so fast.
In the end, social democracy was a compromise to maintain capitalism and avoid spreading revolution. And it worked.
The traditional model was to have nobility that reaped all gains and the rest were just day laborers. Not sure we want to go back to that. The last 150 years where workers got more power worked pretty well economically.
Employment has been around since agriculture. Peasants didn’t just sit around to be forced around to do a Duke or Kings labor work by force. Guilds existed around those times and anytime there is supply and demand there is leverage and power. These guild could contract their services in exchange for currency and recognition. These feudal lords had to negotiate and bargain for steady employment. Contracts were signed for steady pay and consistent labor.
I predict that at some point some of these highly outsourced companies will face competition from a former internal "contracting" company (or sets of them) that have been doing substantial portions of the direct work.
If a company has fewer and fewer essential "walls" separating what they do at the core vs a possible competitor the risk goes up. If one categorizes a peripheral competency as something that should have been in-house then the company becomes at risk of getting quickly subsumed by a competition hiring contractors that the prime company originally trained. And it might not show up for a while unless some assumption shifts - in the meantime the short term profits might look pretty good.
Another risk might be the collapse or disruption at a contracted company where you have less control.
That's something I would worry about. When Accenture is boasting that they can do your core competency better than you, you have to start to wonder if outsourcing your core competency was the wisest move.
Having owned a 20+ person services business I can tell you that the paperwork/taxes/regulations around employees was frustrating. Yes, you can outsource this stuff, but why make it so complicated? Added to that, it was a virtual company with employees in 10+ states, it was a nightmare.
It's comparatively much easier to just pay a contractor a higher hourly rate and let them pick their own health care, retirement, time off policy, etc.
Employees are both a pain and a liability, and few people in government are even aware of the problem.
When I was an employer as a small business, my heart would skip a beat every time I received a letter from the many local, state or federal agencies that would chime in on some requirement as an employer. For someone that wants to do it right, it's very hard to know exactly what "right" is without paying an arm and leg for professional services.
Each letter was a reminder about how easy it would be to outsource each position to another company or country.
>When I was an employer as a small business, my heart would skip a beat every time I received a letter from the many local, state or federal agencies that would chime in on some requirement as an employer. For someone that wants to do it right, it's very hard to know exactly what "right" is without paying an arm and leg for professional services.
Hmm. Wondering what country you are in. I'm in the USA and for "reasons.." I ended up performing all the admin tasks relating to employees (payroll, witholding, IRA, unemployment, insurance) over the past 6 months. I had to learn everything from scratch. Yes it was quite a bit of work, but I don't have the same experience you report at all. I haven't received any letters other than helpful reminders of things I need to file. Yes we have an accounting firm who have over the years educated us on what we need to do, forms to file, and so on. But nothing much changes year-to-year so once you're running the cognitive load is not too bad. None of it scares me at all. Certainly nothing in comparison to running the actual business, where you have customers who don't pay you; risk of being sued; requirement to use Node.JS -- you know -- real scary stuff ;)
I've had countless accusations of unfiled paperwork and numerous refilings. If 1 thing is off it seems like it takes atleast 6 months to correct it.
I also seem to get a fake workers comp claim or two per year that needs to be sorted out. By the time your correction is filed, another notice had already been sent out. So, you need to refile again to be sure then they call asking why you refiled twice. It's a pain.
Also, if you have an employee that owes alimony or child support it's another hassle that the employer gets sucked into.
As a small software agency owner based in the USA, i too experience the same dread as everdev... perpetual fear that i am failing to comply with some arcane rule/law especially at the city and state govt levels...
Aren't they an asset too? A contractor doesn't really care about the long term health of your company, if your company folds, he'll go down the street and work for a competitor. He knows that you'll dump him in an instant if you want to so he has no incentive to go the extra-mile for your company.
I can see outsourcing peripheral tasks, office cleaning, etc, but for any important part of the business, outsourcing seems like a gamble. (somewhat related, I helped in-source a project that had spent 2 years outsourced off-shore which had met few of its deliverables. In 6 months the new local team got it back on track with literally 1/5th the headcount the outsourced agency used which made it cheaper to bring it back in house)
Granted if you're hiring minimum wage workers, maybe it's hard to find quality employees, but for any non-trivial position, outsourcing to contract workers seems like a short-sighted move.
> Aren't they an asset too? A contractor doesn't really care about the long term health of your company, if your company folds, he'll go down the street and work for a competitor.
> ...he'll go down the street and work for a competitor. He knows that you'll dump him in an instant if you want to so he has no incentive to go the extra-mile for your company....
Exactly how I feel as an "at will" employee. At least the contractor has... whaddyacallit... a contract.
I really have no incentive link to the company I work for beyond ensuring that they'll continue to have enough paid tasks to offer me for as long as I want to take them. Even if the company announced some sort of profit-sharing or bonuses, there's no reason for me to believe that I'd be able to collect.
As far as I can tell, the only reason companies around here have employees at all is so they can credibly attach their resumes to bids and proposals.
Not every company is that way. There are places (often in education or government work) where the organization has specifically drafted policies that restrain the ability of the organization to fire employees at-will, and that will give an under-performing employee guidance and a process to improve work before being fired, or will give laid off employees a right of preferential re-hire if a job that they are qualified for opens up. Those policies are sometimes bypassed in extreme cases, such as workplace sexual harassment, or the like, but they can provide some assurance to an employee that they aren't going to be fired for arbitrary or capricious reasons.
If they can be bypassed, they do not provide assurance. A work contract provides assurance, if it has clauses on separation and severance. I have never had an actual contract, and have been fired at-will five times. I can't exactly say that "the company lost a big customer and wouldn't be able to make payroll" is arbitrary or capricious, but that only accounts for one. The rest, while never elucidated, were likely as follows: "the stock is at an all-time high, and we don't want any more of your options to vest", "we bought your company but don't want to keep you" (x2), and "we think you might blow the whistle on us blatantly gaming all of our metrics".
I've only even had the chance to get out of Dodge before any axes fell once. A lot of these companies have been for [contractor] government work. I think the contractor companies would only enact such a policy if the largest customers demanded it. They won't do it just because they value employee retention highly, because clearly [to me] they do not.
A company can dump a full-time employee in an instant too (at least in the US, which runs entirely at-will employment). I've seen companies do just that to full-time employees, while said employees genuinely did care about the company.
I'm of the opinion that any amount of personal investment in a business entity is toxic, regardless of your employment status. The only reason anyone should personally invest in a company is if they have some kind of founder role.
From the article:
> Accenture is one of the world’s largest providers of outsourced labor. Along with many rivals, it is pitching chief executives on the idea that their company’s core business is smaller than they think.
This is a key point I'd like to see more companies think about. There's non-trivial work, and there's critical core work, and I think companies do a poor job at recognizing and separating the two.
As for your anecdote of full-time onsite work being more efficient than outsourced off-shore work, sure, that's usually the case. However, could it be that poor management was the issue, and not the location or employment status of the workers?
It's comparatively much easier for you. It's also comparatively easier for me to just throw my trash out the window, instead of taking it to the community dumpster. [1]
What it does, is it creates more busywork work for society, as a whole. Instead of a few HR persons/systems/payroll experts, in a no-employee world, everyone now needs to become at least somewhat competent at dealing with all this rubbish.
There's a reason we don't churn butter by hand anymore - dedicated creameries are much better, faster, and cheaper at it then I'll ever be.
[1] I'm not saying that you're a bad person, or that having your employees do their own paperwork is like throwing trash on the street - I am only making this analogy because of the amount of busywork that doing your own taxes/payroll/compliance entails. Busywork that most of them are not experts in.
Maybe if you were contracting for someone, while knowing what you know about all those systems. If I were a contractor, I wouldn't know where to start. I'd need to spend hours figuring the law out, figuring out which forms need to be filled and when, how to deal with weird one-off edge cases. Multiply that by the number of employees that you have, and there's the social cost that decentralizing this inflicts.
Because this is a process I'd do once a year (Or four times a year as a contractor?), I wouldn't remember what the hell I did last year, what software I was using, where I found the forms in question (Maybe they moved, maybe the government changed the rules, maybe the website that I learned all I know from is dead/out-of-date), etc.
A company's HR department/accountant does this all the time. This is their core competency. This is not my core competency.
This is the same thing as with self-checkout lines at the grocery. I've yet to see a single customer be half as efficient at scanning and bagging groceries as the clerks. Yet, it's cheaper for the store, because their customers' shopping time is 'free'.
[1] What changes when I'm on paternity leave? Unpaid time off due to sickness? This is something that most people do once, maybe twice in their lives. This is something that most HR people, working for businesses deal with all the time.
So, instead, you're giving all this work as unpaid homework for your employees.
Unless their personal time is worthless, it's functionally the same thing as lowering their wages, and contracting out to an accountant. Except that an accountant would probably do it faster and cheaper.
In another sub-thread, you said that this should be automated, and that nobody should have to do this busywork. I strongly agree. That's not the world we live in, though. As of today, somebody has to do this busywork - and when that somebody is an expert, they can probably do it a lot better then I can.
> So, instead, you're giving all this work as unpaid homework for your employees.
I literally said that I'm doing it myself. Also, if you're a contractor and don't charge for doing work, that's your problem, not mine - you should adjust your prices.
How is it that you can afford your contractors charging you more, because they are wasting their time doing something they aren't good at, but you can't afford hiring someone who is good at that task?
Do you also pay your employees to wash the windows, and vaccum the office, instead of contracting this out to a cleaning service, that can do that busywork cheaper, and better?
If my boss wants me to waste my on-the-clock time to wash windows, that's fine with me, but it's poor business sense. I'm not very good at it, and my hourly rates are higher.
> How is it that you can afford your contractors charging you more, because they are wasting their time doing something they aren't good at, but you can't afford hiring someone who is good at that task?
Because a contractor has way less paperwork than I have to deal with for each employee - at least in my country. We're also free to set our own terms instead of the lawfully required ones, and generally, contractors in IT want that. I'm even doing the contractor paperwork for some of my contractors as it's very easy - I can basically generate it automatically; definitely not the case with employees. An employee also costs way more money (that goes to the government).
> Do you also pay your employees to wash the windows, and vaccum the office
Irrelevant argumentative foul. No paperwork is eliminated doing that and no other advantage is gained doing that, so of course I'm not doing it.
> No paperwork is eliminated doing that and no other advantage is gained doing that, so of course I'm not doing it.
> Because a contractor has way less paperwork than I have to deal with for each employee
Are you saying that:
Amount of paperwork that you have to do for an employee + amount of paperwork that one of your employees has to do for himself > Amount of paperwork that you have to do for a contractor + amount of paperwork that one of your contractors has to do for himself?
I strongly doubt that is the case. But I'm not a contractor, and I haven't enumerated the work involved.
> I strongly doubt that is the case. But I'm not a contractor, and I haven't enumerated the work involved.
That's exactly the case, and additionally I'm paying around 30% more per employee to the government. Being a contractor in my country means filling a maximum of 2 forms per year, out of which one is a registration form and the second one has to be filled anyways even if you're an employee, you just fill a different box. Having an employee is at least 7 different forms after hiring and then at least 4 more forms per year, a lot of government requirements, compulsory bullshit schooling (bullshit from the employee's viewpoint) that I have to provide, etc.
Having done both, I strongly disagree. Contracting in the United States creates an extreme amount of risk both financial (doing your taxes correctly is very, very difficult, and if the next words on my screen from you are "pay an accountant" you are acknowledging that your position perpetuates the problem) and personal (even with the ACA and living in one of the best states in the nation for individual health care finding a plan where I'm not fucked if I get hurt is very difficult).
I'm going back to a full-time job in two weeks and the difficulty of managing stuff that individuals just shouldn't have to deal with is a large factor as to why.
Sure, nobody should. But we don't live in that world, and so it is not useful to form political positions off of things that don't exist.
In the real world? If you run a corporation, you are afforded, by society, extremely powerful and beneficial rights, and as part of the social contract you should be handling these sorts of affairs on behalf of the people who make you your money. It is mere decency, and "well employees should do it" without that automation that we both agree needs to exist--but, rather critically, tends to always be step two for certain folks, after "set them off on their ice floe", not step one--is morally super not great.
What I am saying is that it is all-too-convenient to say "oh, we'll eliminate that heavy burden we are now placing on you" and then, once it is so placed, proceed to do exactly nothing about it because, hey--the owners are happy, and who cares what anyone else thinks once they're happy? (This is one of many reasons why the Ubers of the world are so nasty; they shirk their responsibilities and leave their de-facto employees holding the bag.)
To do justice, one must eliminate that heavy burden, and only the ownership class has sufficient political pull to ever really do anything about it--so they need to continue feeling the pain of it until they do.
I totally agree that employment should be made easier. For example things like health care and 401k should be handled by the employee instead of the employer. It would also be nice if there were pension funds that are open to everyone instead of just employees of one company or government.
But the trend to just relieve employers of the "burden" without giving more power to the employee is wrong too. For example each state or the whole country should be one risk pool where everyone can buy in. Same for 401k, disability and others. A lot of tax deductions should be moved from employer to employee.
We have to be really careful not to end up with a market where employers have all the power and the rest are just day laborers without any rights.
I wonder about healthcare a lot. It seems to me the people who actually have the ability to vote with their wallet invariably get good health insurance through their employer. Surely this must do something to inflate prices.
I think views on healthcare would change rapidly if employers were prohibited from providing it as a benefit and all people had to get it privately. Even if employers raised salaries in accordance the shock people would have seeing the full cost of insurance would stir discontent.
The answer as others have pointed out is obvious. Medicare for All is something every business owner should support to simplify their own lives. (Ignoring that it’s just good business decision for “USA, Inc.” since it’ll save the country money.)
>people would have seeing the full cost of insurance would stir discontent
I'm not sure. Maybe health insurance tends to be fully paid for by many Bay Area companies, but the overall trend seems to be for it to be much more of a split between employer and employee. It's still often a significant benefit but the employee-paid share is still significant enough that most people make deliberate decisions among available plans.
Or, you know, we could have a solid European-style social safety net where benefits aren't linked to employment AND the individual doesn't have to be an expert to handle their own benefits.
I got it! You’re right; America is a big place. It’s hard to conceive of all that mass at once. But is a state too big? I mean, most are much smaller than the largest of the rest of the developed world which has been treating healthcare as a citizen’s right for decades on end, and saving billions in the process. If you do that thing in that one state 50 times over, once for each of the other states, each using their own resources, you have the equivalency of the whole big entire America. Not even kidding. This is legitimate mathematics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratiohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication
I also know how to program computers but that’s for another day.
EDIT: I thought about it some more and realized how big California is. As far as California goes, I think you’re actually right. California is just simply too big. I haven’t worked out an algorithm for it yet. That will require probably a whole city of computer scientists to work that one out.
The emphasis on choice and freedoms in the US is often good in principle, but imo has been abused in too many ways to justify some truly horrible policy decisions.
> AND the individual doesn't have to be an expert to handle their own benefits.
Not only do they not "have to be an expert", the individual does not even get a choice in the matter.
Are you a Christian Scientist, and do not use health services? Do you want to prioritize school tuition over retirement? Retirement over health insurance?
Not to worry citizen. Your older brother has made the optimal choices for you so you don't have to
Things like 401k and healthcare are extremely complex, and that naturally means that the system is better run by a few specific people on behalf of a large number of people. Even though my healthcare is managed by my employer, it's still a remarkable pain in the ass for the parts that I have to manage myself.
That doesn't have to be the employer, but if I had to choose between putting that burden on the employer and putting it on the employee, I would put it on the employer in a heartbeat.
I think this is a better argument for why it makes sense to nationalize healthcare and relieve employers of that burden too.
I had private health insurance in Germany and it was super easy. It makes no sense to let the employer handle it. If your car insurance was bought by your employer it would also probably be a super complex beast because the party that pays and the party that uses it have different agendas.
Health insurance plans in Germany must be much simpler then.
I don't know if you've looked at health insurance plans in the US, but picking one (whether private or company-administered) is a pain, and understanding the nuances that differentiate your options is a pain.
That's where regulation helps that defines minimum standards so you know that the plan is reasonable when you buy it. A lot of US plans seem to be designed so they don't have to pay when the patient gets sick.
fwiw there is a thing called "SIMPLE IRA" in the USA that is very easy to administer. It involves little more than the process of taking some $ from each paycheck, adding up across all employees every month and mailing a check to that amount to Charles Schwab. Employees get to decide how to invest the money. The tax benefit is much the same as a full-blown 401(k).
Well except you need to pay the contractor twice the money because now they need to spend time and a lot of money on experts to just file their taxes correctly. This scales a lot better for employer/employees, not for any particular reason but that the system was "designed" for it if you can call it that.
Even better, replace all humans with SaaS products and automation, at least as far as knowledge work goes.
No morale issues, no HR violations, no hiring, no diversity quotas, no standup or sync meetings, no one-on-ones, no wanting a promotion, works 24/7 with no sick days or vacation time, no rivalry within the team, no need for office space, catered lunch, benefits, work visas etc.
The upside is hard to overstate. As an employer, I will do everything in my power to switch human roles to software and will never look back.
To some degree you still need some people, albeit far fewer of them, to manage and, perhaps, customize those services. But, yes, as a general principle, it makes a lot of sense to outsource largely undifferentiated tasks like payroll, travel, payroll, etc. to whatever combination of software and specialist companies it makes sense to do so. It's possible to overdo it but for non-core functions it absolutely makes sense to start by asking why it can't be done with some combination of off-the-shelf software and outsourced services.
Nothing, that's part of the race, and the goal of every company to figure out. Most products eventually get replaced by something else, that's just the nature of technology business.
So dealing with paperwork is a pain both for the employer as well as the contractor. Rather than paperwork shifting away from the hands of the company, which you seem to be in favour of, wouldn't a more likely future scenario be that some kind of paperwork-middleman will spring into place? Like, someone that deals with the paperwork (who somehow require minimal paperwork themselves) for a minimal fee so neither the company has to deal with it nor the contractor?
Alternately, you could use a PEO! (i.e. completely outsourced HR services, such that your employees are actually employed by the HR's shell company) You get the management ease of contractors; they get the benefits of employment.
It seems to work, but I'm curious if there are non-obvious downsides.
Paperwork and regulations around employment have grown so complicated because poorly performing businesses historically tend to try to rip off their employees first. It's simply much easier for the unscrupulous (or desperate) small business owner to squeeze margins up by abusing their employees rather than doing something that could improve their competitive position.
this! Individually, each regulation is well intended but the sum has made W-2 employment into a deep burden outside of "core" roles that define the company. Compound this with very different career & workplace needs by different job function, and you have a recipe for contractors and outsourcing.
one thing that can help are PEOs like TriNet, who handle the multi-state and international paperwork, among other things. I've used Trinet for 20 years and numerous companies - frustrating at times, but way better than DIY.
It's also comparatively much easier to _fire_ a contractor than an employee. With employees you need to pay for their unemployment, give them severance, deal with COBRA, etc. Contractors' lives can be ruined in a moment's notice. That's why I'm not a contractor, and never will be. I see how the tech industry treats people it doesn't like, and I'd like to know that I at least have _some_ protection against that.
> Part of the reason that contractors have a higher hourly rate is to account for the time between contracts.
Actually they don't. Some contractors are able to negotiate higher hourly rates, just like some employees are able to negotiate higher salaries. Yet, just because some employees managed to get paid above average salaries that doesn't mean all employees earn above average salaries.
I've seen both and I don't think it comes down to negotiation, I think it comes down to contract type.
I've worked as a contractor for a firm. We billed out pretty high.
I also know some people who work for a certain company as "contractors" but just seems like a way for the company to avoid giving benefits. A shitty hourly wage and they "furlough" everybody for a few months out of the year so they don't really have to worry about actually firing anybody, just don't pick up their contract next year.
Perhaps I should have clarified; part of the reason that contractors can negotiate higher rates is because businesses are willing to pay more if they can avoid a long term commitment like keeping a person on as an employee.
If you are a contractor, then you are running a business and you will have to do things that an employee wouldn't. One of those things is negotiating enough to cover the time between contracts. If you aren't good at negotiating then your business will not do as well.
Then on the flip side contractors usually get paid for hours worked, including evening software releases, weekend on-call and so forth. Employees.. not so much. I'll take job insecurity over unpaid on-call any day of the week (especially Saturday and Sunday). Besides, employees get fired pretty easily from what I see. In some States they often get some severance to offset lawsuits, but a contractor still makes more.
That could be a double edged sword for employers, though.
If regular employees start becoming contractors on a large scale then I'd like (and expect) to see some kind of unions or employment agencies springing up to handle the paperwork for the (former) employees and use collective bargaining to get better wages, group insurance, etc.
>It's comparatively much easier to just pay a contractor a higher hourly rate
Is this an actual option though? I've heard this notion a few times on HN that you can simply "1099" people and all is well. Admittedly not my core competency but I have been told numerous times by experts that you can't do that because the IRS and state labor dept will make their own determination as to whether your staff are employees. They may disagree with your thinking.
You can but they're cracking down on it and fines are steep. California recently passed a really unfriendly and strict law because delivery type businesses abused the 1099 option [1].
Now if you run a service based business (say app development) but outsource/1099 something like design but you are building an app - does graphic design fall under the B test ("that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business")? Is design outside of your usual course of business? Or does it count because your app needs design?
It's really a grey area but you can see how that B rule is really open to interpretation.
We've had labor law litigators tell us to basically stop doing 1099 at all. I started doing part time hourly instead for new hires. And hiring people that live outside California including other countries.
I don't think this will work out well for most people - they'll get part time work or hourly with limited benefits and many will be pushed to work for a staffing firm.
One thing that's harder for a contractor is that the insurance rates are noticeably higher if you buy a policy as a private person. Large companies can usually negotiate a bit nicer terms form insurers for a collective policy.
I can imagine that schemes exist, or will crop up, for this benefit to be passed to the contractor, as a part of compensation package which is also less expense to the "employer". E.g. doing contracting work via a shell company that only exists to hire contractors who already got a bit of contract work, and provide them the benefits of scale for a cut of them.
I don't understand, why were you not using a PEO or service that handles all that? I've used PEOs and love them, they handle everything and hook in with good 401k programs, health insurance, and more.
The media's desire for a short and snappy title makes it misleading. It's really about "The End of (Vertically Integrated) Employees".
The various outsourced positions mentioned in the article are still employees. They're just someone else's employees.
Companies just don't want to have vertically integrated employees including janitors and cafeteria workers. (E.g. Outsource to Aramark food services and their employees.) They also don't want white-collar employees who aren't necessarily "core" to their business. (E.g. Outsource to Accenture Consulting's employees.)
In general, I agree. But it's also the case that many of the outsourcing companies that provide mostly unskilled services tend to hire people as contractors to the degree permitted by law (or beyond) whereas, historically, the mailroom clerk was an entry-level position in a vertically integrated company.
One downside I see at many companies is that they have no internal jobs like this, to use as a test period for new employees. If you used to use the mailroom clerk (or whatever) position as a test bed to find out things like, does this person have a good work ethic? that cannot be determined in an interview or a resume, then outsourcing those positions is a problem.
That's true. On the other hand, the "work your way up from the mailroom" model is somewhat predicated on an employment model where people may stay with the same employer for decades--or at least an extended period.
[ADDED: For professional jobs, internships and co-op jobs can provide a somewhat similar function.]
True. The assumption of "we don't need/want long term employees" is also something that will be challenged if we see a prolonged period of labor scarcity. Of course, that's a big "if".
Depends on how highly paid. A 401(k) with employer match, subsidized group-rate health insurance, and (in New York) pre-tax transit benefits, is a big increase in effective income.
And again, this only applies to the highly-paid. Now consider the less-highly paid.
This is the goal of the wealthy class and corporations. To treat the common man as a disposable and interchagable cog. It is always more profitable to not have to ensure the cog cannot encounter one medical issue that bankrupts them. It more profitable when you need not show any loyalty to the cog. We can see the end goal where profit is more important than humanity.
Workers might also band together, in some form of group, where they could clearly demonstrate to employers their interest in being treated fairly, and with some amount of loyalty. Those employees would have to agree on a common set of goals, so I'd propose that we derive the groups name from the latin word "unitatem" - oneness, sameness, agreement.
At some point the ruling class becomes so small and so powerful that they suddenly lose all their power as the majority decide that things aren't working out anymore and revolt. A new more fair order is installed which slowly trends back toward too much power. Rinse repeat
No, they aren't. A free market capitalism will always work for the greater good of humanity, except when it gets distorted by (inhuman) outside forces, like for example the state.
What evidence do you have that this claim is true?
If your evidence is theoretical, what separates your argument from the argument "if true Communism were ever implemented, it would always work for the greater good of humanity"?
I believe the natural end of a totally free market will be a world where wealth and power is concentrated in only a few hands. It will be very similar to the middle ages. Just replace nobility with capitalists.
Not sure why this is being downvotes when it describes exactly what is happening. A relentless desire to increase profits at all costs is exactly what is leading to these decisions being made. The scary aspect is how this is spilling over to the political field as well, with corporations lobbying for changes over the past few decades which have all been very very anti-labor.
This is exactly what they want. I hear about all kinds of Software Engineers on HN asking for way over what a FTE gets paid, but that's simply not the reality for most contractors who are paid well below FTE's, with zero benefits at all, and no job security. Management treats you with more hostility as if you're trash and easily replaceable as well.
This is what the wealthy class & corporations want, cheaper labor. For the majority of contractors, they're not making nearly as much as FTE's, the contractor middle-man that got you the contracting job is taking a hefty cut and while they provide benefits, they are extraordinary in cost.
I'm not talking about independent contractors, I'm talking about large firms that hire people to contract at large corporations. It's become a big thing in Seattle, and if you're not a software engineer your chances of getting FTE to start --without at least 6 months of cheap contract labor-- are slim to none.
This is the goal of the wealthy class and corporations. To treat the common man as a disposable and interchagable cog.
Fully aided and abetted by the tech industry, don’t forget. If we aspire to be real engineers we all need to apply some ethical thinking to writing code that enables outsourcing, offshoring, zero hours contracts, surveillance/privacy invasion yadda yadda. And for working for or with companies with those practices.
I just think of whoever wrote the software that tells Amazon warehouse workers how many seconds they have to fetch the next item, so they have to pee in bottles in order to keep up or that monitors call centre workers. Would that person want their own keystrokes counted and their webcam scanning to make sure their eyes are on the screen?
Pardon the personal anecdote, but as I grew up and went into the highest education level I could I thought I'd have some kind of beauty in my job. When I first hit the IT world I was shocked by the similarity with lowest wages employees. You're a cog. One from a little rare material but still a cog. I felt no difference between this or being a cashier.
Have you tried talking to your superiors about it? Maybe you should look into getting something you are more passionate about or interested in from a business or technology persepctive
What is humanity? Is humanity the ability to feed your children, to have shelter, to benefit from medicines, to possess the capability of generosity, to hope to leave a higher standard of living to your descendants?
I am not sure how viable this hiring model is for companies that want to develop bleeding edge IP. Speaking only about development jobs: contractors are nomadic, they're not tied or married to your success or failure. From a developer POV, that's not a bad thing. You can just come in, do your thing, and move on to the next great adventure. From the employer side, each time you are training someone new to become familiar with your code base, your company intricacies and peculiarities, etc. which takes time and effort, and learning from failure, time for which may not be available. And the end result is that you may end up with a mish mash that doesn't work well together because the people who made it are gone or moved on. Also, developing is mentally exhausting. Not sure what dev, unless they're really desperate, will want to indulge this and expand that kind of mental effort for less payout or benefits. Or maybe the company only hires these for less innovative stuff or CRUD jobs.
While this is convenient and cheaper for businesses, it also removes financial incentives in place to help businesses succeed. This seems to be short term advantageous but long term destructive.
Many a good business idea has come from someone who felt they had something to gain from the company succeeding. Contractors have incentive to put up and shut up, after all, argue with the boss and you are replaced.
It also gives core business competency to contractors, who can turn around and give that knowledge or experience to competitors, or even open up shop themselves.
You don't have "job security" just because you're an employee. You have a wee bit more of it, compared to a contractor, and it depends on your package.
Job security is a myth. In computing, it's the subject of a familiar meme: if you're one of the few people that understands some legacy technology that is important and hard to replace, then you have job security. It's a pejorative term: oh, that <expletive> tech, that's just for job security. Nobody who is "with it" wants to touch it.
> if you're one of the few people that understands some legacy technology that is important and hard to replace, then you have job security
I've never seen this play out in practice. The PHB doing the firing is 3 levels up and has no idea what the legacy technology is or that the employee is hard to replace. They'll be more than happy to fire them even when it screws themselves over. Everyone left has to learn to work with or around this technology.
Isn't this almost a repeat of what Microsoft was dealing with in the 90s? Wasn't that whole issue a big deal at one point? I remember them trying to make as few people as possible blue badges (FTEs), causing all sorts of resentment from their contractors for many years.
There will continue to be less and less security for workers who perform tasks where training and performance are well systematized and unique judgement and skill (think classical professionals) is not a value added.
This is the nature of a healthy and functioning economic system. The question is, how do humans provide for themselves a semblance of predictability and sustainability to their work and income?
These problems have been solved before. We simply need to expand our thinking a little. Collective bargaining, wage & hour laws, and various systems of education have all worked. The problem evolves as the economy evolves. One thing we should also consider fixing are laws that drive companies to want to outsource certain types of work.
I'm sure we will figure this out. What concerns me instead, is the full 10%+ of the population who have such a low IQ that the economy has no use for them. I don't mean this as a normative statement. This is a point of fact. 10% of the adult population has an IQ so low that there are no jobs you can effectively train them for. As automation increases the need for the next 10% will diminish, and so on. This is a problem we have no proven solution for.
The end of employees, and perhaps the start of payroll simplification? Literally every country expects their businesses to go through arduous, arbitrary calculations just to pay people. I run https://usebx.com and we're in the process of building payroll into our app. It has to be one of the most fiddly bits of dev we've done, with multiple edge cases lurking at every corner to break our logic. I mean, if you make the admin around employing someone so difficult (and expensive), it's hardly surprising that businesses do what they can to avoid it.
> Janitorial work and cafeteria services disappeared from most company payrolls long ago. A similar shift is under way for higher-paying, white-collar jobs such as research scientist [...]
Wait, what? What kind of research scientist are we talking about here? The ones that work at Google Brain, DeepMind, etc., the ones formerly known as data scientists at Lyft, or the ones employed by universities that research niche scientific fields?
>About 70,000 TVCs—an abbreviation for temps, vendors and contractors—test drive Google’s self-driving cars, review legal documents, make products easier and better to use, manage marketing and data projects, and do many other jobs. They wear red badges at work, while regular Alphabet employees wear white ones.
A long time ago, Akio Morita, the legendary head of Sony, commented that, even if 4 out of 5 employees were mediocre or poorly behaving, there was 1 employee out of the 5 who was so good, so full of useful ideas and innovation, that he/she made up for the low efficiency of the others. So, Morita didn't want to try and cherry pick the employees. He kept everyone.
But Google appears to be pursuing a different strategy.
Hypothesis: this is the result of a long period of labor surplus. If, as seems to be the case in some places like Austin, TX where I live, we are now moving into an era of labor scarcity, there will come unexpected problems. Like, if you find that sometimes important functions don't get done on time because there were not enough people to do it because someone quit unexpectedly, but it's not technically your employee so you don't have much leverage in figuring out what the problem is to make sure you don't get caught short-staffed again.
The reason to have an employee is to make sure they are available when you need them. If there are always a surplus of people willing to be there, then outsourcing is a way to reduce your costs. But, if that changes, then the downside of "it's not your problem" becomes more apparent; it still is a problem that impacts you, it's just not _your_ problem, so you can't do much about it.
Only some parts of the U.S./world are in a labor shortage situation right now, of course. But until recently, just about nowhere was, and had not been in a long time, so I wonder if this is going to be a painful lesson for some companies.
In many ways the "end of employees" parallels the "end of marriage." Many people take the option of short term relationships. What's interesting is that society tries to deal with the change by trying to tame the new trend.
For employment, it's government trying to classify Uber drivers as employees to give them protections. In relationships, it's governments attempting to set up alimony when co-habitating couples split up.
Another failure mode of the American capitalism model. Not an employee, no benefits, no retirement, no job security, disposable. If enough suckers get become contractors, maybe we can finally get universal healthcare and a stronger social safety net.
For any company that scales up past a certain size, it can be cheaper to run their own department to handle things at volume, than to pay an outside company the costs of handling things at volume plus their markup. They can customize and specialize for their own needs, too.
So there will always be integrated employees somewhere.
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Perhaps because you stated your personal experience as though it was universal. It works for me.
>Maybe I need to be in Mobile?
Nope, Desktop here. Maybe geolocation, who knows.
TBH, I thought it was. Maybe they've blacklisted my IP or geolocation like you suggest or something else.
For the record, I tried it in Android Chrome and it works ok there! Just not in my desktop Chrome.
OSX 10.12.6 (16G29)
Chrome Version 67.0.3396.99 (Official Build) (64-bit)
If I'm contracting a company to do X, who they get to do it could change day by day. So I can hire an agency to outsource something to for like a three year contract. That company then churns employees every 6 months under some slightly sketchy practices.
Not as worrisome with certain skilled jobs, but for unskilled jobs, it's kind of a rough deal.
Drives wages down while the contractor can still charge decent fees. That and the contractee can terminate at any time basically.
Then industrialization came, and those who were skilled were contractors. They would do work for someone and get paid for the work they did. Then they would hustle for more work.
Even in factories, you would show up at the door each day and hope they had enough work for you, and then get paid as you left.
It was only very recently that factory owners thought about offering steady pay in exchange for not having to hire a staff every morning.
1. Soldiers e.g. legionnaires in the Roman empires
2. Filial relationships e.g. a lord and the subjects of their court
3. Apprenticeship with a master
4. Membership in a guild that held a monopoly for services within a region
5. Servants and bonded laborers,
6. Monks and Priests
7. Artists, writers, musicians and scholars with wealthy patrons
8. Professors, teachers and tutors
9. Various artisans and craftspeople employed in a noble's household
...
There are not exactly the same as modern employment but they do have many of the same characteristics (long term relationships, valued labor, etc...).
_Private_ regular employment was certainly less common, just because private enterprises (as we understand them now) have been a relatively new invention.
A rather large portion of factory work was carried about by unskilled children who only needed to do some very specific thing and could be paid far less than skilled craftsman.
In the end, social democracy was a compromise to maintain capitalism and avoid spreading revolution. And it worked.
Employment has been around since agriculture. Peasants didn’t just sit around to be forced around to do a Duke or Kings labor work by force. Guilds existed around those times and anytime there is supply and demand there is leverage and power. These guild could contract their services in exchange for currency and recognition. These feudal lords had to negotiate and bargain for steady employment. Contracts were signed for steady pay and consistent labor.
If a company has fewer and fewer essential "walls" separating what they do at the core vs a possible competitor the risk goes up. If one categorizes a peripheral competency as something that should have been in-house then the company becomes at risk of getting quickly subsumed by a competition hiring contractors that the prime company originally trained. And it might not show up for a while unless some assumption shifts - in the meantime the short term profits might look pretty good.
Another risk might be the collapse or disruption at a contracted company where you have less control.
It's comparatively much easier to just pay a contractor a higher hourly rate and let them pick their own health care, retirement, time off policy, etc.
When I was an employer as a small business, my heart would skip a beat every time I received a letter from the many local, state or federal agencies that would chime in on some requirement as an employer. For someone that wants to do it right, it's very hard to know exactly what "right" is without paying an arm and leg for professional services.
Each letter was a reminder about how easy it would be to outsource each position to another company or country.
Hmm. Wondering what country you are in. I'm in the USA and for "reasons.." I ended up performing all the admin tasks relating to employees (payroll, witholding, IRA, unemployment, insurance) over the past 6 months. I had to learn everything from scratch. Yes it was quite a bit of work, but I don't have the same experience you report at all. I haven't received any letters other than helpful reminders of things I need to file. Yes we have an accounting firm who have over the years educated us on what we need to do, forms to file, and so on. But nothing much changes year-to-year so once you're running the cognitive load is not too bad. None of it scares me at all. Certainly nothing in comparison to running the actual business, where you have customers who don't pay you; risk of being sued; requirement to use Node.JS -- you know -- real scary stuff ;)
I've had countless accusations of unfiled paperwork and numerous refilings. If 1 thing is off it seems like it takes atleast 6 months to correct it.
I also seem to get a fake workers comp claim or two per year that needs to be sorted out. By the time your correction is filed, another notice had already been sent out. So, you need to refile again to be sure then they call asking why you refiled twice. It's a pain.
Also, if you have an employee that owes alimony or child support it's another hassle that the employer gets sucked into.
Aren't they an asset too? A contractor doesn't really care about the long term health of your company, if your company folds, he'll go down the street and work for a competitor. He knows that you'll dump him in an instant if you want to so he has no incentive to go the extra-mile for your company.
I can see outsourcing peripheral tasks, office cleaning, etc, but for any important part of the business, outsourcing seems like a gamble. (somewhat related, I helped in-source a project that had spent 2 years outsourced off-shore which had met few of its deliverables. In 6 months the new local team got it back on track with literally 1/5th the headcount the outsourced agency used which made it cheaper to bring it back in house)
Granted if you're hiring minimum wage workers, maybe it's hard to find quality employees, but for any non-trivial position, outsourcing to contract workers seems like a short-sighted move.
Is this any different with an employee?
Exactly how I feel as an "at will" employee. At least the contractor has... whaddyacallit... a contract.
I really have no incentive link to the company I work for beyond ensuring that they'll continue to have enough paid tasks to offer me for as long as I want to take them. Even if the company announced some sort of profit-sharing or bonuses, there's no reason for me to believe that I'd be able to collect.
As far as I can tell, the only reason companies around here have employees at all is so they can credibly attach their resumes to bids and proposals.
I've only even had the chance to get out of Dodge before any axes fell once. A lot of these companies have been for [contractor] government work. I think the contractor companies would only enact such a policy if the largest customers demanded it. They won't do it just because they value employee retention highly, because clearly [to me] they do not.
I'm of the opinion that any amount of personal investment in a business entity is toxic, regardless of your employment status. The only reason anyone should personally invest in a company is if they have some kind of founder role.
From the article:
> Accenture is one of the world’s largest providers of outsourced labor. Along with many rivals, it is pitching chief executives on the idea that their company’s core business is smaller than they think.
This is a key point I'd like to see more companies think about. There's non-trivial work, and there's critical core work, and I think companies do a poor job at recognizing and separating the two.
As for your anecdote of full-time onsite work being more efficient than outsourced off-shore work, sure, that's usually the case. However, could it be that poor management was the issue, and not the location or employment status of the workers?
What it does, is it creates more busywork work for society, as a whole. Instead of a few HR persons/systems/payroll experts, in a no-employee world, everyone now needs to become at least somewhat competent at dealing with all this rubbish.
There's a reason we don't churn butter by hand anymore - dedicated creameries are much better, faster, and cheaper at it then I'll ever be.
[1] I'm not saying that you're a bad person, or that having your employees do their own paperwork is like throwing trash on the street - I am only making this analogy because of the amount of busywork that doing your own taxes/payroll/compliance entails. Busywork that most of them are not experts in.
No, it isn't. It's way harder to deal with each employee than it is for the person to deal with their stuff as a contractor.
Because this is a process I'd do once a year (Or four times a year as a contractor?), I wouldn't remember what the hell I did last year, what software I was using, where I found the forms in question (Maybe they moved, maybe the government changed the rules, maybe the website that I learned all I know from is dead/out-of-date), etc.
A company's HR department/accountant does this all the time. This is their core competency. This is not my core competency.
This is the same thing as with self-checkout lines at the grocery. I've yet to see a single customer be half as efficient at scanning and bagging groceries as the clerks. Yet, it's cheaper for the store, because their customers' shopping time is 'free'.
[1] What changes when I'm on paternity leave? Unpaid time off due to sickness? This is something that most people do once, maybe twice in their lives. This is something that most HR people, working for businesses deal with all the time.
My small business doesn't have money for anything like that. It's me, the owner, doing it instead of doing my business.
Unless their personal time is worthless, it's functionally the same thing as lowering their wages, and contracting out to an accountant. Except that an accountant would probably do it faster and cheaper.
In another sub-thread, you said that this should be automated, and that nobody should have to do this busywork. I strongly agree. That's not the world we live in, though. As of today, somebody has to do this busywork - and when that somebody is an expert, they can probably do it a lot better then I can.
I literally said that I'm doing it myself. Also, if you're a contractor and don't charge for doing work, that's your problem, not mine - you should adjust your prices.
Do you also pay your employees to wash the windows, and vaccum the office, instead of contracting this out to a cleaning service, that can do that busywork cheaper, and better?
If my boss wants me to waste my on-the-clock time to wash windows, that's fine with me, but it's poor business sense. I'm not very good at it, and my hourly rates are higher.
Because a contractor has way less paperwork than I have to deal with for each employee - at least in my country. We're also free to set our own terms instead of the lawfully required ones, and generally, contractors in IT want that. I'm even doing the contractor paperwork for some of my contractors as it's very easy - I can basically generate it automatically; definitely not the case with employees. An employee also costs way more money (that goes to the government).
> Do you also pay your employees to wash the windows, and vaccum the office
Irrelevant argumentative foul. No paperwork is eliminated doing that and no other advantage is gained doing that, so of course I'm not doing it.
> Because a contractor has way less paperwork than I have to deal with for each employee
Are you saying that:
Amount of paperwork that you have to do for an employee + amount of paperwork that one of your employees has to do for himself > Amount of paperwork that you have to do for a contractor + amount of paperwork that one of your contractors has to do for himself?
I strongly doubt that is the case. But I'm not a contractor, and I haven't enumerated the work involved.
That's exactly the case, and additionally I'm paying around 30% more per employee to the government. Being a contractor in my country means filling a maximum of 2 forms per year, out of which one is a registration form and the second one has to be filled anyways even if you're an employee, you just fill a different box. Having an employee is at least 7 different forms after hiring and then at least 4 more forms per year, a lot of government requirements, compulsory bullshit schooling (bullshit from the employee's viewpoint) that I have to provide, etc.
Economies of scale don't exist. Check.
I'm going back to a full-time job in two weeks and the difficulty of managing stuff that individuals just shouldn't have to deal with is a large factor as to why.
In the real world? If you run a corporation, you are afforded, by society, extremely powerful and beneficial rights, and as part of the social contract you should be handling these sorts of affairs on behalf of the people who make you your money. It is mere decency, and "well employees should do it" without that automation that we both agree needs to exist--but, rather critically, tends to always be step two for certain folks, after "set them off on their ice floe", not step one--is morally super not great.
It's not like the heavy burden has to be carried by the company or the worker, we can eliminate the heavy burden itself.
What I am saying is that it is all-too-convenient to say "oh, we'll eliminate that heavy burden we are now placing on you" and then, once it is so placed, proceed to do exactly nothing about it because, hey--the owners are happy, and who cares what anyone else thinks once they're happy? (This is one of many reasons why the Ubers of the world are so nasty; they shirk their responsibilities and leave their de-facto employees holding the bag.)
To do justice, one must eliminate that heavy burden, and only the ownership class has sufficient political pull to ever really do anything about it--so they need to continue feeling the pain of it until they do.
But the trend to just relieve employers of the "burden" without giving more power to the employee is wrong too. For example each state or the whole country should be one risk pool where everyone can buy in. Same for 401k, disability and others. A lot of tax deductions should be moved from employer to employee.
We have to be really careful not to end up with a market where employers have all the power and the rest are just day laborers without any rights.
The answer as others have pointed out is obvious. Medicare for All is something every business owner should support to simplify their own lives. (Ignoring that it’s just good business decision for “USA, Inc.” since it’ll save the country money.)
I'm not sure. Maybe health insurance tends to be fully paid for by many Bay Area companies, but the overall trend seems to be for it to be much more of a split between employer and employee. It's still often a significant benefit but the employee-paid share is still significant enough that most people make deliberate decisions among available plans.
Or so the mythology goes.
EDIT: I thought about it some more and realized how big California is. As far as California goes, I think you’re actually right. California is just simply too big. I haven’t worked out an algorithm for it yet. That will require probably a whole city of computer scientists to work that one out.
Not only do they not "have to be an expert", the individual does not even get a choice in the matter.
Are you a Christian Scientist, and do not use health services? Do you want to prioritize school tuition over retirement? Retirement over health insurance?
Not to worry citizen. Your older brother has made the optimal choices for you so you don't have to
That doesn't have to be the employer, but if I had to choose between putting that burden on the employer and putting it on the employee, I would put it on the employer in a heartbeat.
I think this is a better argument for why it makes sense to nationalize healthcare and relieve employers of that burden too.
I don't know if you've looked at health insurance plans in the US, but picking one (whether private or company-administered) is a pain, and understanding the nuances that differentiate your options is a pain.
The estimated taxes are silly though.
No morale issues, no HR violations, no hiring, no diversity quotas, no standup or sync meetings, no one-on-ones, no wanting a promotion, works 24/7 with no sick days or vacation time, no rivalry within the team, no need for office space, catered lunch, benefits, work visas etc.
The upside is hard to overstate. As an employer, I will do everything in my power to switch human roles to software and will never look back.
This is called a "PEO".
It seems to work, but I'm curious if there are non-obvious downsides.
one thing that can help are PEOs like TriNet, who handle the multi-state and international paperwork, among other things. I've used Trinet for 20 years and numerous companies - frustrating at times, but way better than DIY.
Actually they don't. Some contractors are able to negotiate higher hourly rates, just like some employees are able to negotiate higher salaries. Yet, just because some employees managed to get paid above average salaries that doesn't mean all employees earn above average salaries.
I've worked as a contractor for a firm. We billed out pretty high.
I also know some people who work for a certain company as "contractors" but just seems like a way for the company to avoid giving benefits. A shitty hourly wage and they "furlough" everybody for a few months out of the year so they don't really have to worry about actually firing anybody, just don't pick up their contract next year.
If you are a contractor, then you are running a business and you will have to do things that an employee wouldn't. One of those things is negotiating enough to cover the time between contracts. If you aren't good at negotiating then your business will not do as well.
If regular employees start becoming contractors on a large scale then I'd like (and expect) to see some kind of unions or employment agencies springing up to handle the paperwork for the (former) employees and use collective bargaining to get better wages, group insurance, etc.
Is this an actual option though? I've heard this notion a few times on HN that you can simply "1099" people and all is well. Admittedly not my core competency but I have been told numerous times by experts that you can't do that because the IRS and state labor dept will make their own determination as to whether your staff are employees. They may disagree with your thinking.
e.g. https://www.dol.gov/whd/workers/misclassification/
Now if you run a service based business (say app development) but outsource/1099 something like design but you are building an app - does graphic design fall under the B test ("that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business")? Is design outside of your usual course of business? Or does it count because your app needs design?
It's really a grey area but you can see how that B rule is really open to interpretation.
We've had labor law litigators tell us to basically stop doing 1099 at all. I started doing part time hourly instead for new hires. And hiring people that live outside California including other countries.
I don't think this will work out well for most people - they'll get part time work or hourly with limited benefits and many will be pushed to work for a staffing firm.
[1] https://www.wagehourblog.com/2018/04/articles/california-wag...
I can imagine that schemes exist, or will crop up, for this benefit to be passed to the contractor, as a part of compensation package which is also less expense to the "employer". E.g. doing contracting work via a shell company that only exists to hire contractors who already got a bit of contract work, and provide them the benefits of scale for a cut of them.
The various outsourced positions mentioned in the article are still employees. They're just someone else's employees.
Companies just don't want to have vertically integrated employees including janitors and cafeteria workers. (E.g. Outsource to Aramark food services and their employees.) They also don't want white-collar employees who aren't necessarily "core" to their business. (E.g. Outsource to Accenture Consulting's employees.)
[ADDED: For professional jobs, internships and co-op jobs can provide a somewhat similar function.]
Whoopsie, it looks like we were just well paid peasants all along, instead of being part of the ruling class.
Hmm...
And again, this only applies to the highly-paid. Now consider the less-highly paid.
This is the inevitable result of healthy complex adaptive systems under free market capitalism.
These systems are as effective as they can be inhumane. It's our job to inject humanity into the system.
If something like that is ever invented, I propose we derive its name from the latin word "gubernare" - to steer.
/s
/s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
/s :D
Second, you also don't know wether humanity and capitalism are at odds. I'de wager they aren't.
If your evidence is theoretical, what separates your argument from the argument "if true Communism were ever implemented, it would always work for the greater good of humanity"?
This is what the wealthy class & corporations want, cheaper labor. For the majority of contractors, they're not making nearly as much as FTE's, the contractor middle-man that got you the contracting job is taking a hefty cut and while they provide benefits, they are extraordinary in cost.
I'm not talking about independent contractors, I'm talking about large firms that hire people to contract at large corporations. It's become a big thing in Seattle, and if you're not a software engineer your chances of getting FTE to start --without at least 6 months of cheap contract labor-- are slim to none.
Fully aided and abetted by the tech industry, don’t forget. If we aspire to be real engineers we all need to apply some ethical thinking to writing code that enables outsourcing, offshoring, zero hours contracts, surveillance/privacy invasion yadda yadda. And for working for or with companies with those practices.
the few I could see was high turnover rate of random quality pressured into fake code
The name escapes me at the moment, however.
What is humanity? Is humanity the ability to feed your children, to have shelter, to benefit from medicines, to possess the capability of generosity, to hope to leave a higher standard of living to your descendants?
Those correspond to the creation of wealth, yes?
Many a good business idea has come from someone who felt they had something to gain from the company succeeding. Contractors have incentive to put up and shut up, after all, argue with the boss and you are replaced.
It also gives core business competency to contractors, who can turn around and give that knowledge or experience to competitors, or even open up shop themselves.
Job security is a myth. In computing, it's the subject of a familiar meme: if you're one of the few people that understands some legacy technology that is important and hard to replace, then you have job security. It's a pejorative term: oh, that <expletive> tech, that's just for job security. Nobody who is "with it" wants to touch it.
I've never seen this play out in practice. The PHB doing the firing is 3 levels up and has no idea what the legacy technology is or that the employee is hard to replace. They'll be more than happy to fire them even when it screws themselves over. Everyone left has to learn to work with or around this technology.
Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/business/economy/work-...
This is the nature of a healthy and functioning economic system. The question is, how do humans provide for themselves a semblance of predictability and sustainability to their work and income?
These problems have been solved before. We simply need to expand our thinking a little. Collective bargaining, wage & hour laws, and various systems of education have all worked. The problem evolves as the economy evolves. One thing we should also consider fixing are laws that drive companies to want to outsource certain types of work.
I'm sure we will figure this out. What concerns me instead, is the full 10%+ of the population who have such a low IQ that the economy has no use for them. I don't mean this as a normative statement. This is a point of fact. 10% of the adult population has an IQ so low that there are no jobs you can effectively train them for. As automation increases the need for the next 10% will diminish, and so on. This is a problem we have no proven solution for.
Wait, what? What kind of research scientist are we talking about here? The ones that work at Google Brain, DeepMind, etc., the ones formerly known as data scientists at Lyft, or the ones employed by universities that research niche scientific fields?
A long time ago, Akio Morita, the legendary head of Sony, commented that, even if 4 out of 5 employees were mediocre or poorly behaving, there was 1 employee out of the 5 who was so good, so full of useful ideas and innovation, that he/she made up for the low efficiency of the others. So, Morita didn't want to try and cherry pick the employees. He kept everyone.
But Google appears to be pursuing a different strategy.
The reason to have an employee is to make sure they are available when you need them. If there are always a surplus of people willing to be there, then outsourcing is a way to reduce your costs. But, if that changes, then the downside of "it's not your problem" becomes more apparent; it still is a problem that impacts you, it's just not _your_ problem, so you can't do much about it.
Only some parts of the U.S./world are in a labor shortage situation right now, of course. But until recently, just about nowhere was, and had not been in a long time, so I wonder if this is going to be a painful lesson for some companies.
For employment, it's government trying to classify Uber drivers as employees to give them protections. In relationships, it's governments attempting to set up alimony when co-habitating couples split up.
State adds regulations, businesses look for areas where regulations are fewer, and try to do more business at these areas. Then the cycle repeats.
Taxi vs Uber, hotels vs AirBnB, employment vs contracting,..
So there will always be integrated employees somewhere.