Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?
knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
In a fixed career you have a chance to build something up, while in contracting you're often back to square one with each new contract. You might have more experience, but you don't have the sort of trust and responsibility which you earn if you work long enough in a company or with the same group of people.
It's hard to find truly permanent jobs these days.
I think it's also biting companies in the long run, as I notice more and more graveyards of abandoned projects and services running without anybody present who was involved in building or setting up. But those costs don't seem as obvious to those in charge who'd rather not have to hire permanent workers.
(I work in software engineering and security.)
But at the same time I dont think the grass is greener being permanent. I know lots of people who have been made redundant more than once in permanent roles, and couple that with being tied to some near obsolete technology places you in a worse position than having to keep on top of your skillset for contracting.
I dont mind staying a developer at the moment, but even in contracting terms there is still opportunity to move sideways to analyst roles, or at the moment data roles by being selective with contracts
I sometimes wish I was permanent - but then realise that actually offers me more security in spite of the downside
I'm still a noob myself but I landed a long term contract developing a web application and I like being able to bill (invoice) and just get paid. It's a surprising thing haha, I haven't been working through UpWork in a while but that's still my primary place to look. I work a more-than-part time job in a restaurant (pays my bills as a restaurant drone).
I am trying to land a "full time" position somewhere for security (financially) but I'm lacking in skill/specific stack requirement/degree with almost all the jobs I see near me and also if I do match the majority of the requirements I don't have transportation (working on it).
Remote is cool with regard to picking up random jobs online.
Also regarding freedom, I have a terrible sleep pattern and work mostly at night/sleep in the day. I often go to the restaurant job without sleep just because of the fixed operating time (case against me).
I just think if the "permanent position" I could get would be those people (who I work for) getting contracts from other people, why can't I do it myself and get the whole pie. Granted I'm one person and not a company/can only do so much. But I also wonder can't I generate value myself and not just be dependent on a "full time position". A full time position would be great, better than doing the same thing over and over everyday which is what I currently do at my day job.
I'd like to be an entrepreneur and develop some service/product but I haven't thought of anything yet. Probably not exposed enough to pick up on pain points that people experience. I'm starting to learn/work with hardware though, maybe something there.
Edit: What's hard right now with regard to catching up to a tech stack "just for the sake of getting hired" is the time/expertise. I learned LAMP when I started to develop back in 2013 and I know like why is that still the only thing I know how to do aside from Python, granted I'm full stack can build a full web application but it's not using NoSQL, JavaScript framework, function as as service, serverless etc... The nice thing is LAMP is still pretty prevalent especially in WordPress but most of those jobs aren't great/high paying I guess depends.
I'm working on it though, trying to catch up I just don't know what to learn because it seems there are so many, Angular or React (heard React is easier), can't use MongoDB yet because I need to use at least Node.js or something else that can interface with it. Not sure about postgresql. Working on learning Git, and probably Docker for my local environment setup, having problems with hosts/variables/directories.
If I had an idea that I could execute on I could build it with LAMP for myself not for another requirement. I'm not defending LAMP, already I'm experiencing MySQL's memory/resource intensiveness for example, it keeps growing in RAM usage.
I'm not financially secure so that's why I'm looking for a full time position. But... I'm also technically/stack wise behind so working on it, gotta wait/learn on my free time.
sorry verbose
When you figure that out, you can work in selling the idea.
Haha the restaurant industry for me is like purgatory haha I look forward to the day that I work as a developer full time. Poverty is my never ending nightmare but I live in opportunity up to me to save myself haha.
The possible places to improve are limited mostly by your imagination. What complaints do the bossss have? What do the workers complain about most?
Those are rhetorical questions, I don't know enough about the industry to help. The goal is to start with something, it hasn't even got to sell and make a profit. The goal is to learn and improve, to learn new thinking, to see where changes can be made.
I do find comfort in knowing that I could build the scheduling system that they use. Granted not at scale (yet). Any script kiddie I imagine like me could put something together.
I don't know, I'm not looking into the restaurant industry" as something to work on passion drives things and the food industry is not for me.
Also regarding orders people may ask for some random thing that isn't programmed an "exception".
Anyway thanks for responding to my needlessly long initial post, I will actually edit it, (nope I can't anymore) ahh my social interactions are usually a cringe moment due to my own social ineptitude.
I'm impatient is all, takes time, work, gotta earn it.
Edit: I should expand (human slave hands), I can't judge other people(choices in work occupation/not a choice), I'm laughing at myself/think of myself, well... performing a menial task. But someday if I work hard I will get out. Look at that, two sentences. Grateful to have a chance.
The POS system is not just a communications system, it's also a means of taking EFT payment and a means of auditing. Even trivial places like donut shops have a POS system in order to take payments. And as soon as you get a business large enough that the owner isn't the only one handling money, you need an auditing system to avoid being defrauded by your staff.
(I work in a POS company at the moment. Our origin story is exactly that of an hotel entrepreneur solving his audit problems by building a POS system - in the early 1980s.)
I know what you wrote, but that's what I read.
The "progress" argument doesn't mean much from people who aren't going to have to bear the negative effects of it.
As for predicting what jobs will be made available, that's a fool's errand. Nobody would have been able to accurately predict the many jobs we regularly do today. At one point, the expectation for the total number of programmers needed, across the globe, wasn't more than a few dozen. Yet, loom where we are today.
Back when I was young, in the 1960s, a common horror and science fiction trope was computers putting everyone out of work. The trope included such gems as the big brain eliminating entire office staffs and those people being unable to get work elsewhere.
The trope was so common that the first programmable computer I touched was called a calculator because HP didn't want the term computer to scare people away. This was the early 1970s.
Yet, with each stage of automation, we've improved our overall average lives and been able to make use of the excess labor for new and innovative tasks. I see no evidence, other than hysterics, that this is going to be any different.
If you want to keep people employed for no reason other than as an excuse to exchange money for labor, maybe you could just have them dig ditches? Holding back progress for the sake of keeping people employed is counterproductive. Automating tasks, making tasks simpler, is the point of technology and is what has afforded you to live the luxurious life you live when compared to the lives of people just a generation ago.
I'm not sure where the neo-Luddite trend has been coming from, but it has been strong for the past few years. If you want a suggestion, it is to embrace it and be at the forefront of it. It's not something you can prevent, legally or ethically.
Where, exactly, would you draw the lines? No more cars, because it puts furriers out of business? No more computers, because it puts human computers out of business? No more email, because it puts curriers out of business?
You live in a society created by the fruits of technology. You're happy to post your comment on HN instead of using the postal service or private currier.
Your outright dismissal of others who are going to suffer because of the progress is extremely insensitive. Sadly, this is to be expected from this community. People who push "disruption for disruption's sake," and give no thought to those who are effected, because they feel they will never have to deal with the negative consequences.
Next time this comes up, do not outright dismiss people as being "against progress."
Also automation also makes new jobs less horse stables now automotive shops.
And don't get me wrong, you totally might have a handle on it! But conveying that you do is a very large part of being successful both in contracting and in landing high-value permanent positions. You gotta talk the talk as well as walk the walk. It really does matter. I wouldn't hire even a junior developer if I thought their mental process was as all-over-the-place as this post suggests.
Yes I barely know these nouns I mentioned not arguing that.
Also agree with the verbose I was going to post it into a pastebin (why would anyone want to read it) but alas, it is etched into hard drive(s) somewhere, under my social mistakes.
Same thing with MongoDB, I like the idea of not having to setup a schema before using the DB, but I also have to get into the environment to start using it (talking about my current knowledge).
Edit: yes my thought process is kind of all over the place this is also the end of my day/brain spent after developing earlier today.
haha "Developing" kid and his little sandbox
He's working on those things. I didn't get the impression that he tried to pretend to be a senior developer.
I really dislike the attitude that he has to "talk the talk as well as walk the walk". I know exactly what you mean and it's very important especially while freelancing, but in this context it sounds condescending. To paraphrase your words: I wouldn't hire someone who judges other people who just talk about their experiences.
@jcun4128: No worries, you don't have to meet some type of stylistic standard to express your opinion on HN (except the standards outlined in the HN guidelines, of course - and your comment satisfies all rules). Your comment was absolutely appropriate and reasonable.
I've seen this happen a lot in full-time-only shops. It's possible it happens more often in shops that lean heavily on contract work, but it happens everywhere.
It takes strong technical leadership to keep that sort of technical debt quantified and prioritized without killing productivity. Especially since it's generally a huge strategic issue, but not something that generally sinks a project, department, or company overnight. So ignorant or unscrupulous leadership can run the show for extended periods of time, get promoted, and not be held accountable for making a problem worse by ignoring it.
"As an evolving program is continually changed, its complexity, reflecting deteriorating structure, increases unless work is done to maintain or reduce it." - Lehman.
The same is true with those old applications and services. They may have been running fine for years, but they are eventually going to have to be worked on.
The longer they wait, even though they are currently static, the more problematic they are going to be. They are going to break when something underneath them changes - and change is pretty inevitable. It's not just that they are going to break, the undocumented things built atop them are going to break.
I suspect I'm preaching to the choir, however.
But to the CEO it looks like a lean organization because the permanent headcount is so low. I bet they would be better off if they had a fixed staff of experienced people who actually know the systems they are working with.
We have two of our managers on this call, one of their managers, three of their engineers, and me. But I'm only there for some vague technical guidance. I don't even know the system/language they're working in.
That's 3 managers for 4 technical people, 1 of which is simply babysitting. So really that's 4 people making sure 3 people do the work right.
Everything takes months.
From the outside it looks like they have a rigorous process of estimating, evaluating, writing requirements and stuff but it's almost pure overhead.
Maybe I should try scheduling some late-night meetings with the senior guy... He's sharp as hell, but we never get too technical during the meetings because that would just confuse people.
Fortunately for me, those projects are few and far between these days, but, earlier on in my career, they were common and frequent.
This is why SaaS and other productized services are so valuable. Buying O365 or Salesforce by the drink is dramatically more efficient due to the fixed deliverable and scale.
I'm just glad we're going to have the opportunity to live in a cyber-punk dystopia!!!
I can't wait to get my first neuro-implant, and to crash my first 747 filled with telephone books into my brain.
The world of Snow Crash, where a few corporations own the entire world with a very tiny government, is also the basis of the book Jennifer Government [2] by Max Barry.
I found that book a bit easier to read. Diamond Age, I can't get through it yet. Cryptonomicon, also by Neil Stephenson is on my list, as well as Neuromancer by Gibson.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age#Snow_Crash
http://deadline.com/2017/09/ringworld-lazarus-snow-crash-ama...
When you are "contracting" (I assume you mean freelancing) you ARE working for a "company" - YOU. Your boss is you, your accountant is you, your assistant is you, your maid is you. If you don't give yourself a promotion, sure you won't "build something up".
What you describe is not inherent to "contracting" it's up to you. Some people thrive in that scenario.
A company can call me janitor as long as they pay my rate on time.
At the end of the day, the risk for you and your family is a lack of cash. A "permanent" job is anything but that (you think they'll keep you around if the company is headed South?)
Learn to negotiate better. Build a bigger savings. So that when you're in between jobs, burnt out, you can sit back for a bit and calculate your next move(s).
It seems to work pretty nicely, however, if you have a partner that has a stable, full-time gig while you work contract. The full-time gig usually has higher stability + health benefits, while the contract gig brings in more money. Also, if your contract is suddenly gone, at least you don't have to jump into survival mode ASAP since there's still money comin in.
That's the most common arrangment I noticed among my contractor peers at least, at the time.
The other thing I learned was that I was only entitled to unemployment support if I had been on a W-2 sometime in the previous two years in NY. While this was not the case for me, fortunately, I had been in CA on a W-2 so I qualified for unemployment from CA. Had I been contracting for more than two years straight, that support would not have been available. Something to keep in mind.
Agree with all else you mentioned, though.
I agree that this is helpful. When I was looking into going solo/freelancing in the legal field, I asked several solo lawyers how they provided health benefits for their families. All of them said that their spouse had a corporate job with good benefits.
In my experience the people I've met who only wanted to do contracting appreciated the clear specification of the work required, the lack of competition with other people in the office, and the simplicity of working when they wanted to and not working when they didn't want to. That contrasted with people who wanted to be full time because they were looking to evolve with the job or experience a wide array of roles. They were looking to "grow with the company" either in a technical leadership sort of way or a company leadership sort of way. The founder/entrepreneur is a sort of outlier in that they have some vision/idea of what they are trying to build and their world is wrapped around that rather than their career or monetary goals.
That is completely different than the rise of locally outsourced labor where a company hires a janitorial company who contracts out for janitors. At least in the Bay area you can pretty much contract out almost all of the non-technical stuff, from HR to building operation and security. I hadn't thought a whole lot about that until the Times article about janitorial staff as employees and as contractors. I cannot imagine (although I recognize it is possible) a contract janitor for ABC Janitorial being able to ask a line manager if there were programming tasks they could try at the company. Or to switch from janitorial to adminstrative assistant or security guard to sales. Sadly, I don't have access any more to the contract I signed when I hired a janitorial company for keeping the Blekko offices clean. Because now I am curious if there were in prohibitions in that contract that would have prevented me from hiring any of their contractors as employees.
My two cents is that companies have become so focused on killing upward mobility on purpose as a cost saving measure due to what I feel is increasingly more short term thinking. I can't tell you how many times during my contracting days I heard a story about how $company used to have one or more full time employees who setup, managed, and knew all their systems, but they decided they would rather save the salaries and just use the contractor "when needed". Of course half the time it was some halfassed MSP type shop that didn't know their ass from their elbow, didn't really care about being proactive, and milked billing enough the companies ended up spending just as much money as the salaries but with 1/8 the effectiveness. Throw in outsourcing to foreign countries (Goldman Sachs) and abuse of H1Bs and yeah, I'd say the rise of contract workers is killing upward mobility.
That said, its not the contractors fault, its managements. My view is this is largely because the CTO and CIO positions are failing to properly brief the Cs/board of directors on why they shouldn't be doing this, and that is largely because the CTO/CIO is too much a management and not enough tech. Often I would even see companies without a CTO/CIO, and some poor greybeard would be haphazardly trying to run an IT department and speak board speak at the same time, in the end doing neither well because they had little backing from higher up.
This is why so many companies are literally drowning in their own technical debt due to greediness and short term thinking!
I think its time for more technical people to go get an MBA and shake up the stagnant CTO/CIO positions.
For a long time I just wanted to be in a cold data center all day with my head in a terminal doing good work. As a senior sysadmin though I have learned that I should have been playing the politics game in the meeting room to protect my department and the company. I wish I had learned this sooner.
For a worker, yes, its less of office politics and having to deal with crappy co-workers. But that is how you grow. I learned so much when I am working with people than being all alone. So, having couple of people approach the same problem in different ways, helps you learn, teach & grow. I was learning something new everyday, when I was working in a team. Plus contract jobs are effecting the basic needs of human beings - "food, clothing & shelter", due to the very nature of uncertainly. Basically I am more worried about the basics and not as focused at my job when I have a full time job. I feel that I am just completing the task at hand to get paid. I don't analyse the issue and try to find a solution or seek for some improvement. Plus working in a specific domain for a period will help in gaining experience and you have build up skills.
For a employer, how much ever you document a solution, there is going to be knowledge gaps. Only when you have someone working on a problem for a while, will they be able to come up with a better solution. Each employee comes come a different background and will view the problems differently. That will bring about a nice work culture.
Team work is not given enough credit. Instead, there is always the focus on one rock star that does it all. I personally feel that for that one rock star to actually perform, there needs to be a team behind to support.
> Plus contract jobs are effecting the basic needs of human beings - "food, clothing & shelter", due to the very nature of uncertainly...
Until your job (or department) is eliminated, or targeted for reductions. You'll have a similar level of uncertainty, but will have less control over doing anything about it.
> I was learning something new everyday, when I was working in a team.
Great for you, but at some point, you won't be learning much. Or you'll start to learn that "we're doing it joe's way because he's been here the longest". Or "we're going to use nodejs because XYZ... " but what it really means is dave wanted to learn node so his resume looked better when he left for the next job last month.
> and having to deal with crappy co-workers. But that is how you grow.
You can "grow" in a number of ways. Figuring out how to get clients, get work done and deliver projects to get paid is at least as much 'growth' as learning how to deal with office politics and crappy co-workers, many of whom may not share your work ethics, drive or priorities (yet their ethics, drive and priorities will still impact your ability to get things done).
> I personally feel that for that one rock star to actually perform, there needs to be a team behind to support.
And I've seen the opposite - where 1 or 2 people did 90% of the work - they were the true experts (domain, tech, etc) yet the entire team was praised, even when they either didn't contribute or in some cases were actual drains on the project. To publicly call out the bad team members, by, say, moving them to a different project, would look bad and make the manager(s) look bad, so things were kept as they were.
There is no one right setup for all projects or personalities.
It's generally true that contractors can't get promoted within the company. It's not unusual to see 40+ year old contractors still working as engineers.
The money is great but you really need to have a low risk investment strategy on the side... I don't think you can get rich from contracting but you can have a very decent retirement.
Contracting is good if you're burned out with startups that lead nowhere. It's the closest I've felt to being my own boss.
Not 'promotion', but more respect for my expertise and more choice about my working practices.
'Promotion' is not something I've often observed happening in any of the software departments I've worked with of late.
It does scare me when people say things like "40+ contractors still working as engineers", as if 40 is old. I'm 40 next year and less than halfway through my working life (according to the government, obviously I'd like to retire early).
That said, I am moving to be more independent over time, and hope to have my own thing going within the next few years (over and above my current contracting business)
I get the impression that contracting in the US, at least in tech firms, is a lot less lucrative.
There are really two classes of 'contract work' in the US.
The first class is what I'd call skilled specialists. These are your independent marketing consultants, security experts, developers, designers, copywriters, etc. These folks are usually, but not always, fairly experienced. They take up contracting or consulting as a career choice, and while they have to hustle to stay above water, they accept the hustle as the price of freedom from a corporate life. Often they work remotely. If they're strong and well-networked, they have some leeway in negotiating fees and terms for their services. The catch is that there are very few availabilities on the market for their services at any given time, and most firms don't appropriately value those services. As such, skilled specialists thrive or stumble on the strength of their reputations and rolodexes. Many of them have served for years in the corporate world, or in high level academia. They may have the ability to reeenter corporate America at will, e.g., for a client who really wants to bring them in house.
The second class is what I'd call no-choice contractors. These are most often (but not always) younger workers, whom a company will hire for short term jobs, and then spit back out whenever it's done with them. Many of these workers are placed by temp agencies, or respond to open positions for fixed term jobs, and would probably take full time jobs if the jobs were available to them. This category includes seasonal hires, unskilled laborers, and skilled laborers placed at companies on short-term assignments with the vague (and usually fruitless) hope of ascending to full-time status.
Skilled specialists are a much smaller pool, on the whole, than no-choice contractors. And many skilled specialists are but one wrong decision, or bad run of luck, away from slipping into the no-choice pool.
If you're unfamiliar with US corporate culture, the best way to understand my distinction is to first realize that labor lost the war with capital here about 30-odd years ago. During the Reagan era, labor rights one might take for granted in Europe were effectively positioned here as socialistic, and thus cancerous to the 'competitiveness' (read: profit margins) of the firm. Wall Street and hedge funds, along with prevailing MBA management culture, have convinced us that the flexibility afforded to big firms by contracting out their jobs is necessarily a good thing. It allows them to be more nimble, and to operate with a higher degree of tactical freedom from quarter to quarter, or from year to year. More important, if not all important, is that a contract labor force is better in the short run for returning shareholder value.
This line of reasoning is very attractive, but almost too attractive. What we have now is a system, and a culture, that treats more and more jobs as holes to be filled, and which treats individuals not as prospects to be groomed, but as cogs to be worked hard and replaced when worn out. We have also traded strategic thinking for tactical thinking, and we no longer understand the difference. But that's a rant for another time, perhaps. :)
China didn't actually start to manufacture more than us until just a few years ago, and they have something like three times the population.
People say the middle class is shrinking, but seldom mention that the number of people in the upper class is growing. We have pretty good employment numbers and our securities market is booming.
Many of our businesses are the most profitable in the world. We are still sought out as the place to go for education and starting a business. We have more people trying to come here than we can even accommodate.
So, from a numbers view, we are doing okay. We may not be number one in every category, but we're up there on the list and still doing quite well.
Of course, there's more to life than numbers, but hopefully I expressed it well enough.
NONE of that matters because those metrics measure the winners. The key measure is, does our system have a lot of big losers? If the answer is yes, then that system has failed.
I don't think anyone would argue the system is perfect. I'd conclude that it's not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is. By being a part of the system, you're already better off than some 40% of the globe, by default.
Citizens of western nations (the US in particular, median income there puts you among the .3% globally) and the rest of the globe have a similar dynamic yet I have seen no westerners who proclaim the evils of income inequality attempt to resolve that disparity, in fact they seem set to increase their own income making the problem worse. Thus I don't take that argument on it's face as a serious one.
What GDP and median income don't capture is that the above security is slipping away from more and more people. Increasingly, you're either a professional married to another professional making $200k+ or $300k+ as a household, which is great. Then you search which metropolitan areas other high income households are moving to and go there and your life is pretty good.
The flip side is you marry someone who makes little, or not marry at all because it's not a prudent financial decision. Wherever you live, your kids are stuck going to school with worse resources and only have other poor kids to become friends with, many in single parent households.
I don't know how it plays out in the end, but I would postulate that large class divides aren't good for societies and nations. Everyone doesn't need to be equal, but there has to be a veneer of everyone being "in this together", and if it becomes too obvious that we're not, then it incentives behavior of "steal or be stolen from", meaning too many people start to game the system and we lost trust in each other.
To be absolutely clear - the system isn't perfect and could use improvements. My post was merely to point out that we're not only not doomed but are doing fairly well.
We have hungry people, but we don't have people dying of hunger in the streets. We have crappy medical coverage, but we have some of the best practices in the world - and horribly unaffordable emergency treatment that will probably financially ruin you. We have both wealthy and poor, but our poor are rather wealthy on the global scale.
It's not perfect, there's room to make improvements, but it's not really that terrible and the doom and gloom predictions haven't changed since the 80s. They've barely changed since the 60s. I can't speak for earlier than that, I wasn't cognizant.
Society isn't breaking down. The kids are as reckless as they ever were and old people complain about them as they always have. There isn't going to be a revolution, class warfare isn't going to erupt into violent confrontations on a mass scale, and nobody is going to eat the rich.
Call me when they are hanging bankers and politicians from lamp posts. It's not perfect but it's not horrible. It's actually pretty good for the average person. Even the below average have it pretty good if we examine them from the perspective of a global community.
Our poor people get more monthly food assistance than some people spend on food for an entire year. Not that we should emulate them, but we should stand back and admit that it's not that bad and acknowledge that the many predictions of doom have been grossly inaccurate.
Can we improve? Of course, and we should. Only insane people would think the system is perfect and can't be improved. I'm fact, the only differences I see between groups of people are the things they want to improve. I don't think anyone seriously believes it is currently ideal.
It's just not that terrible for the average person. You don't start getting massive uprisings with serious revolution potential until those average people can't get their football and beer.
But societies rise and fall on a greater timeline than one's lifetime. Wages haven't risen since the 70s or 80s and there is still no revolution, so it will take time. But recognizing that there is a problem is the first step to fixing it, before it's too late and it snowballs. Or perhaps ups and downs are unavoidable, and it's best to just plan for yourself.
Either way, the declines in birth rate, marriage, and equality are, by all indications, due to structural economic factors. Society is changing, maybe not breaking down to the point of violent confrontations yet, but it is something to watch out for in the future, but it could take a while.
In the context of this subthread, which you have missed entirely, I am explaining to someone outside the US what's led to the rise of the contract labor force here in the US, and providing a framework by which we might view the different types of contract labor in our industry. That is all I am doing. That is the whole, fairly narrow subject of my post.
Yes, I'm pointing some fingers in very specific directions where blame is due. I'm hardly denouncing the whole US system, or even the whole financial culture, and I'm hardly throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To be clear, neither is the Wharton professor in the interview we are ostensibly here to discuss.
You have also failed to cite a single number, which is ironic, given the crux of your post. You have provided a broad sweep of claims without citation or data. Put some specific numbers on the table if you're going to make them the basis of your argument. (And hopefully someone else can take you up on that argument, because once again, it's not at all the argument my post seeks to open. If you want to bait me into some broad argument about whether or not the US system is superior to the European or Chinese or Turkish or Brazilian or whatever system, I am not interested in taking the bait.)
Going forward, I'd appreciate if you actually took the time to read what I am saying in the context in which I am saying it. Instead, you seem to have latched onto my use of the words "MBA" and "Reagan" and possibly "Europe," and have thus attempted to beat me in some imaginary debate on a point I didn't even make. If all you're here to do is torch strawmen, you won't find many interested takers.
Median Income, adjusted: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Median_U...
Gross Domestic Product: https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-g...
Manufacturing Output: http://perspectives.pictet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/US...
Unemployment Rate: https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_8974_u...
Poverty Rates: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/82285/povertyratesby...
Now, if you feel you were attacked that is unfortunate, but the system isn't that bad and histrionics about Reagan and being seen as cogs in a wheel is rather dramatic when the system has demonstrated itself to be reasonably effective.
most of what you said I generally agree with (about contract workers). then you lamented with the trite: "if only we were like europe" type comment.
tbh, i want to be nothing like europe. who's economy do you lionize? Portugaul 9% ump, Ireland 6.1% ump, Greece 22% ump, Spain 17.6% ump? Even France isn't doing great. Or would you prefer to cherry pick one of the more Nordic countries like Sweden with virtually no ethnic or geographic diversity?
I'm sure Europe is great, but they are by no means an archetype of economic success. Nor is our situation anything like theirs, so this is why people get irritated by such comments.
As an employee, who's not invited to share in those profits, why do I care? Why would I rather have that, than have more stability and more vacation time like they do in Europe?
So, it's in your best interest that they continue to be profitable. Your benefit is contined employment and the benefits that go along with that.
If you want to get more from a business profiting more, your best choice would be to buy shares of that business through the stock market. Even those that don't pay dividends can increase in value and increase your wealth along with it.
You are, of course, perfectly entitled to not care one iota. You don't need my permission to do that.
Companies in Europe are profitable, too.
"So, it's in your best interest that they continue to be profitable."
I wasn't asking why I should care that they're profitable. I was asking why I should care why they're more profitable.
"You are, of course, perfectly entitled to not care one iota. You don't need my permission to do that."
So your answer to my original question of why I should care that companies in the US are more profitable while offering crappier benefits to employees than European companies is that I really shouldn't; and that it's a raw deal for everyone else.
A lot of the awful ones too, mind!
Australia and EU are great for contracting.
There are some really well paid London software engineering contracts (often paying higher than EU ones) but most are for big finance firms and they often want people to have a finance background so it's harder to get in. Also from my experience, UK contract recruiters tend to be more picky about having an exact technical skill match.
Australian contracts are the easiest to get. Some pay ridiculously well. I did an indefinite rolling contract that paid the AUD equivalent of USD $650 per day, $13K per month. It wasn't particularly challenging either.
I later travelled to other countries where software engineers were treated like factory workers so the country definitely matters.
It's not far above that in a lot of UK places, particularly the SME space.
Maybe I should have tried contracting in Aus when I lived there!
Permanent members of staff seldom get the same money as skilled contractors and have to put up with a lot more restrictions around holiday and work life balance.
I would equate a contractor in the UK to being the equivalent experience of being a consultant without the politics and drama that comes with it. I have worked for almost a decade as a consultant in different countries and much prefer being a contractor to that.
Promotions seem to normally equate to more responsibility with a meagre if at all pay increase for permanent members of staff. People forget that there is only 1 CTO in an organisation, not everyone can ever get to that level. Most get stuck in middle management hell doing unfulfilling jobs.
I've been contracting five years, and the state of software engineering seems woeful in the small and medium sized countries of the UK.
Could have sworn I fixed that...
I have seen terrible disasters developed by every single sort of person. The issue normally comes when we as developers seem more interested in doing "clever" things at the expense of making sure we code for maintainability and support ability.
Combine the above with a large part of our community being terrible at communicating and you have a recipe for confusion and chaos.
[looks at current codebase]
> at the expense of making sure we code for maintainability and support ability
[cries, etc.]
(The current codebase is a masterpiece of cleverness - a single person's homegrown ORM and ObjectModel in Perl. Unfortunately that also means it's an overly complex, horribly unreadable, utterly unmaintainable piece of crap.)
After that, just have the confidence to push for it, to ignore the recruiters who will tell you you won't be able to - they just want the commission for placing you in perm work - yeah. I waited until I had about 12 years experience. I don't think I needed to wait that long.
I dunno where you're seeing that but in the circles I move in, no-one is getting even 75% of 3xEFTE. More like 45-50% of 3xEFTE.
(EFTE = Equivalent FTE. Obviously new FTEs cost a lot less.)
As my boss said getting on the short list meant that the company thought you where good enough but with say 600-800 potential candidates for promotion the competition was brutal I knew better developers than me who just gave up
Long term I've no idea if it was the right choice but it certainly suited how my mind worked.
> Our work shows that children's prospects of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century.
Is the second source referring to absolute mobility?
(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/business/upward-mobility-... (2) http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2014/nov/06/jeb...
I've now been contracting as a developer for as long as I was a permanent employee and I've learnt more as a contractor. Sometimes it's been a bit of luck with a job but the rest is mostly from only having to do the job you're in for - so no reviews, company meetings and the rest, plus I can pick and choose (and afford) to go to more workshops and conferences.
It can be easier to be complacent as a perm employee but less so as a contractor.
Firstly they're not talking about your kind of contracting.
Secondly, as developers we have a lot of power and freedom because our job is to use the very tools which make it easy to learn.
Other people need more formalised training, or help even getting started using the new tools.
It feels like you're trying to blame the workers, the victims, here.
I read the article as covering all types of contracting, include my own.
Eventually I had enough and tried jumping into contracting (but ended up in consulting). At this point my career and pay went through the roof. I'm making (literally) twice as much money now, and finally achieved the title I was after.
Most of the companies I've worked at don't value the domain knowledge their current work force has. They waste time and money taking risks on new resources like myself.
I don't feel I'm personally a bad investment, but if companies we're willing to prioritize their current work force, I wouldn't have to bounce around employers to get where I feel I'm best utilized.
It reminds me of a great Clay Shirky essay:
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2013/11/healthcare-gov-and-the-...
Japan's unusual hiring practices in large traditional corporations (Straight from university or bust) doesn't help.
In terms of jobs, it seems there are fewer guarantees and fewer formulas to follow (you used to be able to work somewhere for 30 years and count on a pension).
Upward mobility is still alive and well, but it's through self education and using the internet. Constantly improving is the only way to beat the game. Discipline, etc.
As a software contract worker, the last thing I want is "upward mobility".
That means more bullshit and less actualy hands on development.
Being a contract worker let's you control your taxes better and you can find another gig without feeling like you killed the family cat when you 'leave for another opportunity'.
If your thing is upward mobility, then incorporate yourself. Slap on CEO and Director title on your LinkedIn profile and call it a day.
I see time and time again, technology management not grasping it is the comprehensive solution, the product that allows customers to solve their problems without other software that make the difference. Any key technology is great, but without all the "document / project" wrapper, multiple import/export options, and API interfaces that contract developers are often tasked to create that enable the "key technology" to have the accessibility to be successful. Without all the "interface and GUI stuff" you do not have a product. That "interface and GUI stuff" is a core competency, yet technology management rarely recognizes this.
Quoting a bit of comedy:
As long as there are ill-defined goals,
bizarre bugs, and unrealistic schedules, there will be
Real Programmers willing to jump in and
Solve The Problem, saving the documentation for
later.
-- "Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL"[0]
Rather that than fill in holiday forms, attend company meetings, have annual performance reviews etc etc.
I'm not going to jail anytime soon.
Bookkeeping is not too cumbersome, you just have to account for such tasks and their overhead in your hourly rate. Factoring all costs is the only big hassle, but after this, it's no hassle at all.
The problem is that automation will be taking even more jobs away in the near future.
It’s going to be a hard transition for people.
Starving blacksmith, out of work horse trainers; yet an entire new industry, the automobile essentially created from nothing that employed more, created more wealth than all horse related commerce in the history of the world.
It’s arrogant to think that this time it’s different, that somehow our technology advances are finally going to wipe out the common worker. These arguments that automation is going to collapse society, etc— straight out of the Marxist playbook; they were saying the same thing about factory machinery a century ago, weaving looms, for example.
Everything will be fine.
"Everything will be fine." is just too ambiguous to argue against. Being fine is not an objective quality. I'm sure the world will be fine. But maybe it won't be fine in my eyes or for most people in a sense that they'll lose a significant amount of wealth compared to their current situation. But maybe they'll still be fine in another way. So maybe both sides are right - in their own regard.
But I've also been wondering if there might be a new kind of job coming, "person who does a new thing until it can be understood well enough to be 'autoficialized'."
Artificial intelligence may be great at running complex but well bounded problems, but intelligence of the wet kind probably won't be surpassed at recognizing and dealing with "exceptions" real-time for some time to come.
Also, AI will fail at being subversive, which is sometimes necessary. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that ..."
"Sorry, no fajitas today, the machine's service has been called. We just got a crepes machine ..."
I'd rather be at my firm with bonus tied to account revenue which is generated by teams of people. That way your pay is disconnected from your time and has much more room to grow.