The Challenges of Being in the New Contract Workforce
npr.org
npr.org
This means that working does not provide insider access to potentially better (or alternative) jobs when coworkers move on. There's no implicit social framework for insider information. There's no personal channel where a Lyft driver finds out that Uber is a better opportunity (or vice versa).
To put it another way, two Lyft drivers have little basis for connecting on Linkedin. Not that I think Linkedin is great. Only that gigsters don't even get the loose social connections that Linkedin facilitates...and cynically, the gig economy casts other Lyft drivers as competitors rather than coworkers.
Another aspect of gig economy companies controlling networking: they typically ban workers from communicating directly with customers. Ostensibly it's for safety reasons, but the real reason is most likely to prevent workers and customers from circumventing the fees. The result is that workers are not able to develop a regular set of clients which could provide referrals, etc.
The Network Uber Drivers Built:
Ride-hail drivers work alone, but they’re banding together online to compare notes, uncover new policies, and help each other navigate the rough roads of the gig economy.
Similar online communities exist for Mechanical Turk.
(I don't think your overall point is wrong, just pointing out that contractors often figure out ways to organize online anyway... This is a good trend, and hopefully spreads as a way to counteract the sometimes-isolating world of contract work...)
If all we're talking about is getting a small number of people a leg up, then is it so bad (socially) that contract work lacks that? In my mind, the whole question is about overall social benefit, thus benefit to the "wide group." In fact, if web forums are as equality-inducing as you imply (which I kind of doubt, to be honest), that would count as a big benefit overall to that kind of system.
That's the wrong interpretation. It's about giving a large number of people each a personalized leg up. It's equality-inducing in the worst sense to have everyone hit the same indifferent and impersonal wall. Personalized opportunities are how you find holes through that wall.
Basically real human relationships are a safety valve in an inhumane system. Weak and distant broadcast relationships aren't.
Otherwise they might talk too much: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pgkk7b/newbie-dri...
It's a total dead-end.
On the other hand, I know a couple of people who started driving for Lyft recently to supplement income when their other freelance work slows. They've found pretty creative ways to make the most of the gig. One guy in particular is doing some social/influencer type stuff around it and has found some clients for his primary work as a content writer.
Going in the other direction, my wife is a lawyer and is always chatting with drivers and giving them her business card. She helped a driver with some questionable traffic tickets. Nothing major, just a short phone call and some free advice that got the tickets throw out. When his brother got hit by someone running a red light, she got the case.
There's always value generated when people connect. Sure, two Lyft drivers don't have a lot of reason to connect, but a Lyft driver has the opportunity to connect with people who do other things. Maybe there's some value in that that is just now being explored.
I mean in the story, it is the lawyer in the back seat making some rain. It isn't the driver getting hired at the law firm or even getting a lead on a better job. The driver just avoided some of the costs of doing business that they might otherwise have payed. Not that that's nothing, but it's not career enhancing.
What's more interesting is that the the available Gig Economy workforce has aggregated so well that Social Groups can become the new Unions, and mass actions can trigger swiftly. Uber is valued highly due to switching costs, but one can start a competitor and let most of the company's drivers know in a day.
“We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment.
https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created...
What I find intellectually-interesting is the idea that it's a big hetereogenous system where different parts and aspects are "crumpling" (both concurrently and sequentially) rather than one big politically-noisy snap.
Push kids towards college for earning-potential; defer usual retirement ages; have fewer children; live in a smaller place; both spouses work, live in the city, since you need a denser job-supply for both spouses to be hired and commute; work a second part-time job; etc.
Especially in economics, nothing is simple. Everything has branching consequences and influences. Nothing happens in isolation. Trends are the products of a thousand knobs being tuned according to another thousand knobs each.
* I make over 40% more than I did when I was full-time, and I was already in the top band for pay in my title. This far exceeds the 15% markup for self-employment tax.
* My wife works full time so she has our back for health insurance
* I can save way more for retirement with an SEP IRA than I ever could with a company-sponsored 401k...it's $55k/yr for 2018 (assuming you contribute 25% of earnings or make $220k/yr)
I can understand that the Gig Economy is certainly not benefiting everyone (e.g. Uber drivers, Postmates runners), but I mean boutique consulting firms have existed for a while and many of them achieve many millions in revenue even with only a few partners. Am I missing something or delusional in my thinking?
If you're confused, then you have a lot in common with many Uber drivers!
That language, offloads, is loaded. This idea that it's someone else's responsibility to handle even the most trivial of life's decisions for us is toxic. If you don't understand the basic concepts around running a small business, there's plenty of books on the subject in the library.
Where on earth is that number coming from? Uber?
https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/internal-uber-driv...
"In early 2015, a study commissioned by Uber found that drivers in 20 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, were grossing around $17 an hour.... But the $17-an-hour figure was based on data from 2014, when Uber rates in most cities were higher than they were in late 2015. It was also based on gross earnings and did not account for driver expenses."
This is from an article complaining about how little Uber drivers make...
>But in three large metropolitan cities, drivers make far less than the national average, about $20 per hour, after expenses.
"None of these advertisements mention driver expenses. The same goes for the alerts Uber sends to drivers — sometimes five times a day or more — telling them that other drivers on the road were making $20 or $30 an hour in gross fares."
Yes, if you're poor it will be harder to buy health insurance, but you can avoid consumer debt at virtually any income. You can save up an emergency fund at virtually any income level. The fact that it might get more difficult to do any of these things as you get closer and closer to the lowest end of the poverty spectrum... is that really the argument we're trying to have? Because that seems like a silly thing to interject in a conversation about people who are going to be starting and running small businesses.
Consider how much time, energy, and expertise it takes even to research disability insurance and buy the appropriate product.
This argument reminds me of web designers who blame users for the mistakes they make when presented with a horrible user interface -- that there is no system so terrible that the user can't be a moral failure, 100% responsible for their own misfortune.
Generally yes, poor people are less capable of gaining the "expertise" to do many things, because they are busy trying to stay alive. It's textbook hierarchy of needs.
Noticed other replies; why the fixation on car insurance? I thought we were talking about structural impediments to poor people?
>Consider how much time, energy, and expertise it takes even to research disability insurance and buy the appropriate product.
This is in the context of a discussion about starting your own business. If you're on the tier of hierarchy of needs where you're struggling for food, then sure, maybe you shouldn't be starting your own business at this point. However, if you have the intellectual capacity to buy car insurance, and also are in a position to be starting your own business, you almost certainly have the cognitive ability to purchase disability insurance.
i.e., being poor is harder than it looks ...
Somehow we've gotten from there to a point where you're suggesting that a poor person who is somehow capable of starting their own small business is, by the very nature of being poor, fundamentally incapable of making a good decision regarding disability insurance options. And it is because of this fundamental lack of cognitive ability that we need a regulatory environment demanding that the business owner (who is themself) must purchase disability insurance on their behalf?
I'm sorry, but you've just gotten to the point of nonsense.
I don't think anyone is actually suggesting that.
I was suggesting, essentially, that poverty is a vicious cycle. That, to quote the movie Hell or High Water, "I been poor my whole life. So were my parents, an their parents before 'em ... It's like a disease, passing from generation to generation. Becomes, a sickness, that's what it is ... Infects every person you know"
And obviously this isn't a universal. There are always exceptions, that goes without saying.
>It's also expensive, inconvenient, time-consuming, and risky to be poor. None of the suggestions you make are "easy" for poor people.
>Consider how much time, energy, and expertise it takes even to research disability insurance and buy the appropriate product.
This whole thing is about me calling out rectang for suggesting that poor people are too stupid to buy disability insurance.
You: "The soft bigotry of low expectations..."
You: But what if you're mentally disabled?
You: Jane
;)
The long answer to this question is, in fact, extremely long.
My contention is that this is a disgustingly classist view against poor people. Poor people, by and large, seem perfectly capable of purchasing car insurance, and disability insurance is generally less complicated.
You have to have sufficient income to consistently cover basics with money leftover. Some people simply don't have that.
Not that I recall, but that situation could happen to you if you had employer or government provided coverage.
>Or have an expensive pre-existing condition?
No, but there are other options like health-shares. These are usually tied to religious organizations and works almost exactly like health insurance, pooling costs. Obamacare grandfathered in existing health shares but made it illegal to start new ones.
>There's certainly an element of luck involved, especially when it comes to the US healthcare system!
There's a certain element of luck to life in general. I'm certainly not dismissing the unfortunate souls you're referring to, but we equally should not pretend like these things are all that difficult for the average person to do.
Not specifically to you but this conversation is highly interesting because it demonstrates the two different attitudes - one from the person you were replying to and one from pretty much everyone else.
In software engineering it is the attitude of people who come up with a solution to their problem as compared to the attitude of the people who are complaining that the solution is not general enough and therefore should not be considered a solution.
It feels to me that our minds have been atrophied by generations of being told that we can't do anything. Forget budgeting a small business, we can't even budget for our own family. Someone else, be it the government or our employer, has to provide some universal solution to all my problems like saving for retirement or being able to buy an antibiotic for my kid. So someone presents a solution, and rather than being able to take that, adjust it to our individual needs, our psyche is so weak that we just sit back and try to figure out all the ways we can avoid taking agency in our own lives, we need big brother to solve it for us.
Ultimately it's perhaps the same thing though. In your scenario people want to pick apart the solution so they can return back to deciding that their employer or the government has to provide a solution for them.
One guy is living life probably pulling in upwards of $150,000 a year (or living in a lower cost of living place with six figures income). Simply budgeting well will cover all these things. And another thinks that "budgeting" means you don't get to eat on Mondays so you can keep on bills.
Person 2: But what if you're a diabetic blind one legged cancer patient?
Buying your own workman's comp is 0.0075% of your salary in my state ($0.75 per $100 in salary). Disability insurance is $30/mo for $50k salary, so if you're making $30k/yr then disability will be even less. You can make a budget, avoid consumer debt, and save an emergency fund at virtually any level of income. The median national income is $32k/yr for a single person. Sure, a lot of people making that kind of money also have bad personal finance habits. But the idea that it's impossible to live a decent life on the kind of income that half of all single people in the country are making is hyperbole.
[1] https://www.floridawc.com/workerscompensation/policy/rates/
Here's my personal experience - I had a single parent who always worked and always had health insurance through her employer. In her 50s she got hurt and couldn't work much (no cobra, no money either) and lost her insurance. She worked in retail for a while. Then she got cancer and died. Maybe if she'd had more frequent checkups it might have been caught earlier? Maybe less stress would have helped? Who knows. I think if we had national health insurance or health insurance you can't lose, then a lot of people wouldn't face this problem, it would help in the aggregate. She never got to 65, so she didn't jump onto the safe medicare.
Whether or not there are improvements to be made to our healthcare system is an entirely different discussion than whether or not an average, able bodied person could reasonably go out on their own without another person working in the home to back them up financially. Of course it would be better/easier to have a support system with another worker in the house. Of course it would be better if you had easier access to healthcare. I would never suggest otherwise.
Also, I'm sorry for your loss. My mother is a cancer survivor and it's just a shit situation all the way through.
It's a trade-off and comes with definite benefits like you listed.
At the same time, companies fire by the millions in aggregate in a recessionary environment. Or worse, your employer simply vaporizes and goes out of business, which similarly happens in droves.
If you're a contractor, your exposure depends on who you're doing business with, how strong their circumstances are, just as it does when it comes to who is employing you.
The U6 went up to ~17.5% during the great recession. There is a very small group of elite tech companies that weathered that storm without firing people. Google is up at 80,000 employees now, Microsoft is at 125,000. Do they avoid layoffs in the next recession? I'm skeptical. Microsoft has almost no growth, any recession would hit them hard. Google's growth is 1/3 what it was ten years ago, a recession would slam their ad business and bring their growth down toward single digits.
Note on this point: many company-sponsored 401ks do allow you to contribute up to $55k/yr - though a good chunk of that will be after-tax money. (Though again, the after-tax can often be converted to Roth, which has its own benefits)
Heads up that you can only contribute 20% of your earnings up (up to the limit) to a SEP-IRA. This is because you can contribute up to 25% of your taxable income, but your contributions are deducted from your income.
For example, if you make $1, and put $0.20 in your SEP-IRA, your taxable income is $1 - $0.20 = $0.80, so the $0.20 you put in is the full 25% of your income.
To contribute $55K in 2018, you will need to generate $275K of income.
I don't think this is correct. We are talking about employER contribution to the employee SEP-IRA account, which is 25% of the compensation, not exceeding the annual limit (https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/retirement-plans-faqs-r...).
You are correct to say that you can contribute 25% of compensation. However, your wages are different than your profits, even as a self-employed person.
Let's say you are self-employed and you make $1 of profits and pay yourself $0.80 of wages. You can contribute the other $0.20 you have to your SEP-IRA, since it's 25% of your wages (or 20% of your profits).
Because of this, you need $275K of profits to generate $220K of income and a corresponding $55K SEP-IRA contribution.
For more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEP-IRA#Reduced_rate
It's low skill work, groundskeepers, janitors, housekeepers, drivers. Businesses have moved to contracting to effectively lower total compensation.
1. Entrepreneurs running gig economy startups and the implications for how they should treat their workforce
2. Tech workers who work in the gig economy (e.g. Gigster developers, PullRequest reviewers, independent developers)
So I read this and bring up my point because it seems like contract work, inherently, is not the problem. The problem is, what others have mentioned, that the government regulates employment in such a way that we tie benefits like health insurance to the employers, and do not align incentives properly. Would you say that's an accurate assessment?
Man is a featherless biped may work to describe the category. But if you give a tax break based on the number of men living in each home, you'll find a lot of people plucking chickens.
That's a pretty limited view. There are plenty of non-entrepreneurs on HN who are looking for interesting technology and tech-related society articles. It could also be meant to resonate with people who just think that the gig economy is questionable development.
> So I read this and bring up my point because it seems like contract work, inherently, is not the problem. The problem is, what others have mentioned, that the government regulates employment in such a way that we tie benefits like health insurance to the employers, and do not align incentives properly. Would you say that's an accurate assessment?
I don't agree with that. I think the problem with contract work, especially the gig economy kind, is that it's a further progression of the dehumanization of work. More an erosion of the social contract than a failure of government regulation. That dehumanization reduces the buffers between actual people and the more sociopathic aspects of capitalism.
Yes, because of the externalities. If an Uber driver in London gets sick, he or she will still be treated by the NHS despite Uber’s business model involves paying no employer’s NI.
If you want to say the NHS simply shouldn’t treat those who don’t contribute well that’s a whole ‘nother thing...
* Contract developers have greater flexibility on taxes. "Pass through" entities are big now.
* Contract developers are more independent in a lot of ways. Some employees have clauses where they give up all IP they create.
* Contract developers often move from project to project more, which gives them a better network effect then their W2 counterparts.
Are there reliable sources of contract work? I have yet to find any, though I admittedly haven't been looking the hardest.
The best paid work comes from a professional network. When I look for a new project I send an email to former co-workers and some past clients asking for leads. I then follow up on those leads.
But, I am medically handicapped. When I had a corporate job, I lived in fear of losing my job for taking too much time off. My life revolved around getting myself together enough to make it to work 5 days a week.
I don't have those issues anymore. I can take time off at will and resume working when I feel better. My access to paid work is not threatened by that.
My income is portable. This has allowed me to repeatedly move to improve my quality of life. Historically, this was a luxury enjoyed by only the jet set and well off retirees, not working stiffs.
I think we need to provide national healthcare in the US to make the lack of benefits less of a problem. But I think if gig work is well designed, it can raise quality of life for ordinary people.
I wish my life were easier. I am really grumpy about it not being easier. But gig work is a viable solution for me under circumstances where most normal jobs simply are not. This has helped make it possible to make headway on my problems when I should simply be doomed with no real hope.
So I think we need to just focus on making gig work a positive. I don't think it is a given that it has to be a terrible experience, even for people who aren't making tons of money.
* What sort of business entity are you using? What considerations did you make when choosing this entity?
* What is your work like? Are you remote/onsite? Do you have one client or multiple?
* What is your staff like? Are you a lone worker? Do you have coworkers in your business? What did you choose to offload onto others?
* How do you manage taxes, insurance (beyond those covered by your wife), and finances?
* What alternatives have you considered in the event that your wife couldn't cover you?
Mostly interested because this seems like a viable career path (to me) but I would definitely want to consider it with eyes wide open and learn from someone else's successes and failures.
* I'm remote currently with high utilization client (as a subcontractor) and smaller retainer clients.
* I am a firm of 1.
* I have an accountant to manage taxes and finances. I keep meticulous records of what is a business vs a personal expense. The subcontractor gig is insured by the main contracting company. The retainer gigs stipulate it is knowledge/access only, so without any IP deliverables required, so there's no need for insurance on that. I may get insurance if my employment situation changes in terms of the contracts I take on. For this, I'd talk with your lawyer.
* I would just buy health insurance through the state. I live in MA, so we have to have something. We're both young and healthy, and she has an incredibly stable job, so I don't worry about this one too much.
I should point out that I'm very new to this (4 months in) so definitely don't look at me as a source of having "done things right" - I am learning every day and still sweating it all.
* Have you considered an S-corp? If so, reasons against listing it as an option?
* Any recommendations in general contractors (even if not specific ones, just things to look for in a general contractor)?
Thanks for your time and response(s)!
* A general contractor? I hear that term I think of those guys who work on your house. Could you be more specific?
* I guess I just lifted the term as it seemed appropriate; given you mentioned subcontracting I imagine there is an entity above you that does the direct contracting - any recommendations for what to look for in that contracting authority?
* LLC with S-Corp designation. This is very tax-advantaged vs. Sole Proprietor.
* Currently, I'm mostly on-site for one client.
* 1-person shop.
* I have an accountant. You want a good, small business accountant.
* I buy health insurance for my family through the ACA exchange. It's very expensive so make sure you factor it into your rate.
I've had 2 FT gigs that lasted 6 months each since 2004 and regretted it both times. If you can handle having to network and interview frequently you can make more money with more flexibility as a contract developer.
* What are some recommendations you have for establishing a rate? Do you use hourly, weekly, or project?
* What do you look for in a small business accountant (it sounds like you may have had a less-good one in the past)?
* What avenues do you typically find yourself using for contract work? i.e. LinkedIn, job boards, word of mouth, etc?
* I've actually been blessed with a great accountant. He's saved me thousands over the years and sent letters to the IRS on my behalf clearing up a couple issues along the way. I would look for someone who specializes in small, professional service firms that is used and referred by people in your area. If they tell you they don't think you should organize as an LLC, look elsewhere.
* Starting out I used recruiting firms. They have the advantage of an established network and getting you paid every 2-weeks. The disadvantage of course is they take a cut. Their first ask will always be a low-ball hoping they can get a huge margin. Always try to get them to make the first offer and always ask for more. You'd be surprised how much room they have to negotiate up most of the time. As I've made connections over the years I've relied more on my network, but I'll still use an agency to fill the gaps. Also, boutique consulting agencies can be great for sub-contract work. They often need to staff up for a project they just landed, but don't want to take on full-timers and they usually command excellent rates.
I just wanted to second this point. In this way, checks both boxes off: one for getting the advantage of an established network like a recruiting firm; two for getting you the higher rates and not needing a middleman
Being an independent contractor or a self employed business owner is fine for someone who has an entrepreneurial bent coupled with unique skills that are in high demand. Such people can likely charge rates that more than compensate for the lack of employer benefits as a contractor.
However, the contractors described in the article don't appear to have that combination of advantages. Presumably they also don't have spouses who can carry them on their health insurance plans. In a previous era, their jobs might have previously carried benefits, but many of these jobs have been reclassified as "variable workforce" positions, as companies restructure their employment to minimize the carried costs and risk of fulltime employees.
It's not even 15% difference, as the salaried workers also pay half of it, so the difference is just the employer portion, which is paid by self-employed contractors.
I've been paying for my own insurance (a bronze plan) for the last three years, as it was cheaper than adding me to our family plan. It wasn't very expensive (started around $300/month in WA), but was going up about 20% each year, so this year we switched to a high deductible plan.
This is what bugs me to no end about insurance. They get you with a low intro rate, then jack it up a massive amount annually, and leave your option as basically switching (if there are better options even available), or shouldering more of the risk by moving to a high-deductible plan (which makes them more money).
Are there no good, consistently-priced insurance options for those who are not full-time employees with benefits?
Those contractors that have LLCs may look into group rate insurance, as those are generally cheaper than individual ones (but you may need to have more than one employee to qualify).
I am sure that few in my situation would like to admit it. For most of my adult life I have worked as a programmer on a contract basis mainly online for rates or fees that are well below the market rate for my area. For the last few years I have worked for non-funded or poorly funded startups for very small income amounts and no benefits. Even for jobs that were on site, many of the opportunities were spelled out in the ad or description as low rates like $70 or even $40 an hour.
I am sure that people will find lots of reasons to believe that I did something wrong or am an exceptional case, but I don't believe that. I think I am just an exception in terms of people like me who will admit it.
I have had a few well paid contracts but the income isn't consistent.
But not every contract programming gig is rich. It just absolutely isn't. And not everyone can get those high paying gigs. Also for me I have been trying to get into business in startups and not all startups can or want to receive funding and somebody like me is taking those jobs and happy to have them.
Again, go ahead and try to say there is something unusual or wrong. about me. I maintain the only really unusual thing is that I am admitting it on HN.
My current startup does have a lot of potential so I am hopeful about future income.
This is pretty shocking to me. With recent trends you can easily see that the other half of the population will be people in IT and health care (home service providers, nurses, etc.)
I've never had a contract job, I'm not sure if part-time college jobs count, are contract employees getting work via an agency or are they on their own? If these agencies exist are they helping to negotiate on behalf of their workers?
It feels like there is space for a digital employment agency, there must be a way to combine the "flexibility" of contract work with the longer term cushion that comes with a full time job.
So all of it exists, as it surely would in an efficient market!
Any new opportunities that are available, my agency contacts me and asks if I am interested in doing work there, or if I want to stay at my current place. I have been working at my current place in govt defense embedded work for the past 2+ years getting paid more than most direct hires with the only real downsides being no 401k matching and no personal/sick time when looking at total comp. I am also able to work from home and make my own hours, so I am more flexible than direct hires who have to remain in the office during "core hours".
Some people here have been contract workers for well over a decade, so as long as the company has a need for you, you can remain on contract. If you want to go direct with the company you are contracted at, you can also negotiate that during their periods when they open up direct hiring.
This is my situation here in the Midwest as a defense contractor, so it may differ elsewhere and in different fields of work. Needless to say, it's not a bad gig, especially if you can get into an area where the company can't afford to lose you. For example, I am one of two people in the entire company who knows the OS architecture for every vehicle we make, and I got paid extra money to grind out a few hours a week to learn that architecture.
That's not exactly a downside from a total compensation perspective, so long as you are considered self-employed for setting up a one-participant 401k. You get significantly more control over what portion of your total compensation is taxable vs tax-deferred.
Are there no umbrella companies in the USA? like we have in the UK to avoid the IR 35 hassles.
5% of healthcare consumers, are responsible for about 50% of all healthcare costs. That pool consists overwhelmingly of people over the age of 50. That's the high risk pool. Including them into any pool, isn't an improvement to the pool's cost structure.
What you're arguing for is that including them is superior morally. That's a perfectly legitimate premise obviously. It's radically inferior financially/economically, if we're talking about building risk pools.
Why? From my perspective the whole problem with healthcare and insurance is these are way far from a free markets. Wouldn't it be better if the insurance companies would just look at what people want and offer just that for the prices that make both sides interested?
Specifically I was replying to the idea of incorporating a large group outside the bounds of a company for insurance purposes. As it stands, the states may block it.
This is a problem for high income self-employed people with preexisting conditions. They probably won't be able to buy into an association health plan and they won't get premium subsidies from the government because they make too much, which means their premiums will be a ridiculous percentage of their income.
I switched from self-employed contracting to full time W2 with my biggest client back in December. The biggest reason is because they offered to pay for very good small group health insurance.
Really what we need is an expectation of being able to buy healthcare on our own with regular incomes.
Citation needed.
I'm not sure if the 8 hours is intended to be (8h + X break time), or (8h - X break time); I thought it was the former, but but might be mistaken. That's probably where the GP got their 7.5 from.
(2018) Under California law (which is much more generous to employees than federal law), if you are a non-exempt worker, you are entitled to meal and rest breaks: a 30-minute meal break if you work more than 5 hours in a workday, and 10 minutes breaks for every 4 hours you work
For an 8-hour work day, that would yield a 30 minute break + two ten minute ones.
0: https://calaborlaw.com/what-break-periods-am-i-entitled-to/
Modern civilization has advanced, why should the work week stay at 40 (and eroding in many workplaces in America?)
Also, correct me if I'm wrong but there are approximately 7 days a week and 7*8 > 40.
Let us suppose, what is at least supposable, whether it be the fact or not—that a general reduction of the hours of factory labour, say from ten to nine, would be for the advantage of the workpeople: that they would receive as high wages, or nearly as high, for nine hours’ labour as they receive for ten. If this would be the result, and if the operatives generally are convinced that it would, the limitation, some may say, will be adopted spontaneously. I answer, that it will not be adopted unless the body of operatives bind themselves to one another to abide by it. A workman who refused to work more than nine hours while there were others who worked ten, would either not be employed at all, or if employed, must submit to lose one-tenth of his wages. However convinced, therefore, he may be that it is the interest of the class to work short time, it is contrary to his own interest to set the example, unless he is well assured that all or most others will follow it. But suppose a general agreement of the whole class: might not this be effectual without the sanction of law? Not unless enforced by opinion with a rigour practically equal to that of law. For however beneficial the observance of the regulation might be to the class collectively, the immediate interest of every individual would lie in violating it: and the more numerous those were who adhered to the rule, the more would individuals gain by departing from it.
You are confusing employers paying for things that are part of your job and paying for things to cover your entire life. It's ridiculous to tie the latter to your employer because then you have to fear for your life if you lose your job.
Sure, there's a lot of newer tech in medical. But for a ton of routine medicine uses generic drugs, simple testing (scales, blood pressure, simply viewing abnormalities), and cheap care. For "routine medicine" this should be negligible cost - it's only because of systemic garbage I can't just go to the pharmacist and buy metformin without going through a fucking paywall.
Sure, I get something weird and/or strange, sure all bets are off.
And doctors want annual / quarterly renewals on prescriptions to check if your condition has gotten better or worse in regards to whatever the drugs were treating.
Because at the end of the day, if you overdose on something, someone will still call 911, an ambulance will still come haul you to the hospital, and doctors will still spend millions of dollars trying to save your life if they deem it feasible regardless of if you can afford it or not. Unless you have an explicit will saying not to do that. And when you cannot pay your million dollar hospital stay (and the uninsured cannot) the hospital gets to write off the loss and seek recompense from the government anyway.
And from the governments perspective, around the world, it is simply cheaper to provide regular and preventative care than to deal with the astronomical higher rate of emergency care people have to get in the US because they cannot afford the cheap routine stuff and instead cost the state life saving procedures instead.
But even if it were just weird things that cost a lot, that would still be a serious problem with the idea of expecting people to just buy healthcare as needed.
Even if the best case where they act if your best interest, you have to deal with all your benefits changing when you change jobs.
If all contractors are making 20% above a FTE, that's fine, but that's a decent chunk of change if you're high salary.
This is not evil corporations pushing their insurance choice upon you, it's government pushing employee insurance mandates on corporations. If that bothers you(enough to compel you to take political action), then vote or write your elected official. If your elected official ignores you, then consider that you are not the majority, or your elected official simply does not care, and is motivated by something other than their constituents well being.
The way they do it is by layoffs and planned attrition to return to growth. I'm sure everyone has seen a stock price jump when large scale layoffs are announced.
The main counterbalance is market pressure, which is why high-demand programmers don’t see this as often as other fields where people have less leverage, and, in bluer states, the risk that doing so will trigger government action.
The American worker is getting squeezed on both sides, private employers are offering less and less and government is not picking up the slack. The void will be filled, either by a private corporation or government, but if it's not you can say bye to the middle class.
Any other good or bad effects from Obamacare notwithstanding, if you want to decouple health plans from employment and specific employers, Obamacare is the wrong direction.
I contracted for a few years and it was impossible to get insurance at a reasonable cost because of an extremely common health condition that’s never caused complication in my life. So I was only able to get insurance through employers.
I would not qualify for affordable healthcare because of that pre-existing condition without Obamacare. Even as is, with the fragility of our political system, I am very wary of contract work; the concern that I could lose healthcare at any time based on elected idiots stymies me.
So imagine it's something high risk. "Oh, you have cancer? Yeah, we're not taking you on. Or if we do, we're going to charge you what we expect you to cost, which is going to be insanely high, to where you probably can't afford it."
Net effect: you can't afford healthcare.
The whole point of insurance is to spread the cost and risk widely, so that the healthy outliers help cover the cost of the unhealthy outliers. The fact that it's not always clear who those are (i.e., the healthy eating jogger who has a brain aneurysm and requires multiple expensive surgeries and months of care) should help with any perceived unfairness (though people are really, really bad at accepting that bad things can happen to them).
Your response is, "Well, what if you have cancer?" Fine, I wasn't trying to solve every problem for every person. I'm not suggesting that the current state of healthcare in the US is ideal, or even good. Instead of seeing that there is a path forward and considering that each individual might have to adjust to their own needs, or might have to take a different path altogether, you're just trying to shut down the conversation because the solution I provided is not universally applicable. That's an unnecessary and unhelpful response.
Do you have any actual experience purchasing health insurance before ACA, and later through an ACA exchange? I am not sure what exactly you are "recalling." I purchased health insurance for me and my wife through Covered California last year and found the process quick, the comparisons easy to make, and the pricing clear and reasonable. I have not purchased health insurance myself before the ACA, but from what I was told the options for independent contractors were few and expensive, and were difficult to find.
So, no, in my experience, the ACA did not decouple the affordability of a health plan from one's employer -- it made it worse.
I still don't follow your reasoning. You seem to be saying that any health insurance is too expensive for you to afford, so the ACA doesn't work? As you saw from COBRA, health insurance is expensive, and your compensation package from full-time employment obscures that expense, because typically your employer asks you to pay only part of the expense from your salary. You have to figure the real cost of health insurance into your rates as an independent contractor. The ACA made it easier to shop for health insurance as an independent.
I was in a similar situation to yours - when I was laid off last year, I ended up picking a plan from Covered California that was $80 less expensive per month than the offered COBRA plan, with significantly lower out of pocket costs ($0 vs $9,000 deductible, for starters), in a much more highly rated provider network. So the plan that I was getting from my employer was a lot worse than what I chose to buy through ACA. This would be more apparent if your employer paid out the cost of all of your benefits in your salary and then had you pay the full cost of insurance (which is essentially what happens when you are an independent contractor).
Finally, according to our healthcare rep, no one has been penalized for not taking a healthcare plan. The IRS sends out scary notices every year that they swear to god are going to assess penalties this year. And they haven't so far.
In the UK it’s provided by the NHS but these companies systematically dodge employer’s NI.
Yeah but it's being replaced by insurance that is utterly unaffordable for a lot of contract employees. If we want to decouple health insurance and employers (and we should) then we should be proactively working out what that looks like in the future.
Caused in part by the issues of employability of (some) chronically ill people, driving up costs, and making "individual" plans de facto "high risk pool plans". Which would be helped by, as you said (and I agree):
> decouple health insurance and employer
If holier-than-thou types try to ban these apps based on their own worldview, millions will suffer the loss of their first choice and be forced to accept their second choice - or unemployment.
Look, I can't claim to have been a contractor for any significant length of time, so maybe I'm talking out my ass and every freelancer here can tell me so. But the fact is the american people have let employers have too much power for far too long, and encouraging people to take contract work seems to me like just another step in the wrong direction of giving these companies even more power, and then everyone is worse off for it.
The early Tea Party was supposed to be organized around a theme of "stop the nonsense and denial!" with respect to these kinds of problems, but it was quickly corrupted by the ignorant and by the people who were hoping to find ignorance. Rather than turning energy and community action into positive change, they were derided and stymied.
So now we have Trump who is basically nonsense and denial personified.
Not that Obamacare did anything to get us off the employer healthcare crutch. In that respect, things seem to have just gotten worse.
And I'm a person that doesn't think everything needs to be political! It's just hard to get around the fact that American is grossly misgoverned here. But the American voter can't bring itself to vote on real issues instead of rooting for its political team. This gives me little hope that we'll ever get the 2/3 to 3/4 consensus we'll need to practically fix this (1).
(1) Even if we don't need that many people agreeing to pass legislation, I think things like reforming entire sectors of the economy and employer/employee relationships requires very broad support to be both fair and lasting. Having 51% of voters pee in the cornflakes of the other 49% doesn't get us anywhere. Hopefully that's clear given American politics since 2006 or so.
EDIT: To tie this back to contract work, contract work is great and provides needed dynamism and small-business know-how to the economy. But it's very risky. One needs an independent source of income (other investments, working professional spouse) or a big pile of capital so you can weather ups and downs, take health sabbaticals if needed, hire temp help sporadically, etc.
I agree that they're terrible jobs that one should take only if truly desperate for work or perhaps to supplement another income. But talking about whether people taking them are cut out to negotiate contracts totally misses the point.
However I have heard success stories (online) from people that find work in their local area/network.
I've decided to do my own thing (a sort of micro ISV), and if at all possible I plan to not do freelance work ever again. I'm probably not cut out for it, but I also think software development is just a poor profession for (fixed price) freelance work.
If you have a spouse who is employed and you can gain health coverage for him/her, and if this sort of child care flexibility is important to you (because, say, your toddler gets sick all the time), then working as a contractor can make sense.
At the same time, I generally agree with you regarding the precedent it sets in the aggregate. I also realize that the case I've described is somewhat special.
Back when I worked at Boeing, there were many contractors. They usually were paid double the hourly rate of the salarymen. But they got no benefits, and could be let go without notice.
Turns out that the Boeing benefits package was worth about 40% of the salary, and coupled with the unreliability of contract employment, it worked out about even steven to be paid double.
Sadly, the article does not delve into the pay differential aspect of salary vs contractor. Safety nets don't come for free.
* Do the work from home or wherever I want
* Use my own tools and equipment
* Work when I want to (within reason)
* Have a say in the deadlines
* Can turn down projects
But the minute you dictate my hours and where the work is done? No way.
Isn't that how US law determines if someone is actually a contractor vs an employee?
Slow-motion train wreck.
Being on your own in the workforce often means you don't have the safety net of benefits and other forms of support that traditional workers do.
The best antidote to fear, she says, is to create a new social safety net where freelancers can rely on each other
You are unlikely to get as good a deal from health insurance providers as your employer.
Having insurance negotiated by individuals is a huge impediment for entrepreneurship.
Apparently to you everyone for socialized medicine is a freeloader who doesn't work or pay taxes.
This polarized vision is a large part of what plagues the country.
You realize that -your- cost of health insurance would go down as a direct benefit of being in a larger, more diverse, pool?
Of course, that word genuine, in both contexts, is abused in US healthcare “insurance”, as I’ve discussed in numerous of my comments (and I work in the industry - it’s an absolute abuse of the definition).
The other side of this is considering what happens if you get sick: should we just let you die and bill your next of kin for the cleanup costs? If you’re not that heartless, all of the alternatives cost more than helping people get medical care. I’d much prefer to pay a little more so people can get treated rather than pay for them to be disabled and out of the workforce, or to spare their families the crippling cost of trying to effectively be an insurance pool with a single-digit number of members.
Everyone's particular set of values will vary, but that is mine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm
Though if you have niche skills or knowledge (and I'd include contacts in that), you can be better off with contracts that leverage your specialisms specifically, and not waste your time with work that can be done cheaper by more freely available labour.
The economies of scale argument is not always a good argument because you need to specify where does the deal cut comes from. I think it comes from the fact that the overhead in negotiating a huge amount of contracts is more amortized. So we could have this kind of good deals if independents find a way to reunite themselves. Otherwise the economies of scale argument could basically be the answer to everything ("We need a worldwide government because of economies of scale").
Who knows what we people will find to address this issue. Maybe we'll have coworking space packages with benefits ?
You cant rely on a group and be independent at the same time!
Why couldn't independent unite themselves voluntarily ?
the act of uniting is literally antithetical to being independent. I can't even understand why you would ask that question. Why can't red be blue, makes about as much sense as asking why independent people couldn't unite and still be independent
My apologies if there was a misunderstanding over language. Your English is good enough that I had assumed you were a native speaker
I gave an example. There could be a franchise of co-working space / hotels / resorts all over the world for nomadic or independent people and they would do the bargaining for their clients.
Well yeah, some people are just awesome/lucky/blessed. Given nothing, they know how to build great things. But this is a strong minority of people.
The majority of people are just normal, they may have one or two skill that they are good at, but don't have the skills required to run their own company. A person can be a great employee developer whose capable of building awesome products, but an awful freelance one because they are not good at negotiation, management, finances, etc.
It's a step away from the efficient specialization of a corporate structure, where each employee only needs to be skilled at their particular job, to a guild-like structure where everyone is a worker, manager, accountant, book keeper and politician.
What is it you want to know, though?
I've been permanent, and I've been contract, I really hope I get to finish the rest of my career as a contractor.
Instead, I opting in to a tailored package of benefits that I choose myself. I fund (at very reasonable cost) my insurances directly.
The phrase “social contract” sounds like statist utopian fiction to me. It’s a sad world indeed, when employees can only rely on the impersonal, bureaucratic HR department of their massive employer. Or the cold, dead hand of the state and its civil servants.
Freedom lies in taking responsibility for your own affairs. Insuring yourself against calamity. Saving money for a rainy day.
Step outside our one-size-fits-all system, and further both your career and your security.
If you are a good negotiator then contracting is best. I prefer negotiating the best rate then minmaxing I’m buying my own “benefits” rather than having my employer pick for me.
At the end of the day you pay either way in the sense that high benefits affect salary.
I’d rather get the straight hourly or daily rate and then build on costs for vacation, pension, insurance, etc.
Now it stinks if the rate does not cover necessary expenses as I’ve seen IT jobs try to straight line convert FTE to contractors (eg, $100k salary to $50/hour rate) but that’s why you need to be good at negotiating.
This isn't always true though. For example, health insurance. My employers package is far far better than anything I could get as an individual, and costs 1/5 f the closest comparable package that I could buy on my own.
But that’s what I mean by building it into your rate. If you know insurance costs you $20k to be similar to what a big company pays only $10k, then add it into your contract. Of course, contracting isn’t for everyone, especially if you can’t get a high enough rate to be more valuable to you than w2.
In the short term, contractors can get more money by far - hour to hour. But when life events crop up such as illness, death in the family, personal injury, etc, the house of cards can become unstuck pretty rapidly if people haven't planned well enough for their rainy day.
> You as a contractor just have to factor those additional costs in to your decision-making process when evaluating compensation packages.
Likewise, with the individual mandate removed, there's no reason employees can't opt out of health insurance. But in both cases, the pay does not change. If I opt out of health insurance, and save my company hundreds of dollars per paycheck, I do not get a raise in that amount. The incentive then is to accept health insurance as a employee and do without as a contractor.
The problem for everyone is uninsured contractors will also have incentive to avoid treatment as long as possible due to the expense. By the time they seek treatment, the cost of treating the problem has ballooned. They won't be turned away, they won't be able to pay, and hospitals won't go out of business. I'll let you guess who ends up paying for the outsized medical bills they generate.
And then when they laugh in your face, try it with another company. And another. And another. And let me know how it goes.
He's talking about stuff like Uber. Their whole deal is having a take-it-or-leave it gig-employment offer. They'd laugh in his face if they actually took the time to talk to anyone face-to-face, which they don't.
It is amazing how out of touch people in the software echo chamber are....