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Comment by sharemywin | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand the issue. Hiring contractors is pretty standard practice at most large organizations.

Just because it’s standard practice doesn’t mean it’s ethical. In my experience, the perma-contractors were always getting ripped off when it came to benefits and job security to the maximum extent of California law by some of the most profitable companies in the world, companies that could trivially afford to pay. I found it abhorrent.

The solution is not to bandaid it by forcing a handful of companies to pay more generously, but to affect legislation that will provide everyone with the benefits and job security, regardless of employer. This would remove the inherent competitive advantages that large employers versus small businesses, and be easier to implement in the long run.

Unless somethings changed sense like the law not on google side.

The assignment length issue became a serious topic of conversation in the late 1980s when the IRS announced their intent to re-class Microsoft contractors as common law employees and ultimately make them eligible for the same stock option and retirement benefits offered to regular MS employees. The length of time Microsoft’s temporary and contract employees had been on assignment was part of that argument. The employees in question had all surpassed the ERISA “year of service” rule, which requires that once an” employee” works 1000 hours they are automatically eligible for ERISA governed benefits.

Lots of unethical practises are 'Standard practice' these days. So what?

Hiring contractor doesn't entirely speak unethical to me

Of course not, but that's just it, when engaged in as a practise to deprive long term workers of benefits, it is unethical, at least to me.

Certain jobs aren’t as valued as others. Hence less pay and benefits. Is there something unethical about that?

Probably yes, but aside from that, this tactic is moving upmarket and starting to affect the 'more valuable' jobs too.

“Don’t be evil” was coined in response to the perceived evilness of other actors in the industry.

Upvotes=/= correctness.

HN whales notoriously upvote anti-corporate posts. It reminds me of slacktivism.

Why shouldn't they? Is it expected that everybody should agree with your politics and views on corporations?

What proves "correctness" in this sense?

It's a rather disappointing truth that HN whales, and HN in turn, are left leaning, socialist Democrats. You'd think a tech focused forum would be more diverse, but there's only one viewpoint kosher here. Unfortunate that the very people screaming for diversity lack basic tolerance for diversity of thought.

You don't have to be a "left leaning, socialist Democrat" to disagree with the comment. It is rather worthless as an argument since it just a classic appeal-to-popularity fallacy.

As one someone I think you'd count in that group, I can say that you are unequivocally wrong. I am fairly active on this forum and I don't really reply to people who say things I agree with because its already been said. There is a surfeit of libertarians on this forum that give me opposing viewpoints to debate, as well as a minority of corpratists

Upvotes here may != correctness, but they are a pretty good proxy.

I've been here for a while, and most comments on policy/law really are downvoted for being dumb, not for whatever political label can be pattern-matched to it. If a suggestion presented in your comment correctly accounts for first-order effects and at least pretends to account for second-order effects, you can argue things that match pretty much any political ideology out there, as I've seen done here many times.

(Related, classifying things by political labels doesn't lead to correct answers in general.)

True that upvotes!=correctness. But the idea of karma and incentivizing those with higher karma with more privileges on HN basically means Upvotes=correctness for purposes of being heard on and being able to mould HN.

For all practical purposes on HN, a politically left leaning viewpoint is more likely to incentivize the op, and turn HN more left in a vicious cycle of Upvotes/Downvotes

I partially agree with your general criticism. But as conservative in tech, I'm completely with the lefties on this one.

> HN in turn, are left leaning, socialist Democrats

This is the hostile media effect: ideological users see the platform as dominated by their enemies. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18671955, where HN is "the techno-libertarian norm around here".

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=13110004&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...

HN is made of humans, and humans project concious and unconscious bias in their actions.

Though perceptions may vary, there certainly is one ideology that can be scientifically proven to exist among HN whales. It may or may not be the one I perceive, but to pretend like HN whales carry no ideological baggage in their voting is inaccurate.

Maybe a poll, or sentiment analysis of the most Up-voted and down-voted comments can reveal this.

Thanks

Reply on news.ycombinator.com