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Comment by dudul | Hacker News Reader

Is there a significant difference between terminating a full time, "at will" employee and a contractor? Other than a few weeks of severance I can't think of any.

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Legality aside, culturally Google has a reputation of never having laid off employees. Even when a team gets shuttered the engineers are given months to find a new role on another team.

That kind of positive reputation makes recruiting easier.

They may not have publicly announced layoffs, but I know several who, let's say, overstayed their welcome. They were given months, but no other position appeared. The company was still hiring like crazy, but somehow an internal candidate wasn't acceptable. Go figure.

It's a company like any other and now they're acting more like the herd.

Then that's just a PIP in disguise.

The candidate could very well have been a false positive on the initial hire in the first place. And candidate simply got lucky into that team

I know an extremely high performing engineer that was on a successful but completed project (not at Google). His whole team was given a few months to find a new position. Multiple managers tried to get them on their teams, but the transfers all were blocked at a higher level.

Eventually, he asked for and got severance pay. Shortly after, during the earnings call, the leadership told the investors they were reducing engineering spend by cutting hiring and consolidating programs, but that all redundant engineers were encouraged to seek another position in the company.

Of course, they neglected to mention that such positions didn’t really exist.

It was clearly a layoff, except they strung the laid off employees along for a few months. That way, they didn’t have to damage morale or customer/investor confidence by admitting it was a layoff.

I’m sure people further removed from the situation would assume it was a PIP, which hurts the engineers’ careers.

This is interesting.

Then That’s clearly just lay-off.

Layoffs (especially of 2k people) are interpreted as the company being in trouble. Letting contractors go is interpreted as business as usual.

Defaults matter. FTEs are default live; they stay unless laid off or fired. Contractors are default dead; they're gone unless the contract is renewed. In this case they've rescinded offers that were made, which makes it unusual and newsworthy.

You can’t sue for discrimination or wrongful termination.

You are not protected by the WARN act.

There are more but that’s just off the top of my head.

If there wasn’t a difference, companies wouldn’t do it.

Remember, they have to pay these people more money than they would for a direct hire because the staffing agency takes a cut of their weekly pay.

Contractors can sue for discrimination in some states.

Contractors for Google are still employees working for a contracting company. They could sue if they were discriminated against for membership in a protected class.

Usually this is not true: they are not employees at all, contracting company also hires them as subcontractors, each of them running their own sole propertiorship (at least that's how it works in my country).

But even if they were employees, they are not really getting fired from the contracting company - it can still try and find them another gig, for a different client. So you can say they are not getting fired at all, just suddenly have no work to do (but still have a valid employment contract).

Of course if contracting agency can't find them another position in reasonably short time they will fire them as well, but that's not on Google anymore, so Google can't be sued for that.

I’ve worked as a contractor. Was definitely an employee of the contractor company.

Well if you have accepted a contract offer isn't google in breach of contract?

Self employed contractors seem to get a really bad deal in the USA. If I had agreed a contract in the UK for x months work id expect the employer to honour it and also be paid 2 to 3 times the FTE rate .

This article is using “contractor” to mean whatever they want it to mean. They’re not talking about highly paid independent software developers working on contract. They’re talking about at-will employees of a third party that Google contracted with to fill low-skill positions.

That's not "whatever they want it to mean". That's industry standard terminology. And it's not all low-skill positions. A friend of mine is a PhD optics researcher and he was a Google contractor (the employee of a third party kind) for a few years before moving on to an FTE position elsewhere.

The difference is that contractors can be removed from the company without any action on part of the employeer. If an employer wants to remove contractors one option they have is to do nothing and let the contracts expire. They cannot do that to an employee. They must explicitly tell the employee that their employment is being terminated.

Even for higher skilled "contract positions" you don't seem to command a premium in the USA.

I have seen people getting paid a lot on contracts. But of course it depends who considered them high skilled - Company contracting them or contractor themselves.

Got to keep this discussion in context. Google has no need of hotshot contract programmers. That company already has 50000+ crackerjack programmers and they decline to hire 99% of the candidates who want to join them. In the context of this article, the contractors are people who would not be qualified for full-time engineering jobs at that company. They are performing peripheral business functions or grinding on manual tasks like content moderation.

The positions in question here are basically lower-tier quasi-employees, who are contracted through an employment agency because Google doesn't want the liability of employing them directly. That liability is both legal and reputational, the latter because cutting contractors lets Google cut costs without worrying their FTEs. These contractors work full time for a single client (Google). They expect/hope to do so indefinitely, at least for a year or so, and in normal times they do.

I believe that UK-style contractors are closer to what I'd probably call a "consultant", specialists who get a much higher hourly rate than an FTE would but aren't sad or surprised when a contract ends. Those do exist in the USA, but that's quite different from the "contractors" here.

I think contracts come with clauses that enable either party to give notice and terminate the contract. As to whether or not you get 2 or 3 times the FTE that is highly variable. You wouldn't necessarily know what the FTE rate is. Typically you would see an advert with a specified rate, be recommended or brought in by someone already there. Either you would be made an offer. If you like it you go for it.

FTE for the industry is fairly easy to get and contract agencies will know what the rate is.

I know what the day rate for my skills are £700-800 for central London - though that doesn't factor the commute so probably ought to be a bit more.

I don't think "at will" employees are even guaranteed severance pay every where.

True, this is just an expected curtesy, just like the 2 week notice an employee is supposed to give when leaving.

I always thought this was an odd formality due to the asymmetry; if an employer is terminating you, they generally won't give you a 2 week notice, at least in the USA.

But they are supposed to give you 2 weeks of pay. I prefer to get the cash and have 2 weeks, at home, starting the full time search for a new job. Instead of having to show up for 2 weeks while knowing that I will be gone in a few days :)

There's no such law in any US State that I'm aware of that requires a company provide you severance pay upon termination. Such severance is a courtesy at best. When the circumstances are contentious, it is frequently provided in exchange for an agreement that the terminated employee not sue the company for unlawful termination, discrimination, etc. and not defame the company in any way.

There are also no laws that an at-will employee must give two weeks notice- it is a courtesy at best.

Yes, just like the 2 week notice from the employee. I feel like we've gone full circle twice now.

I've always given 2 weeks notice, never been offered severance pay, but on the other hand never been marched out immediately like some people. In one instance, I gave my resignation and then they said shortly afterwards how about we make it a week from now instead of the full two weeks (or something like that). They paid me according to how long I worked and no more.

In CA and many other states have an implied contract exception to at-will employment. If two weeks notice is in the written employee handbook, or they have a history or doing providing it they do need to give two weeks notice or pay in lieu even if you don't agree to any other agreements

Tell that to all of my former employers...

In most jurisdictions the only thing a company in the US is legally required to do is pay you for the days you've worked in the pay period you are terminated. If they let you go, they are also usually required to give you your final paycheck at termination time. Mandatory severance is not part of the law.

A lot of contractors are incorporated, so the contract is not between google and the contractor, but between google and the contractor's corp (sometimes another agency in between google and corp). So the contractor is not an employee of google and employment laws do not apply. Termination rules (typically a few weeks notice) are defined in the contract.

There's a legal difference at these volumes. The WARN Act applies here and states may have their own laws that also apply.

Contracts are for a specific time period, 12 months for example. FTE has no expiration date.

At will employment can be terminated at any time. Contracts can also be terminated whenever the company decides, as per the present example. Not sure what that has to do with my question.

Fun fact: Montana is the only state that bans this.

It is a little more nuanced than that. Many states have laws that say PTO is earned, it needs to be paid out 100% of the time, some say it depends on the written company policy, other say it never needs to be paid out. And similarly, Montana requires good cause to fire employees(except if they are new employees or meet a number of other exceptions), a number of states have exceptions to at-will that require employers to follow their own policies(and many large companies require two weeks notice, and good cause for firing) and a number have few to no exceptions to at-will.

Sure that's true in theory. In practice contractors are let go at the end of their contract unless there's a renewal and often due to co-employment risk they can only be renewed for a certain length of time before they must either be hired or let go. It's also seen as no big deal to end a contract early. You are there fully at the convenience of the company. Often there's no need to go through HR, they just make a phone call to your agency for you not to come in the next day. That's much different than most companies treat their FTEs, even though in the USA employees have almost no protection in most states anyway.

Just because something is legally similar does not mean it's used the same in practice. This is very true of contracts.

Yes there is. In CA and many other states the at-will employment doctrine has an implied contract exception. That means employers need a good faith business reason, or good cause to fire employees, but not contractors in this context.

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