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Comment by hellisothers | Hacker News Reader

One problem with hiring only contractors is they’re in it only for the money. “Well duh!” You say, but they’re not incentivized to do anything beyond beyond what they’re asked to do and will need to be highly managed. They’re not going to improve performance, make long term tech investments, or (the big one) innovate. Because they have no incentive to, they have no skin in the game.

This is obviously a generalization and of course this may well work great for some companies, including yours.

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"they’re not incentivized to do anything beyond beyond what they’re asked to do and will need to be highly managed."

I actually find that quite offensive. Myself and the other contractors I know are professionals, winning work through reputation and delivering results. That's why we get paid well.

We require less management and always try to deliver above expectations. We have a professional, business to business relationship with our clients, where many employees seem to consider their employer almost a surrogate parent.

Employees have no more skin in the game, in fact I'd say less - if I don't deliver I get no more work.

In my experience, being a salaried employee doesn't really give you skin in the game at all. It's often illusory, as owning a sliver of equity or profit sharing translates to practically no upside or downside. Salaried employees and contracts are equally likely (or unlikely) to be invested in the success of the company. Misusing contractors or mismanaging salaried employees is a failure of management, and ultimately a failure of ownership. Garbage at the top, garbage at the bottom.

That is fair and I apologize for the characterization, it’s a generalization not meant to apply to everybody. I have been on both ”teams” as engineer and manager as well and either way it’s something you have to take into account as you work on or manage the people.

I work a lot with contractors in a different industry (construction/real estate) and I can't say this is true. Even mercenaries want to take pride in a job well done, and if you build a long-term project with them, they'll want to see it succeed. Being in it for the money does not have to mean not caring about what you're working on.

Also, referrals are worth a lot of money in construction. I’ll pay extra if I’m not gambling in a random contractor.

> "but they’re not incentivized to do anything beyond beyond what they’re asked to do and will need to be highly managed"

What skin in the game does an FTE have? Aside from maintaining benefits, which personally I think is preposterous to tie to full-time employment anyway. What else is there? Stock? Contractors are eligible for stock.

Even so, I don't need anyone to do anything beyond what they've been hired to do. Why would I need someone to go above and beyond? I just need smart, competent workers.

You may think that’s the way it’s supposed to work for contractors, but in every single job I’ve ever had as a contractor, I always tried very hard to work as if I was a salaried employee — like I had skin in the game. It’s just part of who I am, and I can’t really change that.

Either way, I am trying to take home a certain amount of money, sure. And make enough to cover my insurance needs, yes.

And as a contractor, I was always sensitive to those clients who wanted to make sure I never billed more than 40 hours a week, regardless of how many hours of work I actually did.

Maybe that’s not how contractors are supposed to do things, but that’s a core part of my personality, and not something I can change — or would want to.

Of course, I’ve never been an Amazon warehouse worker, or a driver for Uber or Lyft, so for them I might act differently. But as an IT consultant many times over the past 30+ years, this has been the way I have worked.

I am w-2 and my salary is in the top <2% of salaries in America and I literally only do my job for money, and I only care about money.

The better I do, the more money I can make.

This is also a feature since contractors can be told upfront what to do in deliverables and the medium for deliverables. I plan on using contractors in the future.

I look forward to not having to inspire or align people and just tell people "this is what I want".

Their skin in the game is their reputation for repeat work.

> "I look forward to not having to inspire or align people and just tell people "this is what I want"."

What I like about contractors is that good ones will give you suggestions and recommendations for improvement, but they won't make it their life's eternal mission to throw your entire project off track by campaigning for their solution.

I had a contractor do literally that.

> One problem with hiring only contractors is they’re in it only for the money.

What do you believe employees are in it for?

The context of this conversation is full-time salaried employees who give more than they financially get, so personal satisfaction, influencing others' behavior, or prestige at the company are some potential answers to your question.

A lot of (most?) tech industry workers change jobs every 2-3 years and develop no particular attachment to or long-term plans for remaining at a company.

Thanks for the answer. Having had experience with both employee and contractor colleagues (and having been both) I'd say the only one that might not apply (but also could, depending on circumstances) to contractors is prestige at the company.

One problem with hiring only contractors is they’re in it only for the money.

I don't think that's totally true, it certainly wasn't in my case. I started contracting because I had had enough of the corporate grind. Quite a lot of my peers seemed to have the same attitude.

> I had had enough of the corporate grind

"Personal Business Commitments" "Performance Reviews" "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "Be sure to share stuff about X new project on your social media!" "Submit your vacation request"

Yes, this. All of this.

I will deliver you technical solutions to the best of my ability, and I will do it as well as I can, making sure things are documented, complete and easy to understand for longer term maintainers, using common tech stacks where possible.

I will not corporate pole-climb or waste my life on company admin, nor pretend I believe in your mission.

Having a customer is so much more intuitive to me compared to having a boss.

I’m a salaried worker and this is my exit strategy. In a year or so, when living situation is secured (mortgage paid off), I’m going contracting.

Played the game to put myself in position to do this, but absolutely weary of it.

I did it and it's worked out pretty well. If you've ditched your major debts then you'd be in an even better position to manage the ups-and-downs of contracting, so I say go for it!

My ownership over the projects I worked on has gone up enormously since I became a freelancer/contractor. I'm not here to merely put in the hours, I'm here to deliver the best product I can. And I tend to stay on a project until I'm sure I can leave without it collapsing.

My incentive is to make my client happy so they may hire me again, to get a successful project on my resume, and to be able to point future clients to this client if they want to know what I can do for them.

I'm a consultant / contractor. I never think about it as "in it only for the money". I try to provide value as much as possible.

Having been a contractor for quite some time, I was in it for the work and I was happy. I usually worked in the middle of the bell curve part of the project and was exempted from all the silly meetings.

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