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That's ironic then, because a huge percentage of the full-time employees at FAANG are actually former contractors who've been converted. So that would suggest a large chunk of their full-time employees are sub-par.

And that still doesn't answer the question--why hire anybody directly at all?

If you're so much better than the other contractors, they could just pay you higher rates. It'd be the same thing.

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"huge percentage".. got any numbers to back that up? i can tell you its a single digit percent at G.

It depends heavily on the role. For SWE and SRE you're probably correct, but for a number of UX engineering roles, temp-to-hire is weirdly common.

I've been on high performing teams at MSFT where it was over 70%.

You basically get to pick and choose who to hire after a year of seeing their code. Bonus if you pay contractors really high rates to attract good talent.

I am familiar with this process at most of the companies in question. No, it is not a huge percentage; to the contrary, it's very difficult for contractors to become full-time employees.

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