If you become an independent contractor, doing all your own taxes and client interface, you'll quickly realize that those "undeserving" suits are saving your sanity by doing all the people-handling and drudge work that you, as a hacker, would hate.
Also, in that situation, those suits pay their employees full time even when the contracted hours this week only add up to 18 hours. They bear the risk of having that happen, and in return, they soak up the profits when they get to charge the contractee for 60 hours worked in a week and still pay only salary to their own employees.
In the case with which I'm most familiar, the contract is for two days a week at $50/hr, and the employee of the contractor company gets ~$12/hr (here in the deep south, that's livable; he owns his own home). That may sound terrible to you, but on days they don't have anything for him to do, he still gets paid. It's a tradeoff.