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Comment by fiatmoney | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's employee count would look much higher if they counted subcontractors working in their warehouses.

Walmart's number would also be significantly higher if they included part-full-time employees. Walmart has been known to keep employees just under 40hrs so they don't have to provide full benefits.

Well the governments actions in the last few years has more than encouraged companies to keep people at twenty nine or less hours.

That seems to be the new entry point for a lot of service/retail work. Get past the trial period and there may or may not be opportunities to move to forty

Plus all the UPS/FedEx/USPS employees.

That's the case with Microsoft and Apple too, I expect many companies.

When I was a contract programmer at Apple In 1990 I was told that it hired so many contractors so it could inflate the ratio of revenue to employees, which would inflate the stock price. While Apple still had to report our pay it was some other kind of business expense, like office furniture.

A (non-tech) company I used to work for hired temp workers as a way for HR to hit some kind of "low headcount" performance bonus. It was terrible for everyone else, including the temps themselves.

Some Federal agencies are restricted to X number of employees by law. They hire a bunch of contractors to get around this. It's not a great system.

My father once complained about the hot weather making his work at the naval shipyard unbearable.

But dont you have air conditioning my mother asked.

The federal regulations specify the temperature in which AC is permitted he replied. Washington DC is the coolest place that permits air conditioning.

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