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Haha, just assumed I overdid it. I don't want to come across as sales-y here and I've only ever placed one person from the forums (and indirectly through another office at that) so just want to make sure my tone isn't "come work with me, I'm the greatest" because I don't post here to make $$.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:42
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Hey Dark Helmut, I know you've said in the past that LinkedIn is basically "when in doubt, send a connection request." Which is what I've been doing and hey, my LinkedIn's looking pretty decent now. My question is - if you, as an IT recruiter, had literally zero shared connections with IT_Worker_00, and that person sent you a connection request, would you accept it based on their job history? I'm assuming that given their position, recruiters are fine with this and get why someone would do it, but I was interested in your take. I'm not looking to move anywhere for at least the next year, but I'd rather have some connections in place for if I do start looking around.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:59
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evol262 posted:Really not trying to pick on you specifically, but contracting isn't anything to do with you. It's to do with the business needs of that company. You need a job, recruiter finds you, recruiter fills that job. I've never felt disrespected or devalued in any way from being a contractor. I know not every work environment is the same, and there a probably places where people look down on contractors, but a job is a job, and it's really not anything personal. Your self esteem shouldn't be contingent on whether you're a capex or opex. Contracting doesn't have anything to do with the employee?  I am really glad that in certain types of contracting being done that it is no different benefits wise from being FTE. Saying that, I would still assume for the overwhelming majority of contract workers in the US both the pay and benefits are less than FTE on average. Being approached for a contract/contract to hire position wouldn't affect my self esteem at all. It would simply be shitcanned.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:27
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you should be thanking your corporate overlords for the mere opportunity to validate your existance as a resource beep boop
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Jul 30, 2015 19:31
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:Hey Dark Helmut, I know you've said in the past that LinkedIn is basically "when in doubt, send a connection request." Which is what I've been doing and hey, my LinkedIn's looking pretty decent now. If they were local and/or had some sort of IT skill set, absolutely. I don't go out of my way to connect with people out of my market, but I'd probably just click accept anyway. The people I NEVER connect with are out of town recruiters, since they are always spamming me with their consultants, adding me to their mailing lists, and generally cold calling me with BS I don't need. Sound familiar?
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Jul 30, 2015 19:43
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Sickening posted:Contracting doesn't have anything to do with the employee? You literally don't exist to them at the time when they've decided they need a contractor. Sickening posted:I am really glad that in certain types of contracting being done that it is no different benefits wise from being FTE. Saying that, I would still assume for the overwhelming majority of contract workers in the US both the pay and benefits are less than FTE on average. Sickening posted:Being approached for a contract/contract to hire position wouldn't affect my self esteem at all. It would simply be shitcanned. go3 posted:you should be thanking your corporate overlords for the mere opportunity to validate your existance as a resource beep boop A job is a job. It doesn't matter what line item you fit into on the budget, does it?
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Jul 30, 2015 19:44
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evol262 posted:
It just depends what's important to you and what's near the top of your wish list. The bottom line is that there are plenty of contracts that make sense and a lot of them pay better than comparable FTE roles. If you have an in demand skill set and you can command an FTE job that meets all your needs and your team will all be invited to your wedding and your boss will share a cigar with you over your first-born, then more power to you. I feel like in most places though, people are there primarily to earn a living, and any other niceties on top of that are just icing on the cake. I don't mean this to be as snarky as it might sound, but you (Sickening) just come across like that guy who thumbs his nose at contractors or sees them as scabs who "they took our jobs" (southpark). Like evol said, a job is a job as long as it meets your needs. If you have the skills, you can contract for years and make great money and still feel validated at the end of the day.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:58
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spud posted:Would still try and remove you from the equation ASAP. What are you on about? Getting rid of system admins and replacing them with...?
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Jul 30, 2015 19:59
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Dark Helmut posted:I don't mean this to be as snarky as it might sound, but you (Sickening) just come across like that guy who thumbs his nose at contractors or sees them as scabs who "they took our jobs" (southpark). Like evol said, a job is a job as long as it meets your needs. If you have the skills, you can contract for years and make great money and still feel validated at the end of the day. If you took it as me being "they took our jobs" then I don't know what to tell you. Me making GBS threads on a job posting is a lot different that looking down on an employee. There is a huge difference. Sickening fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 20:03
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Again just my two cents but when I was on contract I got better pay with overtime to compensate for the lovely health coverage and benefits. Not all contract or contract to hire jobs are bad. Just do your homework and see if the job is a good fit for you. I also didn't have coworkers who looked down on me because I was on contract and not a full time employee.
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Jul 30, 2015 20:20
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i really have a hard time believing some of you are so dense as to not be able to understand what Sickening is talking about but then again this is IT
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Jul 30, 2015 20:37
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Internet Explorer posted:What are you on about? DevOps. Or network engineers who will slum it.
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Jul 30, 2015 20:41
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Colonial Air Force posted:DevOps. Or network engineers who will slum it. This is a hilarious post. Thank you.
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Jul 30, 2015 20:42
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Internet Explorer posted:This is a hilarious post. Thank you. It's how hiring managers think!
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Jul 30, 2015 20:45
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go3 posted:i really have a hard time believing some of you are so dense as to not be able to understand what Sickening is talking about but then again this is IT Why don't you try explaining what you think it means? Multiple people "not understanding" in the same direction is a good indication that doesn't read however you think it does.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:02
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Sickening posted:Perspective is for sure a big part of it for me as well. If someone wanted to bring me on contract to hire I would believe they either don't have confidence in hiring me or they don't respect the position I am coming in for. Both wouldn't work for me. go3 posted:you should be thanking your corporate overlords for the mere opportunity to validate your existance as a resource beep boop Maybe I'm just dense, but to avoid beating this dead horse further I'll say it just seems like you need the perceived security blanket and validation that comes with the FTE label. And maybe in the state/country/enclave where you reside it's a reality that it actually grants you that security. But in most of the US at least it's not the case. To me, I don't look to my employer to validate my existence or boost my ego and tell me I'm a special snowflake. If I get this (which I currently do) I'm certainly more apt to be loyal and I'm generally happier, but I don't require it and did mercenary contract work for years. A job is a job is a job and I believe firmly in working to live and not the other way around. I could be off base here, but that's what it feels like you all are exuding. Everyone is different and as long as you can find what you need with an employer where you are, then that's great. My point is just that if a day comes when you are less than happy, you might be closing the door on a great opportunity if you are completely unwilling to contract for a bit.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:04
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go3 posted:i really have a hard time believing some of you are so dense as to not be able to understand what Sickening is talking about but then again this is IT Whether you're employer treats you like poo poo or not has nothing to do with your status as a contractor or FTE and a lot to do with your employer being more or less lovely. There's ample evidence in this very thread that being an FTE is no protection against abuse or termination. I personally had very good luck working as a sub and knows a bunch of other people who did as well. There are no generalizations to be made, it's all about the specific opportunity.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:12
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I'm waiting for someone to invent EmployeesAsSimpleServants or eASS. It'll have a virtualized living environment (in reality conexes with one one hole for the bathroom and another for food and water), full of tech employees and when someone needs a "resource" they pull a lever and a sysadmin gets tranquilized and dropped off at the workplaces doorstep with their foot chained to the required server rack or cubicle.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:42
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My employer almost always brings in new people on a six month contractor-to-perm basis, and it's absolutely a try before we buy situation. The only thing I can really add to the conversation about it is that while there may be only a trivial legal difference in the difficulty of terminating a contractor vs terminating a perm, there's a huge difference from an HR basis. We're a large company and if I went to my HR rep and said Joe Geek is not doing good work and I want to terminate, they'd march me through months of paperwork and performance improvement plans. We'd have to show that we gave Joe every opportunity blah blah blah. If I bring in someone on a six month contract and realize four months into their contract that they aren't the person I want, I just don't convert them to perm. No mess, no fuss, no increased paperwork. Even a probationary period isn't quite as clean or easy from an HR point of view. This has sometimes saved us - we had one guy who interviewed as a smart guy with a great work ethic, but turned out to be absolutely unable to focus on his own job. His 40 hour work weeks were 25 hours of what we wanted done, 20 hours of telling other people what they were doing wrong, and five hours of being told he wasn't allowed to work OT and needed to get out of the office. On the other hand, we very nearly got burned once when a change of upper management and budget priorities almost put us in the position of telling a highly respected contractor that we'd love to convert him to permanent but at a lower salary than we'd ever discussed. They'd have turned us down with extreme prejudice and been right to do so. We only dodged that bullet by finding a different slot to hire them into, and even then, there was some friction.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:43
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Zorak of Michigan posted:
That's a great example of why you WOULD want an employer to do CtH. What if this guy was on your team and you just had to deal with him for years? That try before buy thing helps keep shitheads off your team. Moral: don't be a shithead and you'll get hired anyway...
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Jul 30, 2015 21:55
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Dark Helmut posted:That's a great example of why you WOULD want an employer to do CtH. What if this guy was on your team and you just had to deal with him for years? That try before buy thing helps keep shitheads off your team. Moral: don't be a shithead and you'll get hired anyway... Job security isn't a hand-wavey, make-believe thing. I can only imagine what it would have been like buying my house if I had to switch jobs and resubmit my entire application for underwriting every few months. It would have taken a year to close.
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Jul 31, 2015 00:10
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On the contractor vs. FTE Discussion, in no way does this change the professional value of that individual. Employers and Employees both have different needs and sometimes these are met - even with contractors. On the flip side, it's disappointing to see so many positions CtH but I'm young and it doesn't bother me but if you have a mortgage, kids that's different. If I was in those shoes I wouldn't want to constantly be on edge knowing that I might need to look for another job in $X time frame or be simply let go without any rational explanation without any kind of so-to-speak insurance. There's also the whole subject of "permatemps" but that's another topic for a different day. Vulture Culture posted:I kind of sympathize with this in situations where the particular employee protections in a given state make it hard to get rid of someone, but pick a state at random in the US, and it's most likely an at-will employment state. I'd also wager that most of US Population is based in States with higher bars for employee protection. Zorak of Michigan posted:My employer almost always brings in new people on a six month contractor-to-perm basis, and it's absolutely a try before we buy situation. I suppose once in a while a poor candidate will be hired or corporate bureaucracy may prevent necessarily termination but using CtH for these problem sounds like a rather lazy approach. A treatment, not a cure. Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 00:22
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Vulture Culture posted:I kind of sympathize with this in situations where the particular employee protections in a given state make it hard to get rid of someone, but pick a state at random in the US, and it's most likely an at-will employment state. A date to decide the match isn't working just feels passive-aggressive to both the employer and the candidate. Drop the hammer, help the person find a new job if you're feeling generous, and move on. Vulture Culture posted:Job security isn't a hand-wavey, make-believe thing. I can only imagine what it would have been like buying my house if I had to switch jobs and resubmit my entire application for underwriting every few months. It would have taken a year to close. It's the idea that contracting is somehow less secure than FTEs which is part of the problem. You're not obligated to take short term contracts, and many contract to hire and right to hire jobs are 6mo+ in duration. I've been on contracts which are longer than any job in the employment histories of people I interview, and I wasn't waiting for funding every month -- I knew 4 months in advance. If I'm speaking in generalities, I'd say that more IT contracts above junior/entry are long term than short (0-6mo) Tab8715 posted:On the flip side, it's disappointing to see so many positions CtH but I'm young and it doesn't bother me but if you have a mortgage, kids that's different. If I was in those shoes I wouldn't want to constantly be on edge knowing that I might need to look for another job in $X time frame or be simply let go without any rational explanation without any kind of so-to-speak insurance. Underwriters don't care. I got a mortgage as a contractor 9 months into a 12 month contract. Contracts are not less secure than FTEs. You won't be at a contract for more than a year and a half at most places (due to when people start being considered employees under the direction of the client who need benefits from them, etc), but many of us change jobs more often than every 2 years anyway. Tab8715 posted:There's also the whole subject of "permatemps" but that's another topic for a different day. Tab8715 posted:I'd also wager that most of US Population is based in States with higher bars for employee protection. Tab8715 posted:I suppose once in a while a poor candidate will be hired or corporate bureaucracy may prevent necessarily termination but using CtH for these problem sounds like a rather lazy approach. A treatment, not a cure. It's less about poor candidates (though it mitigates that, probationary periods also do) and more about finding more great candidates.
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Jul 31, 2015 01:10
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Most companies have prevent firing permanent workers without a valid reason, that do not extend to contract workers. This is especially true in larger companies with well defined company policies, even in at will states. Contractors are often going to have the legal minimum amount of rights, where the full time coworkers are better protected. Also contractors can receive benefits, but in practice the benefits for full time workers are nearly always better for the same position. Contract jobs are rarely compensated for the additional risk of finding new employment. This doesn't mean that all temporary or contract to hire jobs are never worth it, but that a contract should pay more per hour to compensate compared to a full time position. When a large company hires someone on for a 3-6 month contract to hire position are they getting paid a greater salary compared to full time workers to make up for PTO/healthcare/401k?
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Jul 31, 2015 01:18
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lampey posted:Most companies have prevent firing permanent workers without a valid reason, that do not extend to contract workers. This is especially true in larger companies with well defined company policies, even in at will states. Contractors are often going to have the legal minimum amount of rights, where the full time coworkers are better protected. Also contractors can receive benefits, but in practice the benefits for full time workers are nearly always better for the same position. Contract jobs are rarely compensated for the additional risk of finding new employment. This doesn't mean that all temporary or contract to hire jobs are never worth it, but that a contract should pay more per hour to compensate compared to a full time position. I know we typically don't hire 1099 workers unless it's a short-term $300+/hr consultant with a very rare skill set. We go through placement firms and those are all w-2 employees paid directly by the firm. Unless it's understood that it's a position that is truly temporary, almost all of the ones I've seen have been hired full time after about 6months (which is the typical turn around for an out-of-budget personnel increase). Like I said, we don't do it because we're doing some kind of try-before-you-buy. We're doing it because we have less red tape for capital expenditure (which contractors fall under), so we can get a position filled quickly. Then we don't have to expedite approvals (which is whole other pain in the rear end) to move him/her over to FT status.
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Jul 31, 2015 01:46
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evol262 posted:You can be let go at any job. W2 contractors get unemployment insurance, and most contractors are not "constantly on edge". When your contract is coming up for renewal and you're not sure, maybe, but you usually get a least a month's notice. I've fired people with less warning as FTEs. I agree with just about everything you've said however that's simply not the case for everyone. Overall, there's more security with FTE-Positions. It's even more desirable if you own a home or have kids. evol262 posted:It's also doesn't happen a lot in IT, since we don't get a ton of 3 month contracts (in general) Weren't you the one to bring-up the bit about MSFT (ab)using contractors and making effective "permatemp" positions? Granted, MSFT is just one very big fish in a ocean but still? evol262 posted:The idea behind CtH is budgetary for the client, in part, but it's also about skimming the cream. You get a steady flow of staff who are pretty average, but some who are really good. Your work always gets done, but your odds of finding a "diamond in the rough" go up dramatically as a simple matter of sampling size. That's interesting and strikes me as the "inverse" of Stack Ranking and I now understand why some view contractors as second-class employees.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:12
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evol262 posted:Thus is easy to say if you're at a small shop or a company which only operates in one state with no protected staff, but many large companies have much more elaborate remediation required before firing. "Drop the hammer instead of setting an expirations date" sounds nice, but it's much more difficult to get rid of people than just at-will implies. evol262 posted:It's the idea that contracting is somehow less secure than FTEs which is part of the problem. You're not obligated to take short term contracts, and many contract to hire and right to hire jobs are 6mo+ in duration. I've been on contracts which are longer than any job in the employment histories of people I interview, and I wasn't waiting for funding every month -- I knew 4 months in advance. evol262 posted:Underwriters don't care. I got a mortgage as a contractor 9 months into a 12 month contract. Underwriters look for consistent employment over at least the past 24 months when considering someone for a mortgage. Contractors working on fixed-length contracts are actually at an advantage here compared to people who work on contract-to-hire and then get hosed around at the eleventh hour (see Daylen Drazzi's neverending stream of fuckery, or basically anyone else who has to deal with the incompetent and abusive government contractor economy). On a fixed-length contract, you can line up your next contract before you finish the current one. You don't have the same capability to do that where a contract-to-hire arrangement falls through.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:50
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lampey posted:Most companies have prevent firing permanent workers without a valid reason, that do not extend to contract workers. This is especially true in larger companies with well defined company policies, even in at will states. Contractors are often going to have the legal minimum amount of rights, where the full time coworkers are better protected. Termination of contract is easier because they're not your employee, but this is an argument in favor of contracting, not against, given that Misogynist's "just sit down and drop the hammer on a staff member who's not working out" is easily applied in one of these situations but not the other. But really, W2 contractors don't really have less legal protection. lampey posted:Also contractors can receive benefits, but in practice the benefits for full time workers are nearly always better for the same position. I don't think anyone is saying "I'd rather have a contract to hire position than FTE" (as an employee). We're saying "things aren't as dreadful as the FTE or bust crowd says, and you can have excellent experiences contracting". Also, that those of us in hiring positions or at large companies with a lot of red tape can see the appeal from the business end. lampey posted:Contract jobs are rarely compensated for the additional risk of finding new employment. This doesn't mean that all temporary or contract to hire jobs are never worth it, but that a contract should pay more per hour to compensate compared to a full time position.  for a pay bump in the length of a contract anyway. Where's the "increased risk" that you don't already have?lampey posted:When a large company hires someone on for a 3-6 month contract to hire position are they getting paid a greater salary compared to full time workers to make up for PTO/healthcare/401k? Tab8715 posted:I agree with just about everything you've said however that's simply not the case for everyone. Overall, there's more security with FTE-Positions. It's even more desirable if you own a home or have kids. I'm sure there's some class of marginalized "never made it past T2 help desk in 20 years then their company closed" contract peons who are going back and forth on some 3-6 month help desk contract treadmill, but those people were hosed anyway. Tab8715 posted:Weren't you the one to bring-up the bit about MSFT (ab)using contractors and making effective "permatemp" positions? Granted, MSFT is just one very big fish in a ocean but still? The problem with the presentation: the idea that long-term contract workers at Microsoft (for example) have no option but to stay there. And this isn't some "the free market will solve the problem" thing (it won't), but there is a thriving job market in most of the localities that have "permatemps". Mostly financials swapping employees who work 12 months here then 12 months there then back to the first. But Microsoft's employees sue basically for the opportunity cost of being at Microsoft but not getting stock. They have the option (and the job market) to leave. They're not wage slaves in a company town in 1870. Also, highly skilled workers with experience should not be (or feel) trapped in a contract in a job market as vibrant as IT is. Microsoft is the scapegoat here, but people don't stay with companies for 30 years anymore (he says, on a forum which has but rails against the unfairness and supposedly transitory nature of contract work). If you want a company that will give you stock options and 401k matches and 4 weeks of vacation and 5 year watches and all that, FTE is what you want.If you basically want money and a job you can be at to work on some interesting stuff while you build your skills, get some certs, and move on to Sr Whatever guy in 2 years, there's no difference. Sickening shouldn't take contract offers if he shouldn't want to (I'm assuming Sickening is Sr and has lots of experience). Lots of other people on here shouldn't. But there are a lot of people here who shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, and pages full of "contract work is oppression and you can get fired on 3 second's notice after your peers piss on you!!1!wgeuwicnrqxovkktlwco" are doing early/mid-career level people reading the thread a disservice. There are plenty of interesting, well-paying contract jobs where you're treated like everyone else there, and you shouldn't ignore them on some kind of misguided principle if you want to make the move from helpdesk to admin or msp to corp. Vulture Culture posted:This is only as true as the company wants it to be. While I'd never advocate actually using stack ranking, companies where it's in use seem to have no problem with this: Amazon, Microsoft, etc. let go low performers all the time without any fuss. It's an expected part of the company's culture. Vulture Culture posted:"You're not obligated to take short term contracts" is the "not all men!" of tech hiring. It's a dumb argument that does nothing but misdirect the issues somewhere else. It's something that I mostly said to direct the conversation away from the short-term migration contracts that nobody in this thread would want to take anyway, and into a comparison of contract-to-hire (which tends to be longer term) and FTEs without muddying the waters with short term work. The issues with short term contracts aren't going away because we're not talking about them. But we're not talking about them because they're not good analogues to FTE work. Vulture Culture posted:6-month contracts make it really difficult to get the mortgage approved and property closed in the contract window without having to resubmit the entire thing to underwriting. At best, you have a late closing. At worst, the seller walks with your deposit. Vulture Culture posted:Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Your one anecdote doesn't change that. Vulture Culture posted:Underwriters look for consistent employment over at least the past 24 months when considering someone for a mortgage. Vulture Culture posted:Contractors working on fixed-length contracts are actually at an advantage here compared to people who work on contract-to-hire and then get hosed around at the eleventh hour (see Daylen Drazzi's neverending stream of fuckery, or basically anyone else who has to deal with the incompetent and abusive government contractor economy). On a fixed-length contract, you can line up your next contract before you finish the current one. You don't have the same capability to do that where a contract-to-hire arrangement falls through. But the reason that I'm presenting a counter-viewpoint to everyone is that people just hear about Daylen Drazzi's neverending stream of fuckery and that one guy they know who's worked for an incompetent or unethical firm who didn't tell them their contract expired and they showed up in the morning to find out their badge didn't work and nobody let them know. But there are people, and people in this thread, who've had very good experiences contracting, and saying "hey, I've been there, and it doesn't always work that way" doesn't mean people don't get hosed, because they do, but it means that it isn't normal or expected. This thread has the worst case contractor stories, not the normal ones, but that's what all the IT bitching threads are about, I guess. evol262 fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 02:50
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evol262 posted:Also, highly skilled workers with experience should not be (or feel) trapped in a contract in a job market as vibrant as IT is. Microsoft is the scapegoat here, but people don't stay with companies for 30 years anymore (he says, on a forum which has If we could remove consumer credit from the equation -- reform the way the finance industry assesses risk, in other words -- these kinds of things wouldn't be nearly so bad. But until that changes, I'm going to be mad about the practice.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:57
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Vulture Culture posted:IT isn't a single job market. There are lots of local job markets, a lot of different verticals, and a lot of very specialized skills. Someone with fifteen years of experience designing HPC storage solutions around GPFS or administering some medical PACS system is going to have a very different experience than a generalist who can apply for a position at one of a hundred different companies looking to hire a magician infrastructure automator. Unsurprisingly, because of the CapEx/OpEx split, people with these very specialized skills are often the ones most getting jerked around by these kinds of arrangements. How likely is it that either of those candidates got those skills in a local market so dominated by one employer (or cabal of employers) that they can set an unbreakable cycle of permatemping which is impossible to escape from? I got at it a little bit earlier, but life isn't fair. The guy who has spent the last 15 years digging himself into a hole where the only people who can see him at the bottom are hogan integrators or whatever is more than a little responsible for his own circumstances.
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Jul 31, 2015 03:05
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I finally got to upgrade my asa5505 from 8.2 to 8.3 ( the major nat overhaul). It took 3 minutes. Once everything came back up I did some testing, internet worked, email worked, SAP worked, mill software worked, etc etc everything seemed fine. I asked my boss to test his VPN connection, but after showing up at noon he spent the afternoon upgrading his work tablet to windows 10 and the tablet was unusable during my testing. He says don't worry about it so we both go home. 1 hour later I get frantic emails from my boss saying the mill software went down, which is internal only and never actually touches the firewall, or even a router; he cannot VPN in to work. He has me pick him up and we both go to work. We restart essential mill software and again it seems fine. We kind of not really guess at what the VPN issue is and say it's acceptable to be down tonight and I can try to fix tomorrow. We can VPN into the ASA, but we can't actually leave the device, furthest we can go is ping the interface of the ASA. We go home. 20 minutes later text messages come in saying the mill software is down again. The vendor for the mill software can't VPN in to take a look (lol). So I might be playing taxi again to go and undo my change for real. Methanar fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 03:14
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evol262 posted:It's also only as untrue as the company wants it to be, and there are just as many financials and healthcare firms and manufacturing jobs and whatever else that make it very difficult to get rid of people. evol262 posted:It's an overt statement of your agency in life. You have agency. You don't have to take something just because it exists. Saying "I'm willing to contract" does not mean saying "I want short term contracts". I never did, and I never took them. evol262 posted:Your pigeonholing the argument into 6 month contracts doesn't change the gist either, and my explicit mention of being at a 12 month contract was an qualifier intended to say "there are lots of longer term contracts out there, and you can be at one and still get a mortgage." But you totally read around that, so... evol262 posted:But the reason that I'm presenting a counter-viewpoint to everyone is that people just hear about Daylen Drazzi's neverending stream of fuckery and that one guy they know who's worked for an incompetent or unethical firm who didn't tell them their contract expired and they showed up in the morning to find out their badge didn't work and nobody let them know. But there are people, and people in this thread, who've had very good experiences contracting, and saying "hey, I've been there, and it doesn't always work that way" doesn't mean people don't get hosed, because they do, but it means that it isn't normal or expected. This thread has the worst case contractor stories, not the normal ones, but that's what all the IT bitching threads are about, I guess. evol262 posted:Let's ask a different question: Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 03:14
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evol262 posted:The law distinguishes between W2 and not W2, not contract or not. Being 1099 in a directly managed position (i.e. not actually independent) is a big no in employment law. And the IRS gets mad. A W2 contractor for any large company is not going to be fired without reason, even though legally they could be, because there is a company policy. A contractor for Teksys/tata/kelly services that is doing work for a large company will be fired without any prior warning. Health insurance and 401k are pretty important unless you want to work for the rest of your life. Even completely well intentioned contract to hire jobs are doing a disservice to the new hires by paying them much less in total comp initially in an opaque way.
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Jul 31, 2015 03:29
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This is a fun read, let's talk about unions tomorrow
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Jul 31, 2015 03:51
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Working in IT 3.0: Contract to Fire, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Do the Needful
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Jul 31, 2015 04:01
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The Fool posted:This is a fun read, let's talk about unions tomorrow The bullet to the brain this thread needs.
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Jul 31, 2015 04:11
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Vulture Culture posted:You feel that specialists are second-class citizens in the job market. I get that. But suspend your disbelief for a second, and pretend that these are people who actually have skills that are valuable and in demand (but are not interchangeable across dozens of verticals the way yours might be), and pay well, but they're still getting screwed over by this insane system of serial non-commitment.
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Jul 31, 2015 04:17
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Vulture Culture posted:You don't have to be risk-averse with employee terminations just because you can. Vulture Culture posted:The majority of contracts are 6-month contracts. You saying "but 12-month contracts exist!" is almost completely irrelevant to the conversation. Each 6-month contract displaces one potential longer contract or full-time direct hire from the job market. The more popular a hiring method the 6-month contract becomes, the worse the job market gets. Each contract displaces one full-time direct hire from the job market if you're going that way. Which is both true and meaningless, because talking about it on a forum won't change that reality, and the elasticity of the labor market is something we could potentially talk about, but most people need jobs. Vulture Culture posted:I'm not reading around anything. I'm arguing the general situation, and you're busy scurrying around pointing out all the exceptions. Those are valuable to know, but mostly not relevant to this conversation. Vulture Culture posted:This is fair. I'm not saying "don't do it." I'm saying "widespread acceptance of this in industry is predatory and has a far-flung impact on people's ability to meet their life goals." The relegation of workers to a capital expense rather than a mutually beneficial relationship is deplorable, but it is what it is, and you can still use contract work as a stepping stone to your life goals as long as you have a clear idea of what contracting can offer you, but that's also applicable to almost all employment, and the cacophony of "goons in wells" who are obstinately holding onto jobs which are sucking them dry isn't any better. Vulture Culture posted:You feel that specialists are second-class citizens in the job market. I get that. But suspend your disbelief for a second, and pretend that these are people who actually have skills that are valuable and in demand (but are not interchangeable across dozens of verticals the way yours might be), and pay well, but they're still getting screwed over by this insane system of serial non-commitment. I don't support the system, and I know far too many Empress DBAs and Hogan specialists who are slowly watching their niches disappear into the gulf of mainstream software developers and J2EE on Tomcat a decade or more before they need to retire with no possibility to escape a vicious cycle of contracts contingent on those skills and no more, until they blend into the background of marginalized COBOL maintenance programmers. They are getting screwed, and it's terrible. But the best advice we can give in the SH/SC career threads is how to avoid that, and accepting contract/consulting work can help with that as much as any other job. Maybe more, since the relative ease of dropping a contract employee makes employers more willing to take a chance on a candidate who may not be a perfect fit, giving the employee a chance to expand their skillset. lampey posted:A W2 contractor for any large company is not going to be fired without reason, even though legally they could be, because there is a company policy. A contractor for Teksys/tata/kelly services that is doing work for a large company will be fired without any prior warning. Health insurance and 401k are pretty important unless you want to work for the rest of your life. Even completely well intentioned contract to hire jobs are doing a disservice to the new hires by paying them much less in total comp initially in an opaque way. It's not opaque at all. Health insurance and 401k are pretty important. And you should get them. As soon as possible, but eventually. The ACA makes health insurance a non-argument, though it's probably still more expensive for contractors since their firms have less negotiation power and a smaller risk pool. But repeatedly and pointedly telling people to avoid contract to hire jobs is doing them a disservice by establishing an unwarranted and unrealistic expectation of what to expect as a contractor. Contracting (and contract to hire) can be an invaluable early/mid-career tool which shouldn't be discounted.
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Jul 31, 2015 04:27
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The Fool posted:This is a fun read, let's talk about unions tomorrow (Related) Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 04:29
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Methanar posted:I finally got to upgrade my asa5505 from 8.2 to 8.3 ( the major nat overhaul). I saw this drowning amidst all the CtH and FTE talk. It sounds like you got your boss to let you actually do some stuff. Good for you. And I know this is a pain in the rear end, but poo poo breaking is (at least for me) the best way to learn. Better to be done in a lab, but you work within your constraints. I don't know ASA, and I'm passingly familiar with iOS, but from having to fix "it broke and I can't tell why! before", I'll suggest a couple things to look at if the ASA upgrade is still on the table for the near future.
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Jul 31, 2015 05:38
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