Ok but then contractors have the freedom to work whatever hours they want, not show up to the office, and subcontract out their work - right? If so that might be more appealing than being an employee
Not in practice, because they use a hiring entity to dictate the terms. You're expected to show up on a schedule, do the work etc. much like a FTE, but you're not an FTE.
I think some folks have this illusion of software contractors that this is somehow common, it really isn't. The norm is you-are-almost-but-not-quite an employee type work environment, and thats at the better places.
I've worked at a place where contractors were treated like they weren't human, basically. Worst equipment, forced to work in an old warehouse that barely passed code to be considered retrofitted for an office, people routine got sick out there because they were exposed to the elements. Not to mention, during fire season (this was California) they were in a building that didn't have a good enough air filtration system, so they were forced to sit in smoke all day, more or less
I quit that place pretty quickly, but it was nothing short of terrible
I think the GP's point was that's how it should be. If a company is going to -- for "legal reasons" -- not treat contractors the same way they treat employees, then they should be doing so not only in bad, exclusionary ways, but also in good ways, with the expected perks of being a contractor that FTEs don't get: freedom to set their own hours, work where they want, and subcontract out their work.
But no, companies like Google want to have their cake and eat it too: they want a class of workers where they can require of them more or less the exact same things that they require of their employees (and much more easily fire them), but can give them a lot less, and treat them like a second class.
That's entirely Google's choice. It does not have to be that way. But they've decided to create this two-class system for their own benefit, not for anyone else's.
Also consider that these people are probably often not contractors in the legal sense. They're likely W-2 employees of some sort of staffing agency, who are then placed at Google. Google pays the staffing agency, the staffing agency pays the "contractor" a salary (significantly less than what Google pays the staffing agency), and all is fine... legally, anyway.
>> Google pays the staffing agency, the staffing agency pays the "contractor" a salary (significantly less than what Google pays the staffing agency), and all is fine... legally, anyway.
The staffing agency vig is so high it is practically the same as an FTE.
I used to work for a temp agency (clerical, not in tech) and I remember once seeing what my agency was getting paid for me on an hourly basis. Iirc, it was something like 3-4x what I was getting paid hourly. It was kind of sickening tbh. Plus many agencies forbid temps from being hired away without paying an outrageously hire fee to do so.
It felt like being an indentured servant in many ways. The only upside was that if you hated the place you worked, you could always ask to be reassigned someplace else. But that's the only major plus I can think of.
The most profitable consulting-type businesses have profit margins >=50%, before distributing profits to equity holders. But either way I'm not sure about your implicit assumption here that the profits should be comparable to the pay of the employees.
Hey, you began your comparison with the most profitable consulting firms…
2 things -
1) Accenture has an EBIT of 20%.
2) The tippy top of the consulting pyramid plays on branding in a way that the average firm does not.
The VAST majority of service driven firms will not become McKinsey etc. making this a poor comparison
Finally - I doubt that the top firms have those margins, I would most definitely like to be corrected though. If you could clarify or share your source, I’d appreciate it.
Note I mention profit before distributing to equity holders. The highest prestige and therefore most profitable consulting companies are all partnerships.
Some highly profitable consulting companies that are partnerships have very high margins, if you don't include the profit sharing component of the pay of equity partners (but do include bonus and fixed salary). The primary public source I can point to is that many top law firms publish their margins to be >=50%.
As for McKinsey, according to Google, McKinsey has 10k consultants and 2700 partners. There are 30k employees, so I give you that the overhead rate is higher than law firms. But
given how different pay is between partners and non-partners, and there is still a relatively large portion of partners compared to other employees, the margins, if calculated this way, is probably still pretty high.
Now is this the right way of considering profit margin? There are some good reasons to disagree with it. But in the same way people can like or dislike EBITDA. At least, it's like nobody discounts Larry and Sergey's cut from Google's profit.
In this context, I would argue it is indeed a good way, especially for the purposes of discussing the discrepancy between grunt pay and hourly charge. It tells us that a very large part of that discrepancy goes to equity partners (who aren't those doing the execution work), rather than "overhead" as it's being argued. This is very different from big-corp type public companies where, even though executive pay is a lot, the bulk of the pay goes to shareholders ans a large number of rank and file and moderately paid middle-managers, which I suspect to be closer to accenture's profile.
The idea of equity in a consulting-type business is pretty strange, on the face of it.
Leaving aside the partnership fair/unfair model, equity = access to capital.
But consulting-type businesses are essentially headcount machines, because the product is 1 person's time.
So why do you need access to capital?
Granted, it makes expansion easier (hire ahead of work), but as far as profit distributions go, what are equity holders providing in exchange for their slice of the profits?
Primarily, you want an apples to apples comparison. A law firm is a service provider, however not a consultancy. The service the two types of firms provide are not directly comparable.
Furthermore, a law firm is a place where your assertion - “ discrepancy goes to equity partners (who aren't those doing the execution work)…”
Senior partners are pretty critical in bringing and keeping clients.
In my previous service company, we aimed for 10%, which was considered the norm. However, we were particularly bad at achieving this, with only 8-9%, though we did have a good atmosphere and happy employees
Getting to profit through pure people power is hard. Every next person you add doesnt double your output. It’s maybe increases it by some %. (This includes overhead costs)
FWIW, this isn't the case at Google (or many other large technology companies). Google dictates the staffing agency markup (which is very limited) and audits for compliance.
This, among many other processes, has significant negative impacts on the quality of the agency that will work with Google on this sort of work - but it does help with cost control.
(Source: I ran one of these agencies, and Google was a past client.)
> They're likely W-2 employees of some sort of staffing agency, who are then placed at Google.
This is precisely what Samsung does in Austin at its fab, via Randstad. I was a supervisor, and had about 50:50 FTE and Contractor. They were treated exactly the same, including getting pizza parties and the like. The main – and largest – difference was FTE benefits were awesome, and Contractors got the bare minimum required by law (Texas, so basically nothing).
I often complained about this to management, to no avail. My main argument was that we were training people to quit and go work for Intel or GloFo as FTEs. Didn’t seem to matter.
I hate this model so much. Just pay people if you want FTEs.
It is a shell company, except that it is not Google (or its equivalent) who is creating it. It is the Infosys and Cognizants (or other bodyshopping firms) of the world who create this structure to satisfy the demand created by the Googles.
I mean classic example are contracting out food service in the corporate cafeteria. You contract the work to some random other company who hire people to do food service or do you want Google or whoever to start hiring cooks themselves? Janitorial staff is also a classic role for this style of employment.
That's quite different - Google contracts for a service to be provided and takes no interest in managing janitors and cooks individually. The red badgers sound like they're being given individual instructions but denied employee protection.
Two different kind of outsourcing contracts. And red badgers, unless they are freelancers, have employee protection. Just not from Google, or any other company using subcontracting agencies for that matter.
but looking at it from a top down perspective, it does seem like google treats these contractors no better than the janitors and cooks. So i dont think you can say it's different merely because the nature of the work is not the same.
The difference between a legitimate third party service and these ought-to-be-illegal body shop arrangements is whether Google is paying for a specific service—e.g. clean offices—or people that they boss around.
Google managed to hire their first chef in 1999 and manage them directly, I'm sure they can manage a global team of cooks better than anyone else if they wanted to, because of their specific needs and so many global offices to spread the gains through. It's all just a decision they took.
Google has infinite money and doesn't have to care about things like that. They can waste money on food just like they waste it hiring 10000 engineers who don't do any work.
What surprises me the most is how a corporation like Google is incapable of meeting temporary staffing needs internally, by shifting people already on their payroll around projects. It's as if they are just admitting that they are shit at managing projects and workloads and scoping work to the point that they need external help to plug these gaping holes in their load management.
How many people do they need to pay to manage this contractor circus? How much effort do they waste sourcing contractors, tracking work assigned to them, treat contractors differently even interns of security processes, and dealing with higher attrition levels? So much waste.
That’s not legally a contractor then. As someone who has done contracting, both for software and in construction plus has hired them and had to be advised by lawyers around the legality of what makes or breaks a contractor…
If you are setting their hours, bossing them around and/or providing equipment they are not a contractor they are an employee. This is the law in 100% of the United States.
>That’s not legally a contractor then. [...] If you are setting their hours, bossing them around and/or providing equipment they are not a contractor they are an employee.
There are 2 different uses of "contractor":
(1) contractor : official IRS tax classification of 1099 independent contractor
(2) "contractor" : a W-2 employee of a "temp agency" or "staffing agency" or "bodyshop" that is sent to a client company (such as Google) needing contingent workers. Adecco[1] is an example of a staffing company that sends people to Google. These temp agencies with workers classified as W-2 employees act as legal cover to "avoid repeating Microsoft lawsuits". From Google's perspective, these Adecco employees are "contractors".
If the above working arrangement looks convoluted with the economic inefficiencies of paying for an extra middleman (the temp agencies), it is. But it cleverly avoids the IRS claiming, "Hey Google, your so-called contractors are misclassified and should be employees!" ... and Google can say, "They already are employees! They're Adecco employees!"
The "1099 real contractor" is not as common as "fake-contractor-but-really-somebody-elses-W2-employee" ... because the "1099 contractors" won their lawsuit against Microsoft.
The tax reform act of 1986 removes the safe-harbor provision for engineers and programmers. This strange sentence means that if a company hires an engineer or programmer - as an independent contractor - and the IRS later decides that this person is really an employee, then the company is liable for back taxes and probably penalties. For other professions, the "safe harbor" provision means that the company is only liable for paying the employer share of taxes going forwards - the previous stuff is handwaved away.
In effect, this scares companies so much that it is very difficult to get hired as a 1099 contractor as a programmer/engineer. The vast majority of companies will require you to be a W-2 employee of some other company (which will be the "staffing agency" or "bodyshop" or "temp agency").
One programmer was driven to fly his aircraft into an IRS building due to this issue.
I'm a mostly fake contractor. I miss the good old days when I could fake contractor directly to companies. Now I have to go through a middle-man that takes a cut. I still make triple what I was making before, but it bothers me that the middle man is likely taking 30-50% off the top.
These laws do not protect workers, they protect entrenched wealthy body shops.
IIRC they can, but only if the other company is also paying some proportion of the costs relative to how many of their employees are present, or something like that. It's been a little while but the rules are in some training presentation or other.
And the ruling makes it
clear that it’s based on the actual on the ground reality, which is why vendors get pulled in the same way.
If the main company is the one giving the vendors employees their direction, managing them, setting hours explicitly, they get included in all hands, etc. then the main company is also on the hook for being their actual employer as far as benefits, taxes, etc. go.
So there needs to be a clear delineation at all times, or bad things happen to the primary company regarding costs.
> Ok but then contractors have the freedom to work whatever hours they want, not show up to the office, and subcontract out their work - right? If so that might be more appealing than being an employee
Depends on the agreement. First off, probably 99% of these contractors work for a contracting company, so as a contractor you have no say: You are an employee of (another) company and they'll set the rules.
If you're truly independent, then sure - try to make whatever agreement you want with Google.
Which is because it is extremely rude, like meanest of meanest, to not share food with each other. Like, of all mean but not illegal things you can do to contractors, not sharing food is probably what people consider the worst. Small every day things are way more provocative than abstract things like retirement funds or whatever.
Been there. Done that. The FTEs got strawberries. I didn't. I don't think I have been that pissed off in my life. If someone had wrecked my car on purpose I'd be less pissed.
I experienced something similar at a previous job. It was funny. I was working in a satellite office for an org based in a different country, and once in a while (minimum once a year) we'd be sent to HQ for a few weeks. Wrapping up projects, team coordination, whatever. So of course we'd eat together.
The team got a new manager when I joined, and he was told that our treatment was equal despite satellite office status because we were on the same teams coordinating on the same projects, but in different timezones.
Anyway, even though I was technically a FTE at the company, I didn't have the necessary prerequisites to pay for cafeteria food at FTE discounts. I was forced to pay contractor prices. A full extra $5 per meal. My manager was initially confused, then upset. Then we tried to talk with the cafeteria contracting company. They told him it was out of their control. So, we began investigating...eventually uncovering some internal "separate but equal" undocumented employment scheme were compensation, benefits, whatnot, unraveled into a weird caste discrimination system. The people that were pulling their weight were paid pennies while senior team members who were awaiting retirement just raked in the big bucks with benefits on contracts no longer offered, or offered through some backdoor deals before the company really expanded.
In the end, the lunch situation was solved by just stating that I was a FTE because I had the same color badge. It turns out the cashiers didn't even
scan badges or anything, just asked you if you were internal and to show your badge.
But out of all the bullshit we uncovered, the food situation really broke his spirit the most.
I don't get it. Why would you be pissed if those were the rules of the company you were contracting to? As a contractor you get paid more than the regular employees because you take on a greater risk (such as being fired at any moment without any explanation) and you do whatever you're told. If you don't like it you can always look for another client. My point being you can't have your cake and eat it too. Does it suck sometimes? Yes. But such is contractor life.
Hospitality is a fundamental virtue. Skimping out on food is maybe the fundamental transgression of norms. The anger is subconscious and maybe primal.
I was a "contractor" from an in practice body shop consult agency, not an actual contractor. I did every day office work for three years, being part of a normal work group going to every day meetings etc.
But I don't think that matters. If you have an actual consultant in the office, being there once a month, you give him strawberries too, if you hand out strawberries.
Also, the pay was somewhat lower. I was fresh out of uni so I didn't know better.
Notably, only bosses two layers up thought it was a good idea to skimp on the strawberries etc. The bosses that had to deal with the ensuing bad mood ensured there was no such distinction between FTEs and "contractors".
I think we're talking about different things: contractors are paid more than regular employees doing the same thing. And they don't have any benefits the actual employees have.
> Also, the pay was somewhat lower. I was fresh out of uni so I didn't know better.
What you describe is outsourcing, not contracting.
The body shop and their client call it contracting. If one will follow the mantra of "words mean whatever people use them as" then this is contracting.
> Why would you be pissed if those were the rules of the company you were contracting to?
Not being on the Google health or retirement plan is one thing. That's something you can do maths to, see if your alternative arrangements make sense.
But witholding food is something that feels anti-human. Like it hits some primal parts of me. Eating a meal with people you work alongside is, depending on your interpretation, between a few hundred thousand and a few hundred million years old as a social act.
I doubt there are true contractors. Giants would not bother to do contractor paperwork with individuals. Most common is when "contractors" are employees of other bodyshop company and are paid as their regular employees, just leased to the client.
And if the we are talking about US - then their salary is much lower, simply because they cannot go anywhere else due to visa constraints.
Different treatment is a thing. But I couldn't imagine someone is ESA will say fruits and pizza are for employees only. Please leave the room while your coworkers eat.
You are missing the point that legal vs. socially acceptable are two different but very real factors that people care about.
You can’t legal away basic courtesy and explain away people’s anger at being treated like a lower social class.
Imagine if first class seats on a commercial flight were interspersed among regular class seats. First class passengers get more room, better food, more respect from attendants … right in front of people who don’t get those.
If the first class passengers get faster access to something basic like water, some people will go ballistic.
Sure people paid more for the nicer seats, but do you think that legal fact dispenses with the unhealthy social situation and bad feelings that would create?
ESA is one of the world’s leading space exploration organizations and one of the few that is international in scope, representing 22 member states. Contrary to a common misconception, ESA is not part of the European Union and not bound by European law. In fact, ESA is not bound by any real-world law, either local or national—it’s governed only by its 130-page Convention and a set of internal regulations.
This international status grants the ESA and its staff privileges that are far superior to those afforded to its bigger sister and role model, NASA, notably the ability to maintain any internal documents as confidential.
ESA were basically granted immunity, almost like a UN agency, and of course they are abusing it.
They also pay lower taxes than everyone else and so on. The best thing about ESA is that it sucks and doesn't actually accomplish much, so hopefully they stop this scam.
Again my complaint is not the end result isn't "impressive" in isolation it's that it's not impressive for the amount of time and money dumped into it compared to any other space program on earth. I said "for the money we pump into it".
Based on the data shared you're right and my assertions are wrong or at least overblown. To be honest I was thinking mostly compared to the Indian space program and their recent successes and I see that the data confirms that they have pumped less money and have (imo) done way more. But overall I'm wrong in the way I was positioning this, thanks for sharing, I did some more research on account of your comments.
No problem. After all, those programs are as much about maintaining knowledge, industry and capabilities in country as they are about specific missions.
To be fair, Austria had a pretty decent navy that used to give the Italians a run for their money. They probably did a bit of surfing here and there, too.
Eh, Scotland is in a similar position with a common-civil hybrid. The Channel Islands use a local customary Normon-derived legal system. And that's only in one European country!
UN geoscheme lists it as such if you want something concrete. (Though it also puts the UK in Northern Europe, and leaves out Italy & Spain & Portugal (Southern), which I didn't mean either.)
It's a funny term. In UK use it means something like 'mainland Europe but not Russia or some former Soviet states'. It's about the bits you think of and travel to, I suppose. Although that makes it sound obvious, which it isn't, because nobody means India when they say Asia, but it's at least as much in the public psyche as anywhere else in continental Asia.
I'd like to as in what ways is Europe great? From my narrow point of view, most if not all successful startups were founded outside Europe, most countries in Western Europe tend to be monolithic cultures where outsiders are made to feel like outsiders, and many European nations are socialist utopias (which means they take away a HUGE chunk of salary as tax).
(And I am asking this in a friendly tone, as a genuinely curious question, and not a combative one. These nuances get lost, so putting them down in words). Thanks.
It is great for living, for raising kids. For life.
Taxes in Europe are huge, but comparable with taxes in California. Just sum all federal, state, local taxes on the salary, property taxes, sales taxes, health insurance fee, college tuition fee. Don't forget to add 25% tips to that. Count also small vacation, maternity leave and sick leave.
And then compare for example with France.
And not to mention you wouldn't find anywhere in EU thousands of homeless junkies shitting on the streets.
I'm sorry, I don't think you have sufficient perspective on what middle class life is like in France to make this comment with any justification. French taxation is incredibly complex and heavy on the middle class. It is financially unfeasible for most middle class households to pass down their homes to their children due to the estate tax kicking on assets over 100,000 eur. There are many unhoused people spread across rural city centers and the outer banlieues of Paris. College is vastly more restricted in France and unavailable to the majority of the population. Social mobility is significantly constrained. Life grinds to a halt with some regularity due to general strikes. I am immensely grateful to have American citizenship and not have to raise my family in France.
It is financially unfeasible for most middle class households to pass down their homes to their children due to the estate tax kicking on assets over 100,000 eur.
That seems OK to me. Why should children who are lucky to be born into a stable middle class family have a large financial advantage over other children? To be clear, passing down an entire home tax free in a highly developed nation is a huge financial advantage. Literally: 1,000+ EURs per month, for life would be saved. Why do so many people on HN think this should be normal to allow? In my eyes, this is the path to Old World aristocracy. The purpose of inheritance taxes is to reduce this advantage.
I can guess what the reply/replies will be: "Oh, but housing is more expensive now. There is no choice but to use inheritance to give my children a head start." It would be better to ask why housing has gotten so out of control, not using inheritance to side step the issue.
You know, it's interesting. 100,000 eur really isn't a lot of money. I wager decent houses probably go double or triple that. Still, an entire life savings would most likely go into paying for that. Decades of labor in a country with small salaries and large taxes. 100k is nothing. Comparatively, to the rich that dominate the socio-economic and political landscape, it's probably a fun weekend vacation somewhere. I think that's what you dread: The rich that can afford to live lavishly. But you're harking over the barely haves, the not rich.
It's interesting.
A country with dwindling birthrates far below replacement levels perplexed by the fact that its people are refusing to father the next generation when they can't even provide a home for them. (It wouldn't even be tax free, by the way. Because the original proprietors bought and paid taxes on the house. What you're suggesting is double taxation :))
But it's okay. France has solved that problem: Make it illegal to take statistics on ethnic origins, let the poors of the world come flood your land, let them work for lower wages, and then act surprised when their culture is fundamentally incompatible with yours. Your streets are now unfamiliar. Unsafe. Dirty. They don't share your values of cleanliness and respect. Your freedom of expression. Don't worry. Their children won't be able to inherit their homes either. That's fine with them though: because they'll send their money back to their homelands where they can build villas with it, (or comfortably live in a ghetto squalor in Paris because it's still better than the conditions back home.)
> Why should children who are lucky to be born into a stable middle class family have a large financial advantage over other children
The reason why we have inheritances is people in power convinced each other that regular people will work harder throughout all their lives if they know they can give their children a better life. Meaning the economy is way better with some inheritance present than without inheritance.
Love is a powerful thing and while most people would agree with you that in theory they'd like all children to have the same opportunities, once their babies are born they will fight forever to give them the best conditions they can.
I agree with inheritance taxes, probably not 100%, but wanted to explain the perspective of people that want full untaxed inheritances.
> That seems OK to me. Why should children who are lucky to be born into a stable middle class family have a large financial advantage over other children?
Are you for real? Because it is not my or my children's fault other children don't have anything to inherit. This is how life works. You do whatever you can to get ahead of other through any means necessary to have a better future. You should not exepect the same outcome for people from different walks of life.
And just because not everyone can afford a house it is not my problem either.
> In my eyes, this is the path to Old World aristocracy. The purpose of inheritance taxes is to reduce this advantage.
So the world would be better if everyone was poor, right? The purpose of inheritance taxes is for the government to steal from your hard earned assets. Just because you're jealous of someone who inherits a big house or whatever will not make the world a better place.
> This is how life works. You do whatever you can to get ahead of other
Except its not how life works. Because we decided to make a law against it. You're trying to argue that the law is bad by... saying that it's not a natural law of the universe (no law is, murder is neutral on a cosmic scale)
> So the world would be better if everyone was poor, right
if you're arguing in this sort of bad faith its pointless discussing anything. Social mobility is demonstrably different across different nations, and policies do exist that actually affected social mobility. Social mobility correlates strongly with GDP. If you want a wealthy society, make it so hardworking people born into poor families can outcompete wealthy failsons
you replied to that by saying > You cannot have the same outcome
I explitly talked about outcome being dramatically different. Children of wealthy people who have no motivation to contribute anything to the world, learn no skills, and are lazy, should not end up on the same level as hardworking skilled children of poor parents. They should end much lower. Barriers to this include enormous inheritances, the housing market (prices driven up enormously by hoarding and inheritance), the cost of university education, vast disparities in the quality of education available in different areas, and nepotism in the jobs market.
These factors are very different in different countries. I forget the name of the stat but looking at the percentage of people born to bottom fifth income parents ending up as top fifth income earners themselves is quite telling. If I remember right there is a dramatic difference between similarly "developed" countries. I looked and couldn't find the original data I read but here [0] is similar, showing denmark children born to bottom quintile parents reach top quintile 14% of the time (perfect unachievable meritocracy would be 20%), wheras in the US its 8%.
It goes without saying, but the reason it is important to point out that it is different between countries is to argue against vibes based arguments of people who just throw their hands up and say "oh but woe is us this is the natural way of the world why rage against nature it will always be thus" simply because they think that is the case without any data whatsoever. This is literally table stakes for even discussing the problem.
> Children of wealthy people who have no motivation to contribute anything to the world, learn no skills, and are lazy, should not end up on the same level as hardworking skilled children of poor parents. They should end much lower. Barriers to this include enormous inheritances, the housing market (prices driven up enormously by hoarding and inheritance), the cost of university education, vast disparities in the quality of education available in different areas, and nepotism in the jobs market.
My gripe is with the above. Why would they try when they don't have to? Would you? And what does it matter to you that someone just spends money they inherited? It's like winning the lottery.
And what has someone's else wealth has to do with university costs?
I am not arguing it is morally wrong for a wealthy child to spend their wealth. I am talking about the whole of society. It's really very annoying of you to persist in strawmanning me in literally every coment. Sure I used negative words to describe an entirely hypothetical person, but the reality is that people exist on a range of productivity.
let me switch to a tangent. You seemed to be concerned with making a wealthy society, where at least some people have wealth, right?
In order to do that we have to ensure that its worthwhile for a talented person to work hard. When someone cannot become wealthy no matter how hard they work, why would they work to make anything in this world?
and so society suffers. The way to make people work to make things, is to reward them for doing that. This is an economic reality, and is demonstrable, there are many economics papers on the relationship between income inequality, gdp growth, and income mobility. Suffice to say, no matter who you are, its in your interest for there to be more mobility, and for inequality to be in a certain range (not too equal, for incentive, and not too unequal, it causes dramatic negative outcomes like crime, unrest, addiction, violence)
One aspect is the work you do and what it pays. If you're in the right industry, you can become wealthy (being in top 5-10% or less of the population) working a normal job.
On the other hand, if you're in a industry that pays very little, then no matter how much you work, you're not going to make it. And probably you're going to make if you decide to become an entrepreneur and get a piece of the pie. But it doesn't work for all and the only thing you can do is to switch industries if you can.
And these days I think the inequalities are greater due to rampant inflation that makes everyone poorer (considering only money earned) and though in percentage terms it is the same for everyone, it hits the lowest earners the most.
The thing is that in a free market I don't know how this can be solved.
Well the taxes pay to enforce property rights. It sort of becomes your problem if others don’t have a place to live and you won’t pay men with guns to keep them from taking your place to live.
I don't think we are on the brink of societal collapse :)
And it is just like now, I use a gun to shoot people that try to enter my house. What you're saying is that I should have people with guns in the house for the times that I'm not at home.
How is this different than today when your house gets robbed during the day?
Anecdotally to me USA even looks like it's collapsing every time I visit it. In the larger cities there are homeless everywere, and often literally next to luxury yachts and limousines. A lot of the infrastructure seems like it's literally gonna collapse, and lots of it really does. It's quite a cyberpunk vibe when compared to e.g. the nordic countries.
Of course there are similar problems in many european countries too. Especially England is quite bad w.r.t homelesness and infrastructure. But England is in many ways culturally closer to USA than most europe.
It is financially unfeasible for most middle class households to pass down their homes to their children due to the estate tax kicking on assets over 100,000 eur.
Inheritance tax for children caps at 20%. That's hardly "unfeasible".
> College is vastly more restricted in France and unavailable to the majority of the population.
French citizen here, I'm really surprised by what your saying as it doesn't match at all what I've seen about french higher education.
> French taxation is incredibly complex and heavy on the middle class
Yes and no. French taxation can be complex, but it's also mostly pre-filled and automatized. For most people, it's simply a matter of checking if the tax form is correct (and I've never had an incorrect one so far, as my employer automatically transmit my paycheck info to the government)
> Life grinds to a halt with some regularity due to general strikes
There are often disturbance due to strike, but "Life grinds to a halt" is also widely hyperbolic. The last real impactful strike I remember was the late 2019 month-long strike on parisian public transport, which was annoying (and was quickly followed by Covid lockdown)
But I also agree on many points you bring, there tend to be far less upward social mobility than in the USA (I'm always surprised by how fast people seem to be promoted in the USA), and generally more disposable income and opportunities. On the other hand, instead of having everyone thinking themselves as "temporary embarrassed millionaires", it's more accepted that even lower socio-economic classes should have decent working and living conditions, along with a better safety net.
On the plus side, apparently very few place in the USA are actually walk-able, even the malls seems to need a long drive instead of being part of living in a city.
There also aren't any food desert, with unprocessed food cheap, tasty[1] and widely available. Also, while there certainly are a fair share of drugs and homelessness, it's quite also quite safe[2].
[1] I know how smug that will sound, but all the echo I have is that fruits and vegetable in the USA taste very bland, and are far less nutrient-rich than they used to be a few generations ago. A friend who visited the USA was shocked about it, and half-seriously though he had Covid when he tried them, and he wasn't the only one.
[2] There are however pick-pocketing targeting tourists, especially asian, but a "hot" neighborhood in France is waaaay safer than a hot neighborhood in the USA.
Startups operating in Americas are founded in US. Rest of the world is different. For example, Lazada is huge in SEA and was created by Rocket Internet (DE). Delivery Hero (again, DE) is massive in SEA as well, the US ones like DoorDash have absolutely no presence. Uber isn't a thing anymore either.
In fact I see far more European and Asian companies operating globally nowadays, US startups are quite isolationist.
I had the same two-caste system enforced in European office of US company. Legally it was a local company with parent in US.
But anyway, "food is only for employees". Funny enough, even student who was there for 20 hours per week and did anything but work was allowed to eat.
It is a legal and cost thing. Said student is directly employed, the contractors have an employment contract with the agency. And those agencies are used to reduce costs, hence no sponsored, free or discounted food.
No, that's a rationalization. It is because psychopaths are running the place. I have never heard of an employer paying benefit tax on pizzas, and if they did, surely they can bill the consulting firm in some circle if that is the case.
Ok, but at Arm my red (intern) badge was no more 'demeaning' than my blue (permanent) badge. Not least because they only left my pocket when I needed to open a door...
(Colours from memory, I think that's right, they were certainly different anyway.)
Point is you can certainly learn not to treat contractors like employees, have badged access, etc., without having such hostility attached to it.
Edit: no! Red actually was a 'badge of shame', that was 'I forgot my badge today and had to get a spare from reception'. Anyway, it's beside the point exactly what was what. Different badges and access/treatment don't have to bleed into social treatment, they don't even have to be that visible.
This conversation isn't about the difference between intern and full time employee but rather the difference between contractor and full time employee.
Depends on when you interned! Before 2018 you would get a green badge as an intern, 2018 and onwards you got the same blue as everyone else, when they moved all the offices to GDAS.
The Microsoft problem was *independent* contractors. I.E. treating people as self-employed.
Normal contractors are employees of a temp firm. None of these issues apply there.
Footnote: I started my career as an IC, before I had family or kids. It was great. 32 hour work weeks and time (and the legal right) to do startups on the side. Ton of flexibility relative to a real job.
The microsoft lawsuit applied to the contractor staffing agencies, too. I'd google it for you, bute they had so many orange v-badges back in the day, that it has to be pretty easy to google.
Web search says that contrary to stereotypes, the problem was that they did NOT have contractor staffing agencies, and that as a result, they were not withholding taxes. This was resolved by bringing in a staffing agency.
A second problem was that they DID have ambiguous language in their employee handbooks, which meant that once temps were ruled employees, they became benefit-eligible, including in retroactively.
Yup, when I read the blog post, my immediate thought was, "Hey, this sounds just like Microsoft when I was there." There it was blue badge vs. non-blue badge.
All the other stuff, too –– wanting to innovate but finding everything so slow, lots of process, feeling very pampered, etc.
There's "contractors" and then there's "branded as outsider". The red hot iron kind of branding, not the marketing kind. Red badging is what you do when you view people as numbers in a spreadsheet instead of people.
Yea I've experienced this in capital one. Some smaller non tech companies are chill, where there is really no difference in how they treat contractors and employees.
Intel used to do this. I was a high school and college intern in the late 90s and it was this blue badge / green badge thing.
The funny thing is, there was another level which was how worn out your blue badge was. The longer you had been there, the closer the badge was to white.
If by "this" you meant a caste-like system, then my experience at Intel in 2010s was very different. Different people (contingent workers with green badges and others with blue badges) worked well enough together, and got well enough along (with one or two instances being the exception, not the rule). That's funny about the white badge. I am sure they could have gotten new ones, engineers have the funniest status symbols...
Wow, somehow I missed all that despite being a contractor for about half of 20+ years of working in this industry... Perhaps it is a USA thing? Although I worked for a couple of US companies remotely and I never noticed it.
I'm currently doing contracting for a Polish branch of a US company you would recognise a name of and the only difference between being a contractor (other than tax stuff of course) is that I can't fill security exception requests, and I get asked if I want to work during certain national holidays or not (employees get a day off per default, I have a choice).
I remember Google had something like contractors need to pay $1 to use the gym, meaning it wasn't free so it doesn't count as a benefit, but the amount was clearly not something that was material.
In the UK at least, if you are a contractor you are legally not an employee.
If you took any employee benefits, the tax man could retroactively classify you as an employee and demand a huge tax bill from you.
So many contractors would refuse any such benefits even if they were offered. Some didn't care of course and took them anyway, but they were potentially setting themselves up for a huge legal and tax problem.
Microsoft learned the hard way to not treat contractors like employees. https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...
Nobody else wants to learn that same lesson.