
Facebook's underclass: staffers enjoy perks, contractors barely get by - heinrichf
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/26/facebook-workers-housing-janitors-unique-parsha
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misiti3780
"Martinez, 30, actually works three jobs to support himself and his family.
His Facebook shift goes from 1.15pm to 10.00pm, so he drives for Lyft in the
mornings. On weekends, he picks up shifts as a park ranger. All that work
affords him a three-room house that is home to four adults and four children:
his wife, their two daughters, his mother-in-law, his wife’s sister, and her
two children. The sister and her children sleep in the garage."

I think it really sucks that the contractors sound underpaid and dont have
access to the benefits. I also wonder why more people dont just leave Silicon
Valley for basically anywhere else in the US (assuming they can find a job
there) and live a more reasonable lifestyle. If you have three jobs, you dont
get to see your family at all, and that is not living. Life is too short.

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Texasian
Moving is expensive and disruptive, not just financially. Having to start your
professional and personal life over is daunting as fuck.

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jmcdiesel
Financially, yes... But... the second part is mostly just the dread of it.
I've moved (with family) 6 times in the last 7 years... most of which do to
bad luck of contracts falling through in the companies i worked for and them
just not having enough work to support the staff... lay offs... and while its
disruptive, there is actually a ton of growth out of it that, honestly, has
been worth it... Just because something is hard up front doesn't at all make
it a bad choice...

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fortythirteen
This is a perfect example of how demands for socialist implementation are a
zero sum game. Facebook's contractors make the $15 an hour that minimum wage
workers are clamoring for.

Now that they have that - and without offering any new value to Facebook -
they want all the perks that high demand, highly skilled workers get. It's a
never ending cycle.

Not that I don't _feel_ for their disposition, but it shows how these types of
requests come with no understanding of basic supply and demand.

~~~
maxxxxx
Just wait until the "high demand, highly skilled workers" get squeezed too and
then remember your words. Most of software engineers do work that at some
point can also be replaced by machines. How many of us do really cutting-edge
stuff?

I think it's a moral issue. We need to find a way to structure society in away
that even people who don't have the hot jobs of the moment can survive.

~~~
fortythirteen
It's certainly a moral issue, but it's not Facebook's moral issue. It's an
affordable housing issue that Bay Area cities are failing miserably at.

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Chaebixi
If it's a moral issue, it's hard to give Facebook a pass for going "not my
problem." _Especially_ since they have the cash to actually act morally.

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landryraccoon
You're not really addressing the point of the person you replied to.

Increasing wages does not help if the housing supply is the underlying
problem, since everyone is still bidding for a fixed resource. It just means
everyone pays more rent. Wage increases in the bay area are always at least
partially wealth transfers directly to landowners. Facebook can't solve that
by paying more, the housing policy in the bay needs to change to allow more
density.

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tyingq
This isn't really specific to Facebook. How many notable companies have in
house employees as cafeteria workers, security guards, cleaning staff,
building maintenance, landscape staff, etc?

~~~
patrickaljord
Yeah, how is the fact that top engineers and sales make way more money than
cleaning staff news? I doubt cleaning staff at the Guardian make the same as
editors in chief.

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falcolas
It's news when some of the biggest and wealthiest companies in the us do not
pay their staff (regardless of work, regardless of contractor status) a
livable wage.

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fav_collector
That isn't a reasonable expectation. Morally speaking, companies should be
expected to pay market rate for the job and anything above that is charity.

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bjl
Morally speaking, if your company can't afford to pay all of its employees a
liveable wage, then it doesn't deserve to exist.

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sp332
This is true and it's largely hidden by welfare costs that are shouldered by
other taxpayers. If your company isn't paying a living wage then you owe a
debt to society because they're literally picking up the tab.

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amigoingtodie
Like every private golf course in Los Angeles?

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oli89
As a Facebook user who is used as a data milch cows I want lavish perks too!

I should really bring this up the next time the Emperor goes on a tour of the
realm.

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ChuckMcM
I like the term 'data cow', all the data cows sitting around chewing the fat
on Facebook while the application milks them for data which they sell to the
highest bidder. Very dystopian but awesome none the less.

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olivermarks
'Attention merchants' milking 'data cows' and reselling ...perfect...

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ChuckMcM
I'm going to go with 'Attention Farmers' to stay thematic with the Cows. :-)

Attention Farmers put out Click Bait to attract Data Cows which they then milk
for Data that they can resell.

~~~
olivermarks
perfect!

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dizzystar
I used to do contracting at another well-known company, filling up coffee
hoppers and candy baskets. The work is easy, and arguably not worth much in
the way of pay.

The problem is that this is all part-time work, and it is effectively
impossible to get full-time work. These companies also tend to be in far-off
places that, if you are earning $9/hr part-time, means you are taking a 2 hour
bus ride each way.

In theory, outsourcing to contracting is a good deal, as the contracting
companies have no real HR issues with hiring and firing. They are also
supposed to supply some sort of health insurance, as required by ACA, but this
is circumvented by shifting everyone to part-time, putting them on 6 month
contracts that roll between canceled and renewed, and so on.

It's a difficult situation for all companies involved. It bothers me that tech
is getting the smear for this, when basically every low-wage job has been
affected in similar ways.

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tmh79
I want to bring the focus on inequality here to the absurd cost of living in
Silicon Valley. There is a world in which contract workers at Facebook making
15 dollars per hour are able to live reasonably close to work and provide for
their families while working only 40 hours per week. That future does not
exist without a LOT more housing in the south bay, the peninsula, SF, and the
rest of the bay area. FB cannot pay the 15% raises yearly that the housing
market demands of those at the bottom. If you care about these issues and live
in the south bay, please look into volunteering with and/or donating to
siliconvalley@home
[http://siliconvalleyathome.org/](http://siliconvalleyathome.org/). If you
live in SF, look into SFYIMBY
[http://www.sfyimby.org/](http://www.sfyimby.org/).

~~~
voodoomagicman
I agree with the spirit of your comment, but FB certainly CAN pay 15% raises
to their lowest paid employees - I imagine w/ very little impact to their
bottom line.

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eli_gottlieb
_Nothing_ grows 15% compounding every year. Not even cancer. 15% compound
growth is a motherfucking financial singularity.

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theonemind
There's possibly a good reason for this. If you don't treat your contractors
different from your regular employees, the IRS might decide that your
contractors are effectively employees and you're just dodging your tax burden.

So, yeah, just about anywhere, you "should" be able to tell the difference
between contractors and employees.

~~~
mattnewton
IIRC this happened to Microsoft

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Kalium
Yup, Microsoft. And the IRS was followed by contractors suing for benefits.

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WheelsAtLarge
This is a common problem with companies. I've worked as both contractor and
staffer. Being a staffer is always better in terms of what perks the company
offers on terms of day to day perks. Contractors may seem to get paid a bit
more on a per hour basis but when you add up all the company perks, it's
always less.

Also, staffers always see temps/contractors as outsiders. It does not matter
how long they have worked together. It's a strange dynamic. I try to avoid
contract/temp work if it's going to be a long term position. It's never
pleasant.

Facebook is not the first and it won't be the last. Contractors/temps are a
benefit to companies since the company can have a flexible workforce they can
increase or reduce with little friction.

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corporateslave3
Would you say that even highly payed contract should be avoided? By highly
paid I mean between 300k-400k a year? Where the job is an hourly pay that is a
never ending contract? Specifically in the financial industry?

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WheelsAtLarge
If you can get that much, you're in a different league. I say take it and
don't look back. 300k makes the pain of being a contractor much easier.

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koolba
> But it does strike her as ironic that the most highly paid workers at
> Facebook are also the ones who get all the free amenities.

That's not irony. That's economics 101.

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gwbas1c
I'd view this as commentary on the housing situation in Silicon Valley more
than commentary on any specific company.

The problem is that, in order for all the tech companies to grow; they need
affordable housing for all levels of the staff. This is just as much a
government problem as a corporate responsibility problem.

~~~
santaclaus
> The problem is that, in order for all the tech companies to grow; they need
> affordable housing for all levels of the staff.

I'd be curious to know why the major tech employers aren't flexing a bit more
muscle on the state level. Cynically, are the higher ups beneficiaries of the
currently absurd housing situation, and thus disincentivized in terms of
personal wealth to advocate for any change?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Cynically, are the higher ups beneficiaries of the currently absurd housing
situation, and thus disincentivized in terms of personal wealth to advocate
for any change?

Giving the proles a place to live would shadow their sunlight and ruin their
countryside views... in Atherton.

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IkmoIkmo
So leave. I just don't get that.

I mean, we're literally talking about a group of people with lower-to-middle
class US jobs, who, on a daily basis, go to an auction together with a large
amount of billionaires and millionaires, and bid against them for real estate,
food and all kinds of amenities. To me, that's a joke.

And then an article gets written about a staffer vs contractor dichotomy.

Come on. Just because you were born in a place of 50 square miles of land, in
a country of 3.5 million square miles of land, does not mean you're entitled
to the laws of supply and demand being suspended by a massive subsidy program
so that you can keep on living there when you're not needed and there's tons
of people waiting in line for your spot who're willing to do it for less,
while you are needed in other cities where your family can live much more
affordably.

And this is coming from a leftist who left his own home town because it got
overrun by rich kids with daddy's money and expats. I didn't like it either.
But I also saw that I was not entitled to hand outs in order for me to live in
the most prime location in the country, because everyone wants that and that
just does not work, as much as we want it.

And the last thing I'm going to do is try to outbid the 1% as a middle class
earner and have a shitty quality of life. Working fulltime without kids for 6
months and being homeless all that time because the average rent equals your
pay just means you need to move. You've got skills, you're employable, you've
got income...

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ShriekBob
If you don't understand why these people can't leave, then you've never been
poor.

The reality for a lot of these people is that they can't really afford to stay
where they are, but they equally can not afford to leave.

No one is going to pay to relocate a Janitor from SF to Idaho. That Janitor
can barely make there rent, let alone find the deposit for some place they can
actually afford, and that's before you take into account moving costs, living
while you find new work, etc.

The truth is, moving is expensive, very expensive, and if you live somewhere
with a high cost of living, it's hard to drum up that kind of money.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
That's nonsense man. I'm literally referring to a woman in the article who
sleeps in a parkingarea because she can't pay rent, but she does work, owns a
phone, a car, earns more cash than is necessary to pay for her non-rent living
expenses.

You're telling me she can't drive, or take a bus?

Because what, she has to move all her belongings from the parking lot she
currently lives in?

Come on. Look, my parents were on welfare since I was 3, never had any
financial support, I've hustled plenty of times moving places, never having
owned a single car. Not a single piece of furniture in my home is new,
everything is second hand and half of it I found on the street.

Look I'm not saying it's as easy as opening an email account. Life is hard.
But we're talking about a person who is homeless. She's way more capable than
you may think, and I'm telling you, the solution to her problem is NOT staying
in SF. You know that and I know that.

But even if people can't move without help from third parties, the solution to
this problem still isn't letting people who make little money to stay in the
most expensive place on earth that they can't afford, it's just not going to
work out. It's governments facilitating them to move. I'd completely support
that.

As soon as some people leave, who's quality of life will improve, companies
will be forced to pay a living wage for those who stay, who's quality of life
will improve, too. Would you stay?

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jjtheblunt
Much like Intuit.

