[LarryL]

> Contractors aren’t humans

Real story from one of the (big) french telecom companies I worked for, as a contractor (a few years ago)...

In that company, a regular employee was given a full desk, contractors were only given 2/3 of a desk (meaning 2 desks put side by side for 3 persons).

Also, contractors were NOT allowed to go to ANY conference. Even when it was about technical stuff that was directly for their project. We had to rely 100% on a transmission of information by our managers/team leads. This led to humorous results, to say the least. Things like: a BIG meeting with plenty of people and managers, who then decided a HUGE technical change on the network, without the ONLY expert because he happened to be a contractor. Once given the results of the meeting, the guy was in a "WTF?" shock. He told me that be immediately binned the request: it basically asked him to disable the authentication server! Not the best decision for a BIG ISP, LOL. Seriously, that's almost beyond belief. (But I have other incredible stories similar to this one).

As a contractor, I have really been mistreated A LOT. So much so that I've sworn never to do it again.

[baud147258]

I'm a contractor in France, the treatment depends on where one is working. Canal+ and PSA were bad, but the current situation is good, there's no difference between myself and the employees.

[isostatic]

Sounds like departments were using contractors as full members of staff. Contractors should be brought in for a specific purpose, as a consultant to staff, as an extra pair of hands to follow the whims of staff.

If contractors are the only expert in a domain, there are big problems. Of course in corporations this is quite frequent - middle managers have yearly budgets for contractors, but aren't allowed to use that money to increase their headcount.

A company I work for decided to get a contractor in to run a £40m project. This makes sense for a management perspective, they get to blame the contractor (who's already left) if it fails, and they get to claim the glory if it works. It's terrible for a company though.

If I want 500 cables run in a data centre, or even 5 cables if it's a long way, I'll get a contractor in. Saves me a day by not having to do that work neatly and lets me do more important things (like ranting on HN). If I want someone to build me a fancy gui, I'll specify the frameworks, and let them mess around with the look and feel, but ultimately I own the output of the work, I need to be able to deal with it as if I wrote it myself.