[newacct583]

> Employee-status may come with certain benefits, but it also comes with many drawbacks and burdens for the employee.

Not to the employees in question. Clearly the frame and interview content of the linked article is that these employees WANT to be permanent employees. But they're not allowed to be because their employer wants the flexibility to terminate them at any time. The fact that the two year contract exists is just a side effect.

Yes, there are real people who want to do contract work. They exist, though it's relatively rare and clustered in careers (software is one) where short term work makes sense. But that's not who we're talking about here. These are datacenter maintenance folks, they want steady work.

And off topic, but:

> I don't really care about healthcare of unemployment insurance.

This is something only ever said by young people who have never been sick (or had a family member suffer from) with a career-threatening condition. Yes, in your 20's it sounds like self-insurance is totally doable. Wait until you have four dependents or until you need to arrange for a parents' surprise retirement.

[taurath]

I'll second that. I know many people stuck in the Microsoft forever-contractor hell (QA, Project Management, etc) and all of them want to be employees. They've worked there longer than most current employees in their area. They get 40-50% of what Microsoft pays for them taken by their consulting agency who has a contract with MS legal, so the only way to get hired for their positions is through that company.

Its a huge financial burden for them to have to take these 6 months off. The worst part is since they're all "contract ended" so regularly, Microsoft can just say they're not reopening for many req's and many people who were waiting their 6 months to be up so they could go back are suddenly having to look for a totally different job.