[fzeroracer]

Every single thing that a company does to contractors is something they eventually want to do to full time employees. If they could, they would convert everyone to contractor status, force awful methods of monitoring employee activity and more.

The mistake I see my fellow engineers make is assuming they're not disposable because they're full time, or that the axe won't eventually turn on them.

[OminousWeapons]

I think you could take the opposite view as well. Yes, if they could treat employees poorly then they would, but they can't so they don't. There is more demand for talent than there is supply of talent. I work at a company that has both contractors and full time employees, and it is very obvious when looking at work product why the contractors are the contractors and the full time employees are the full time employees.

Contractor output is frequently technically shoddy or lazy; their reports are riddled with grammatical mistakes and frequently difficult to understand; and there is no way that they could take point when interfacing with a customer as their English skills simply aren't good enough.

[fzeroracer]

Contractors often work for a business like any other. I've worked with companies where the contractors were better than the employees and vice versa.

But the quality of the contractors is ultimately irrelevant because we're talking about workplace protections and benefits. You SHOULD be blaming your company instead for taking cost saving measures that impact the rest of your organization. If your company is working with contractors that are core to your business then they should be treated the same as your employees. And we should be eliminating the middle area where companies want to treat contractors as lesser employees so they can pay them less for the same work.

[fullshark]

What am I supposed to do with this lesson?