Forced unemployment and second-class status: Google's data center contractors
<i>>Contractors love the good pay and engaging work in Google's data centers. They resent that Google and its staffing firm, Modis Engineering, make them quit every two years.</i><p><i>>[...] But those two-year contracts are written in stone. Workers like Wait are not usually allowed to apply either to renew their contracts or to do the same job as a Google employee. If they want to keep working in the same job, they have to leave the data center for six months and then come back and apply again — but neither Google nor Modis will tell workers why.</i><p><i>>[...] Google likely requires the six-month leave due to federal employment law, Barbara Figari, an employment attorney in California, told Protocol.</i><p>Yes.  All companies got rattled by Microsoft losing their lawsuit with permatemp contractors in 2000:  <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+contractors+lawsuit+settle" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+contractors+lawsui...</a><p>Before the Microsoft settlement, I was able to sell my services directly to the client company as a 1099 freelance contractor because I <i>did not</i> want to be an employee.  But after that, all companies got paranoid about contractors and I then had to go through a middleman bodyshop as a "fake" W-2 employee.  The programming bodyshop then skims a fee from my hourly rate to provide a "lawsuit shield" for the client that wants to pay for my services.