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0 pointsJohnny5557y ago0 comments

Employees are both a pain and a liability

Aren't they an asset too? A contractor doesn't really care about the long term health of your company, if your company folds, he'll go down the street and work for a competitor. He knows that you'll dump him in an instant if you want to so he has no incentive to go the extra-mile for your company.

I can see outsourcing peripheral tasks, office cleaning, etc, but for any important part of the business, outsourcing seems like a gamble. (somewhat related, I helped in-source a project that had spent 2 years outsourced off-shore which had met few of its deliverables. In 6 months the new local team got it back on track with literally 1/5th the headcount the outsourced agency used which made it cheaper to bring it back in house)

Granted if you're hiring minimum wage workers, maybe it's hard to find quality employees, but for any non-trivial position, outsourcing to contract workers seems like a short-sighted move.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

magnetic7y ago· 2 in thread

> Aren't they an asset too? A contractor doesn't really care about the long term health of your company, if your company folds, he'll go down the street and work for a competitor.

Is this any different with an employee?

white-flame7y ago

No. Unless there's a non-compete clause, which is yet another problem.

jasonlotito7y ago

Yes.

logfromblammo7y ago· 2 in thread

> ...he'll go down the street and work for a competitor. He knows that you'll dump him in an instant if you want to so he has no incentive to go the extra-mile for your company....

Exactly how I feel as an "at will" employee. At least the contractor has... whaddyacallit... a contract.

I really have no incentive link to the company I work for beyond ensuring that they'll continue to have enough paid tasks to offer me for as long as I want to take them. Even if the company announced some sort of profit-sharing or bonuses, there's no reason for me to believe that I'd be able to collect.

As far as I can tell, the only reason companies around here have employees at all is so they can credibly attach their resumes to bids and proposals.

secabeen7y ago

Not every company is that way. There are places (often in education or government work) where the organization has specifically drafted policies that restrain the ability of the organization to fire employees at-will, and that will give an under-performing employee guidance and a process to improve work before being fired, or will give laid off employees a right of preferential re-hire if a job that they are qualified for opens up. Those policies are sometimes bypassed in extreme cases, such as workplace sexual harassment, or the like, but they can provide some assurance to an employee that they aren't going to be fired for arbitrary or capricious reasons.

logfromblammo7y ago

If they can be bypassed, they do not provide assurance. A work contract provides assurance, if it has clauses on separation and severance. I have never had an actual contract, and have been fired at-will five times. I can't exactly say that "the company lost a big customer and wouldn't be able to make payroll" is arbitrary or capricious, but that only accounts for one. The rest, while never elucidated, were likely as follows: "the stock is at an all-time high, and we don't want any more of your options to vest", "we bought your company but don't want to keep you" (x2), and "we think you might blow the whistle on us blatantly gaming all of our metrics".

I've only even had the chance to get out of Dodge before any axes fell once. A lot of these companies have been for [contractor] government work. I think the contractor companies would only enact such a policy if the largest customers demanded it. They won't do it just because they value employee retention highly, because clearly [to me] they do not.

nickdandakis7y ago

A company can dump a full-time employee in an instant too (at least in the US, which runs entirely at-will employment). I've seen companies do just that to full-time employees, while said employees genuinely did care about the company.

I'm of the opinion that any amount of personal investment in a business entity is toxic, regardless of your employment status. The only reason anyone should personally invest in a company is if they have some kind of founder role.

From the article:

> Accenture is one of the world’s largest providers of outsourced labor. Along with many rivals, it is pitching chief executives on the idea that their company’s core business is smaller than they think.

This is a key point I'd like to see more companies think about. There's non-trivial work, and there's critical core work, and I think companies do a poor job at recognizing and separating the two.

As for your anecdote of full-time onsite work being more efficient than outsourced off-shore work, sure, that's usually the case. However, could it be that poor management was the issue, and not the location or employment status of the workers?

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