Just because we're in a position to say no doesn't mean that we shouldn't feel compassion for the others that are not in an opportunity to do so. A tech office without a janitor will be dysfunctional, same as the one without a senior engineer. But unlike a senior engineering position, a janitor will not be a full-time position.

I'd personally even take it one step further: those who are payed the least need benefits the most. By relegating this work to temporary workers you're doing exactly the opposite: cutting away the privileges that the full-time employees have. Not to just one employee, but anyone who's ever going to fill out that position.

A trip to the doctor would not make a dent in a senior engineer's pocket (regardless of the insurance), but a janitor could not afford a trip to the doctor in the first place. This could work in a country with good social programs to fall back on, but it has catastrophic consequences in the US.

Contractors for large companies[1] in the US almost always goes through staffing firms - direct contracts with independent contractors are comparatively rare. And even when you do want to bring on an independent contractor, you usually still have to route them through some designated third party staffing firm so that the contractual relationship is IC <-> Staffing Firm <-> Client. This is all due to fact that there are huge liability[2] concerns related to classifying someone as an IC but treating them as an employee.

As such, there's almost always an intermediate taking a cut of the actual rate, even if you're a contractor to the staffing agency.

Then you've got agency relationships, like where I work at now. I'm a salaried, full time employee for the agency I work for and I make about the regional median for my role. But I'm contracted out to clients (including Google) and bill hourly. Depending on the client and the specific roles I'm billing as for a given project, an hour of my time gets billed out anywhere from 2x - 6x what my fully loaded hourly cost is to my employer (salary + benefits + payroll taxes). So the cost to the client is certainly in line with your expectations, but it doesn't come back to me.

[1] You don't see this as frequently at the SME end of the market for many reasons, not least of which is the deliberate inefficiency and increased costs of such a structure.

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...

It depends. For some contractor jobs, they need high level engineers short term and don't want to deal with the normal Google hiring process, which is expensive, difficult, and time consuming for many current employees (most technical interviews at Google are carried out by a random assortment of other engineers). In those cases, they can and will often pay equal or higher salaries to the contractor.

In my case, the equivalent job at Google definitely carried more responsibilities, and they were paid more. However, I believe Google paid my consulting company more than the FTE salary for each of us, with my company taking their cut off the top (at least, that's what I heard).

In short, it's complicated

“If I went as a contactor in the UK id expect 2x to 3x when compared to a FTE at a similar grade.”

At least in the US that’s often not how it works. The agency takes a big cut and the contractor probably makes less than an FTE. In my company must contractors are super eager to go full time given the opportunity.

Staffers have undeniably more leverage that contractors. So yes, on an 'all things equal' basis, this will come out oddly.

It's one thing to outsource security, another to outsource people who work as part of the organization: admins, executive assistants, developers, recruiters etc..

Perhaps, until a shooter shows up at the youtube office and starts firing and then kills herself in front of you. That did happen and can happen at any firm, tech or otherwise.

Occupations paying differently is a major component of inequality, yes.