[sultanofswing]

I have mixed feelings about this as someone who has worked as a contractor at a FAANG company.

On the one hand, many of the complaints are absolutely correct. Where I worked contractors were:

- Second class citizens - Often worked on teams with other engineers, and ended up being in charge of a major part of the project - Have subpar working conditions but are still required to come to the office (ie crappy working spaces with fewer amenities, often the inability to sit with their actual team) - In worst case scenarios can often end up with abusive manager who at times will explicitly let them know their place as a contractor - Get the runaround when it comes to discussion 'conversion' to full time employment. I've seen this happen only a handful of times

From what I've seen the ones most beholden to this crappyness are contractors who are non US citizens (after all if you are a citizen what's stopping you from applying to literally almost any other job... even at a large tech company). Contractors from outside the US are pretty much stuck.

On the flipside the bar for contractors and full time employees is VASTLY different. For contractors (at least in engineering) the interview process can be mostly boiled down to about five recruiter style questions on your area of expertise, or something as simple as "build a class that does XYZ, ok you're great for this role". No full day onsite interview loops with multiple whiteboard / architecture questions etc.

I'm not saying with proper preparation contractors couldn't do the same roles and aren't qualified, but they are also held do a different standard (for better or for mostly worst).

I've also seen many contractors leverage the name-brand of the company they worked for to get interviews that may have been previously inaccessible (yes, even with putting "contracting for X company" on your resume, Google / Apple et all still stand out to recruiters).