Google quietly ices contractors
Keeps hush-hush SEC filing off the interwebs
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Internet giant Google quietly got rid of an unspecified number of contract workers late last year.
Mountain View’s spending plans were outlined in a 15 December Securities and Exchange Commission filing that was submitted only in paper form and therefore flew under the radar of the various web services that track SEC filings.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the records earlier this week. It reported today that Google, which currently employs 24,400 people, kept a section of the filing confidential, claiming it contained trade secrets.
As a result it doesn’t reveal how many interns, contractors and temp workers had been dumped of the 4,300 non-permanent staff it cites in the filing.
In October Google co-founder Sergey Brin told the San Jose Mercury News that the web kingpin had around 10,000 contractors on its books. However, a Google spokeswoman told AP yesterday that hacks shouldn’t conclude that the difference between the two figures represented how many people had been culled under the plans.
She declined to specify how many contractors the company had purged.
The filing revealed that Google has applied for exemption from rules that would regulate the firm “as a mutual fund if its investment activities diversify too far beyond government securities and other relatively low-yielding instruments such as money market accounts,” said AP.
In November Google said it would significantly cull the number of contractors it had on its books, and that it wouldn’t wield the job axe at its full-time staff. ®
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COMMENTS
Beancounters...
...are tossers(*). They cut skilled, experienced (ie "old" or long-term) staff to cut costs and hire people with little or no skill but nice-looking pieces of paper straight from school for a fraction of the "old-timers'" salary, then have to hire Contractors (often the staff they just dumped on) to fill the skills void while trying to get the kids up to speed with the way things work in the real world (as against in the classroom).
Maybe Google has realised that axed Permies often go on to become Contractors, and that once a Contractor has been screwed over by their (ex-)employer, Company Loyalty is in somewhat short supply...
(*) not /all/ Beancounters, obviously. Like not all "Technicians" or "IT Engineers" with MCSEs and no experience are complete wastes of space, and not all fish are incomplete without a bicycle...
Google quietly ICES contractors?
Wasn't that a 1960's euphamism for TWEPing? (Or, for any laymen who may have wandered by unexpectedly, "Terminating With Extreme Prejudice").
Or have they covertly covered them in marzipan, fondant and white sugary stuff and hidden 'em on the cake stand until the current economic speedbump is passed?
Or sent them off to drive the Streetmap Black Vans through Siberia and the Polar regions?
Mines the one with the fur lining, 'snorkel' hood and mittens with string through the sleeves...
Nice to see.
I'm a contractor.
This is what we are for. You should use us as short term replacements for missing skills while you bring existing staff up to speed, or as short term placeholders while you find suitable staff to fill a spot permanently.
Sure, in tight job markets you might hang on to a decent contractor for the longer term, but at times like this it's only prudent to thoroughly trim the contractors before you consider letting the full timers go.
Not that I have a problem with it if a company wants to hang on to me in these circumstances - but it doesn't strike me as a sound business sense and it's nice to see Google yet again doing the right thing (doubtless Orlowski can put a sinister slant on it though).
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