Contractors risk mini-Microsoft-protest
Turner talks new hires
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Microsoft contractors unhappy with a 10 per cent pay cut took to the streets just as senior management - again - talked up future hiring.
The revolution does not start here: Just 15 temps showed up to protest the cuts yesterday evening (Monday) at an intersection near Microsoft's corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Demo organizer Phil Palios had emailed 2,000 contractors inviting them to join in the collective fun.
Palios, a software design engineer, is contracted to Microsoft through Volt, one of many Seattle-area agencies cutting pay rates by 10 per cent on Microsoft orders.
The micro-protest came as Microsoft's chief operating officer Kevin Turner repeated chief executive Steve Ballmer's theme of expanding the company's full-time workforce. Spending online has become justified in terms of future job creation at Microsoft, it seems.
Speaking at CeBit this week, Turner noted that Microsoft's expansion in R&D in search and online advertising and services could add up to 2,000-3,000 new jobs.
He said Microsoft planned to spend a record $9bn on R&D this year - $1bn more than last year as the company works out the technology to go online. To put that spend in perspective, Microsoft's R&D hovered between $6.18bn and and $7.78bn in 2005 and 2004. ®
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COMMENTS
10% vs Termination
How about 10% of what you get now or termination?
Not such a wise-acre now? Continue writing software for hourly wages without royalties, and you get what you deserve.
10% vs Termination
I'm a contractor at one of the publicly owned Banks. I'm greatful to have a job, and if my employer want's to cut my rate by 10%, then that's a hell of a lot better then being unemployed for months!
When things are good, and you are being offered contracts then there is always room for negotiation, at the moment there is none. Deal with it.
Can't believe that there are still clueless idiots who still think they are irreplaceable
@Lee:
"As I have said before, any contractor that takes the full 10% cut is a fool, your agency should shoulder most, if not all of the cut for you."
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. You obviously are neither a contractor nor do you have many aquaintances who are to be posting something like that. If their rates get reduced, so will yours. This in not 1997. If your agency can't make a profit from you they will from someone else. You WILL take the cut. Or leave. What are you going to do, tell the agency you refuse to take the pay cut? Then what? They're going to beg and plead with you and finally agree to absorb the cut in spite of the 1,000+ CV's they receive on a weekly basis? Once you wake up from that lovely dream and return to the reality that a large percentage of talented IT collegues are waiting in line to fill your postition (some for a lower rate than you are paid) you can view your employment with the proper perspective.
Only a fool would think that as a contractor the agency you work for gives a rat's ass about you. This is 17 years of consulting typing here, I've worked direct and through far too many agencies to remember. The only difference between any of them is the name of the agency on the paycheck.
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