Freebase Dali

Aw man that's a bummer. I hope things turn on the upswing soon. Sh*t, if you lived here and had a bit of programming experience in addition to your web development experience, I could get you hooked up easy at my job.

Your wife is still working, no?

Janszoon

Yeah, that's the one saving grace, since as a contractor I can't collect unemployment.

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Freebase Dali

I didn't know that. That seems like crap if you ask me. You were making a living, and thus employed, why shouldn't you be able to get unemployment?
I can understand if a person is able to lie about what sort of employment they had, but surely there were tax records that you had to fill out, and something the company that contracted you out would have to file?

Janszoon

The problem is, when you're a contractor, you're considered your own employer and as such can never be technically laid off. It's one of the big reasons, aside from healthcare and other benefits, that corporate America is so in love with trying to keep everyone as contract workers. This way they can avoid paying unemployment tax on people working for them. Just more sleazy behavior from the usual suspects.

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Freebase Dali

There's also the benefit to corporations that don't require them to provide healthcare to those contracted workers.
Not sure if that's addressed with the 2014 bill though. (Oh derp, you just said this)

The company I work for actually hired on most of our developers as contractors, but after about a year, they were eventually hired full time, because ultimately, the work produced by many of the previous contractors wasn't up to par and those people weren't really dedicated to the company's interests, but just a paycheck, and the thought behind it was that if those that did a good job were hired on full-time, the incentive to dedicate to the company would pay off more in the long run. So far, it has. And personally, I think the full-time position lends itself more to people sorta investing themselves in the company, so really, I think it's more beneficial to the company overall to just hire on salary, instead of trying to save money with contractors that ultimately may or may not really care about the quality of work they're putting into the company, as it isn't likely to support them long term.

Not saying you were a shoddy contractor or anything, but in the context of business, I think companies are better off hiring full time employees for work they do that actually supports the company's business model.
In your case, I obviously think they should have put you on salary, simply because you're Janszoon.

Janszoon

Heh. Yeah, I said as much in the post you replied to.

I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately this kind of crap is an epidemic in the corporate world right now. Even my father-in-law, who has been an electrical engineer for over forty years, has run into in repeatedly in the past few years.

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Freebase Dali

Haha yea I amended my post when I realized you had said the same thing.

And It's definitely unfortunate that the business model of so many companies out there is focused on short-term profit, as opposed to long-term sustainability.
It's really interesting for me right now because the company I work for used to be like that, and is currently transitioning to the more proper solution of long-term sustainability, so I'm seeing the effects of the past practices, and the future benefits, in flux.

We actually just kicked to the curb our main satellite provider (who was routinely jacking up the cost of their services, which we use to provide our services to customers) and hired a full-time satellite expert and business man of 30 years, because he can both provide expertise that is relevant to our own interests and provide us with better business deals, without being subjected to a reseller's interest of simply making the most profit off of us that they can. In turn, we can offer lower prices to our customers, and get more business, which helps both us, and our customers.

So the model, in general, is beneficial to a business that tends to guarantee its benefits to those who put into the company and invest in it, because those investments, whatever they are, will inevitably net a return on it due to the increased productivity and effectiveness.

Simply contracting work out might be effective immediately, but I don't think it's a sound foundation to build success upon.

fleamailman

("...nah, it gets worse humans..." started the goblin asking to be excused for the way he wrote, then continuing "...in that, due to obamacare most corporations are reducing their lower level staff to a 30hours a week employment status, thus avoiding the insurance bill to cover them, resulting in unemployment figures that might look better with less actual work being divided up between more people, yet for the individual concerned it couldn't be worse because often that person then had to work two jobs where the two separate employers who might not wish to share their employee between them...", yet either way then, everyone knew that the american unemployment figures were a farce, where being dropped off the register after two years regardless of whether one had actually found a job could hardly be reflective of the true unemployment figures, whereupon the goblin just sighed, saying "...the only reason why no one sees this as the greater depression of the 2010s as opposed to the great depression of the 1930s is that the media has been corrupted by its paymasters to turn a blind eye towards it and its moral obligation to speak out, oh, and plus the fact that those all too obtrusive soup kitchens of yesteryear are neatly replaced by the unobtrusive food stamps of today, moreover back then it was 1 in 10 who lived in the cities whereas today it's 1 in 10 who doesn't...", simply, it had come to the stage where ourdearmedia was without conscience, and that something that had started out as too big to fail had then become too big to prosecute and was now too big to mention even, where the goblin felt that the excuse of war would be their next tool to suppress even more unreported dissent at home, that america would in effect move onto a war footage against an enemy, imagined or otherwise, to hide the depth of their own shortfall and corruption, so the media would offer the audience what amounted to nothing more than that audience itself then, while hiding behind that media would be that which actually was their reality without coverage of it)

Burning Down

It's the same here. If you're self employed or working on contract (like my mom is) you don't get ****.from the government if you lose your business.

Luckyme

(... a repost from a writers forum where humans fail to see also.)

"Not only does it get worse it has been going on for years already." Lucky sits on the sofa staring down into her empty espresso cup. Humans have been denying the fact that the hot air has been slipping out of their balloons ever since they filled them. They also refuse to see how their own need for more and all consuming want drove those too high. "... what goes up must come down." Lucky once heard a wise man say right before he plummeted from his high to the lowest of low. "It is not my fault. They said it would be all right." Shaking her head Lucky wonders why humans are always ready to put blame on another human instead of looking for faults within themselves.