My job is purely transactional. I’ve worked for 10 companies in almost 30 years. I gave them labor and they gave me money. Whenever one side decided the arrangement wasn’t working, I moved on to another job.
I’m personally well acquainted with many people in tech, especially big tech. Many of them are doing little or nothing, certainly not justifying $300k+ salaries.
What you do has risk but is fundamentally more honest - your skills are around technology and output, not navigating corporate bureaucracy.
I don't think most folks graduate college and think, "You know what sounds amazing? Sitting at a desk doing nothing five days a week!"
I expect most of the time they have good reason to be "unproductive," and would respond positively to those reasons getting addressed, or you're not capturing their contributions accurately with whatever metrics you're using to find "slackers."
And people are doing things, I’m not saying they’re sitting making paper airplanes — just things with no value or that drain their value. I had a high school friend who was brilliant, but his career got nerfed when he stuck with a bad tech/business unit.
If you’re the world’s premier expert in some peculiar process that only exists in one place, that’s no mas. Companies have been rolling in dough for a long time and some have way more people than they used to. One big company I deal with went from an account team of 6 to almost 50.
Some of it boils down to ineffective management and lack of mentoring, for sure, and could be addressed in a better way. Some of it is people getting in way over their heads.
I worked at a company where utility companies sent us data files and we created, printed and mailed bills.
In 2008 during the financial crisis the next time I looked for a job (my third), I had two offers relatively quickly - one programming point of sales systems and the other that I accepted programming ruggedized Windows CE devices for field service workers.
Fast forward to 2020 at the height of COVID, I got my one and only BigTech job working at AWS (my 8th job).
Unlike the author of the submitted article, when I got Amazoned 3.5 years later, I shrugged, my $40K severance was deposited in my account and I reached out to my network and targeted outreach to some recruiters in my niche and had four interviews and 3 offers within 3 weeks. Why would I waste time getting emotional about a company knowing that the CEO is 6-7 positions up on the career ladder and I’m just a random number to most of the organization?
A year later in 2024 around 9:00 PM I had a “1-1” with my manager invite for the next morning. I already had my suspicions and told my wife that I am probably going to be laid off in the morning. She said let her know how it goes and we went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning, was notified about my layoff asked when I would get my severance and responded to a recruiter that reached out to me about a week prior.
I started the interview process and three weeks later I had a job making the same as I was making at AWS.
I don’t need to “justify” what I’m making. I have a skillset and experience that are in demand and companies are willing to pay me for it because by employing me they get a positive ROI.
People in IT who take the employment route rather than contracting, do so because they want job security. eg they might have families. And much as you might be happy with your arrangement, there are plenty in the UK and Europe who do prefer longer-term job security over a few extra £££ in their pocket.
But you’re right that IR35 really hasn’t helped situations either.
Some of my friends have commented that the last few years has been the worst time in their 20+ years as a contractor.
Lots of people, when evaluating the risks of contracting vs employment, find the reward far outweighs the risk. It sounds like you'd be one of them if you were presented with the same choice. And that's a fine decision for you to come to. But that's not going to be the same conclusion for everyone.
