Job Title: Engineer
Location: Santa Clara
Submitted on: 12-Dec-04
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As United Defense's business and future army contracts continue to
solidify, the company has still been highly reluctant to hire direct.
They do not want to risk laying the person off in the future. The
company had bad times a few years ago, and cried a lot when fellow
employees were laid off. This comes from the top, as they would rather
churn contractors on 12 month terms, rather than crying from a future
layoff of a direct hire. In other words, they don't want to get to know
you too well, so you can be exited quickly when your term is up.
Seems many managers have never been on the other side, i.e. life as a
contract engineer without benefits, sick days, vacation, holidays, 401K,
pension, etc. Some managers think they save on staffing costs, by hiring
new contractors every 12 months, rather than rely on fewer direct hires
who could continue to build upon experiences each year. New contractors
must build up their knowledge from scratch on the company products and
processes. Like many companies in the area, they would rather pay big
dollars to the contract agencies, who do nothing but take care of the
1099 and SSI payments. Many agencies have seemingly illegal clauses that
preclude the contractor for changing agencies, even after a full year of
employment -- unless they are not employed at United Defense for one full
year before returning. The job market is bad enough, without unethical
contract terms. The agencies want a huge annual annuity, for simply
having posted the job opening on their web site, or even having been
referred to them by United Defense itself.
There are probably over 100 contractors on the site now, with 700
directs. More contractors seems to be coming in weekly, from all areas
of CA and USA, and many with MS and PhD's. The only direct hires in
recent times have been for entry-level positions, i.e. very low paid.
This seems to be age discriminatory. We keep hearing that direct hires,
even experienced, are paid very low relative to other companies in the area.
For contractors who had been previously employed elsewhere as directs,
working as a contractor is the pits. Contractors are seldom invited to
meetings where they make the design decisions, hence the contractor
cannot be a true engineer. You manager never tells you whether you are
doing a good job or not, or feedback when you highlight major
accomplishments. They hardly reply to e-mail. Perhaps that is the norm
for contractors, you get paid your hourly rate and OT, you want feedback
too?
Direct employees have greater access to information, and can potentially
do better engineering. Our large department has 30-40% contrators, well
beyond the norm, and there are some teams with nearly twice that. Those
levels are bordering on ridiculous. Relying on contractors to get their
critical design work accomplished is no way to treat professionals who
wish to be a direct employee. Hey, if they must, hire us direct, and lay
us off 12 month later. No tears required or desired; we've been though
that already.
Other than that, the company is a great place to work, with otherwise
great people, i.e. were one working as direct employee. The company has
good benefits, profit sharing, 401K, and defined pension plan. They just
need to start treating their critical contractors like real people, and
put them on the staff -- at least for awhile. We have families too.
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