In 2013 during a relative low point of both my life and career, I got a job that I had no idea would alter the course of my entire life. It was an ...
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Your insights confirm many suspicions I had about recruiting agencies, especially about the mismatching expectations. "Our freelancing coworkers are more expensive, so they must earn more," is not necessarily true if it's the intermediary agencies earning the extra money.
Yeahhh so I mean I know people can freelance directly for companies, but yes if they do go the agency route they in general are going to be losing a hunk of pay to the middleman. I know for more traditional freelancers who work directly with businesses, there also can be a lot of runaround getting people to pay their invoices lol. I think with all said and done I'm happy enough being a regular 'ole employee
I'm quite happy being self-employed again, mostly not a as a freelancer for large companies, but more like a craftsperson for smaller customers and startups. I used to be an employee for over 10 years which also has its advantages. Funny in hindsight how some team leads kept warning their employees to avoid the wrong decision to freelance. I have also been happy with some recruiting agencies and some individuals working for them, but I had to decline so many offers that others would have liked or needed to take. So maybe there is some value in those middleperson agencies after all.
Also quite funny how a whole industry can work with dysfunctional nonsense KPIs for so many years and still make money?
Finally, as a non native speaker, I am still fascinated about the different, but not totally unrelated, meanings of the word "agency" in English. "Not giving up one's agency" has been one of my personal key takeaways from this year's beyond tellerrand conference, quoting the cabeza patata's talk about "the positives of saying no".
(Not) giving up one’s Agency: some personal notes about beyond tellerrand conference 2022 in Düsseldorf
Ingo Steinke ・ May 9 ・ 7 min read
Terrible terrible terrible, this is the nadir of prototypical "corporate" business, with senseless top-down management and a ludicrous obsession with "bulk sales", numbers, and inane "metrics" ... great write-up, thanks for making me shudder!
Great post @jtk. A couple of things to mention.
Definitely - and of course, there are good recruiters everywhere just sometimes hard to find. I have more sympathy than I otherwise would have, after seeing the training that was honestly kind of shoved down my throat to treat people more transactionally. Unfortunately there is a lot of that out there and can make finding the good ones hard
Oi but are all these nearshore companies affecting atos in anyway?
if they look down on american contractors I can't imagine what they think about us latam contractors 😂
well, I don't put contractor anywhere because I'm a full time employee in a consulting firm, so uh, I don't think of myself as a contractor for my company, but I sure am for the client sdkfjjkldf
Very much "eye-opening-stuff" you wrote about, JTK. I suspected it was bad, but my naive being never thought it was this rotten. I did some research a week ago, and busy writing about a similar topic where web-devs are involved.
What I have found and based on their public reports found on a third-party site, both Fiverr and Upwork are doing this on an international scale.
They state the following, based on made-public reports from these two firms:
“1 in 800 freelancers (0.125%) on Upwork make more than $1000 per month.”
“Upwork’s revenue from freelancers totalled $226.7 million in 2020. That’s 67.86% of total marketplace revenue.”
In a nutshell, the figures above reduce to an average monthly GSV contribution of $ 487.50 per Freelancer per month or $ 2.90 per hour for 2019, when operating through Upwork. *Remember, the GSV values represent the total turnover for that period. No expenses or fees are deducted from either the "employers" or the freelancers doing work for them.
Doing a bit of basic math it's easy to see that the life gets sucked out of freelancers, especially from regions like Asia, Indonesia, South America and Africa.
And to top it off, even US citizens are not having it so cosy anymore:
Basic calculation show that if we take that $1.3 trillion (per annum), assume no middle-men are involved, divide it by the 60 million US folks we get the following picture.
This reduces to an average of $10.75/hour for a full 52 weeks of work at 40 hours per week. No breaks, vacations or free lunches, no middle-man fees paid to anyone yet—simply Revenue churned divided by head-count.
Comparing it to the GSV calculation of earlier ($2.90/hour) , it's clear that even US citizens are getting robbed in their own backyards. Let's be conservative and say "all shady-sharkies and persons-remotely-affiliated" sneaks away with 30%—Yes, no?
These people's skills are good enough to be sold to the first-world job markets, but apparently not good enough to be compensated fairly. Not even remotely.
A common excuse is these "people" have far lower costs of living. True, when living in a desert or a jungle in some remote place on the Rock, but when you buy a barrel of Crude from said desert or jungle, the free-market price is just that - the free market price.
If you are a human though, your value is determined where you were or are "barreled", not what you are worth.
Let's put those sandals on the investors for a beat or two and see how comfy they sit.
Oh, both companies are screaming for more people wanted in 2023—No surprises there, as stock managers are telling investors both are "keepers".
Looking at footers of some sites, especially ones found in the EU and UK you see the words of unsuspecting angels...
Maybe it's time to start saying no. Simple—Just, No.
Oh crap, it looks like I've tried to hi-jacked this.
Sorry JTK, "slit it's throat" and throw me a rock if you want to. The topic's just a PITA-peeve I have.
Not hijacking at all, thanks so much for the response! Having been on the hiring side I find this whole topic fascinating and would definitely read whatever you wind up writing about it. I had heard that Fiverr and Upwork were mostly not useful to anyone working in the states because they can be underbid, and I agree that it is unfortunate that we now have this dynamic where companies are just exploiting people based on locale. If anything companies should be willing to pay MORE when they get to skip the expenses like office location or healthcare for some of the international workers. It is a really messed up dynamic
Well, thanks for throwing flowers instead of rocks!
It's not an easy thing to fix as most people feel they are facing a huge mountain when they are trying to find suitable work, never mind getting paid fairly. They mostly accept the status quo and sweat away deeper and deeper into the pit.
Discussion and education about the topic, and trying to "push it through the ether" to where it could be needed most is a possibility I'm going to try.
I'm working on finding and putting forward more tangible tools (very basic) with which people can hopefully get a better grip on their own personal freelancing situation, make good decisions and then focus their energies on getting a foot into the door, or leveraging themselves better to get more sustainable work.
Deciding to work through agencies or not is actually not the main issue, I think. They are here to stay, and as stated by others here in your post there are ones that do great work.
The small guys all over the world are however not as visible as they need to be. Well not in a healthy way. Being seen on Upwork or Fiverr is not my idea of the kind of visibility needed. Who likes swimming in a shark tank except for crazy scuba divers like me!
We need another way. I think Quincy Larson's drive with freeCodeCamp sets a great example. There are solutions out there. Tried and tested solutions and approaches by real people who went through the process and who are helping other real people. The hustlers will be and still are in great numbers too, seeing most humans all secretly dream of or publicly brag about making easy money on the backs of the masses. They work themselves out of the system eventually and to recover from a bad rep, especially if people, in general, are getting better informed and warn others via reviews, well they should die out eventually. (Hey, we can hope!)
And from fCC's angle, those folks started off as total newbies and landed some impressive employment. Freelancing is a bit newer animal that's not quite as mature as permanent employment yet. Many are writing about how they managed to find the work they have.
However, if one reads the author’s article, and starts adding up the amount of time spent on a successful outcome, it is pleasantly shocking to see the resilience these individuals have to keep on fighting for survival. And yes, the article is focused on finding work as a permanent team member, but there’s not much difference between being a freelancer and being a staff member. Yes, the freelancer has to fight a bit harder, seeing that they need to have additional systems and processes in place, but the essentials remain the same.
My aim at this stage is to help with the “additional systems” that need to be in place. You can be a first-class dev, but if you don’t know and understand how a business operates, even a one-person endeavour, well you are in for trouble and disappointment.
I'm putting my first "content-baby" out on public display at Substack but will cross-post here on DEV once it's deemed "reasonably acceptable". (Nibbling nails while waiting for my draft's reviews to get back.)
I hope to help at least one person. If it does, then it was worth all the uncertainty and stress 😂
Thanks again for tolerating me here in your DEV yard.
Your post confirms my suspicions. When I needed a job I purposely wrote applications I thought were quirky, and looked for employers rather than agencies. I did try one online agency, but ended up ignoring thir emails as they were obvious crud with offers to pay for extra services to enhance your ability to get a job through a better CV.
I got my start in the industry through staffing agencies. I applied to a bunch of places. Then an IT manager who accidentally included me on an internal email about something unrelated pointed me to a place that was hiring when I let him know of his oopsie.
I found there are basically 2 kinds of staffers.
Places that are never going to bring you on full time and places that expect you to work more than full time.
Both kinds will exploit you as much as you let them. They are aware of this. They can tell when they are pushing folks hard and they start getting call backs from clients about errors.
The difference of course is that some folks (honestly white guys who think the world owes them something) will make a bigger fuss than others. So they get let go. Or to be more technical, it's almost all at will, 1099, "this is not a job" is repeated ad nauseum.
Of course there are FT tech jobs through staffers. I got a temp-to-hire job that I absolutely blew the doors off of. Was brought on as salary after 6 months. They kept me for 5 years. I only left because of family stuff.
While working all over Silicon Valley, the Peninsula and the Bay Area I saw a lot of abuse though.
Quite often you see immigrants getting paid less and expected to do more.
On one occasion there was a South Indian guy working on a really mundane QA task on Friday when we came in to do some network stuff.
He was there on Saturday as we came in at the crack of dawn, and also Sunday when we did clean up and verification.
His clothes did not change the whole time. It was obvious he was stuck there monitoring a batch job or something.
Not the only time I've seen such people metaphorically chained to their desks.
Also worked on several gigs where it was subcontracted through several layers of responsibility. They hand you a SOW with 3 or 4 corporate logos. 20 pages of disclaimers and legalese and then a series of instructions so badly written it could only have come from a committee.
The topper was when I had just moved to NYC.
I picked up some staffing work for walking around money while I looked for a professional gig. Ended up doing relocation work in the financial district for one of the largest players.
The severe BS and headgames I encountered turned me off on ever doing such work again. It was the kind of posturing and territorialism you sometimes see in the construction trades. But among IT staff? Not sure if it was a NY thing, a financial sector thing, or just that particular organization. Now when I want some side money I do independent contractor IT stuff like installing IDF equipment and other small scale stuff I can do on my own.
There are a few platforms that enable this, and I am often working for the client directly, with the platform taking a percentage.
Compared to the short term staffing gigs where if I was getting $20, the agency was getting $30, and the subcontractor $50 for every hour I worked.
In some states the labor laws have loopholes that allow them to call you out for absurd 2 hour gigs at low pay rates. And as long as you work less than 30 hours a week then it's not counted as a job.
Glad I only spent a brief time putting up with that, but I know people who have worked like that for years!
Excellent article, thanks. My entry into contract programming was accidental. My first full-time job after college ended after 2 years due to a merger. I panicked taking the first job offered which was from a contracting firm. I knew nothing about the temporary assignments. It lasted 7 years with about 10 layoffs . We often felt as 2nd class citizens because we knew we were always the first to be let go.
In 20 years I worked 12 in contacting. I learned way more doing that because each environment was different. It streched me to the max for sure. But even as a highly paid consultant, the NIH Syndrome was pervasive. Most teams didn't want to hear about the latest greatest things. The main reason was the tech leads didn't want to be perceived as flat-footed. So it pretty much was a straight jacket 'do as we say' thing most of the time.
For those that were open to the truths of their architecture they were often too deep into the investment to cauterize the bleeding. They would lumber along until years later the project dive-bombed itself into the ground.
Contracting was a pressure laden environment which required thick skin and the need to hit the ground running. Poor architecture often made learning in short time impossible. The feeling of failure was persistent.
I'm now a full time employee for a wonderful team and feel like a valued player. There's nothing as nice a reaching the MVP inner circle but it takes 20 or more years to get there. I'm now able to avoid the mistakes I saw while Contracting and consider those years of high value. It all worked out well but I would not want to willingly rejoin the Contracting world.
Excellent insights. And it very much aligns with most of my interaction with recruiters. One question: what does "Genericizing your title" mean? What kind of titles are good to have. And what conditions did you want a more generic title vs a more specific one? Curious to get your insight on this, since you have such specific industry experience.
Yeah definitely! For me at one point I had a kind of niche/industry title where my duties aligned to the title "Software Developer" but was something way more obscure that seemed less likely to be found and maybe less prestigious connotation, I think my whole title was "Systems Web/Database Programmer Analyst" or something ridiculous. When I was leaving recruiting, I had a more generic title and leaned into it, knowing how much tech people hated recruiters :p it can cut both ways. If you want to highlight the transferrable aspects of your job to another field or title, you may have an easier time going either route, depending on the situation
Hahaha I experienced that before, they want to hire me as React dev even I am not a react dev before.
Agree with you about Atos, it is a bad employer. I've already read a lot of bad reviews online about them before.
I was an IT Helpdesk at Atos Philippines for almost 5 years for Aetna, a health care company in the US. Before Atos, we were part of Xerox, but our account was bought by Atos. So, to make the long story short. The account got closed; we were all laid off.
Our yearly appraisal at that time was only about 500Pesos (8USD). With no other benefits except for government-mandated ones.
At our Christmas party, the food they served was not luxurious. There's no even dessert. It was a very cheap party!
I think the way Atos markets themselves is to "save companies money", but the nasty part of it is that they don't do that by being more efficient or having some special knowledge or relationship with candidates that helps them. They keep costs down (if they even really do, I have my doubts) by having low paid contractors. And I know it is a whole other issue for people to exploit workers in the Philippines and so unfortunate, I'm sorry you had that experience
TEKsystems is why I know what “co-employment” means
interesting
Thanks for this post, @JTK, it puts many of my past experiences with agencies in perspective.
nice
Yep, often recruiters play a big role in turning employees into resources—numbers, really. The bigger the company, the less you're seen as a person. It’s all about metrics, not people.
Job descriptions are often vague to the point of uselessness, which makes it clear how little value some agencies place on understanding the roles they’re hiring for.
When it comes to wage depression, though, it’s not just the staffing agencies at fault. Sure, they take a cut, but the real winners here are the enterprises that push for lower rates. The margins for these agencies are slimmer than people think.
The layers of middlemen are another issue. Sometimes, you’re dealing with ten or more links in the chain before the contractor sees a dime. Each one takes a cut, driving wages down further. It’s a mess, and it’s designed to maximize profit at the expense of the contractor.
That said, not all staffing agencies are the same. Smaller firms tend to be closer to their staff and often advocate for them in ways larger firms don’t. There’s a difference between the big players who treat people as numbers and the smaller companies that actually value their staff.
In terms of recruiting practices, there are different approaches. My company uses a proprietary vetting process to match the right candidates to the right projects, and they can scale teams quickly. That's why we called this guide "humanized".
By the way, it's very nice to see that you’re concerned about wage depression and middlemen!
The absolute worst are the Indian recruiters who download every resume they can find for their automated system that sends out blast emails for jobs that are irrelavent to your experience. Others have phone banks calling constantly with the same irrelavent jobs. Once you are in their system, they are relentless. There oughta be a law.