So I had an interview yesterday, good company, good role, I have several friends who currently work there (company numbers in the thousands so it's not like those connected are a big help) and all over the job posting is how they offer competitive compensation.
And I'm sure they do, in my industry it's common for my type of role to offer salary, benefits, annual bonus, long term incentives, a saving matching plan, and RRSP contributions, as well as decent vacation and flex days.
I'd be ecstatic if I got offered even the middle of the pay band for the role and my experience.
But towards the end of the interview they asked me why I am looking for a job, and told them that I am currently working a contract role and that I'm looking for something more permanent.
Thats when the first shoe dropped and they told me oh well this role is actually a contract role as well, but don't worry all their contractors are treated like staff the roles are not short term there is years of work etc etc.
Ok so they made a decent sell of it.
Then they asked about compensation, and I told them, look what I care most about is being compensated fairly compared to my peers, it matters less what the number is and more that the person next to me with similar experience doing the same job is not getting paid 50% more than me.
I then also explained that quite often people don't do the math when comparing contract rates to salaries rates. In my industry it's quite common to hear people say that contractors make more money than staff, that you take a pay cut going from contract to staff. But the opposite is usually true.
What you often see is a salary may be 100k, with 20% bonus, 20% long term incentives, 5% RRSP, and 5% savings match plan. So that 100k becomes 150k almost instantly.
But they will offer 60 an hour and say that is really 120k per year because there are ~2000 working hours in a year. They then say that contract pays more because you don't get those other perks so it's an all in number that's higher.
But it gets way worse, because when you factor in vacation holidays flex days etc, you will end up working about 1700 hours not 2000, and as a contractor you also have additional expenses, like health and dental, corporate fees, lawyer fees, accountant, additional CPP etc.
So after I outlined this briefly (briefer than here) they looked at me and said we understand but we also have to work within the pay bands we have because we can't pay people outside of the established pay range for the role. The very clear implication was, we know contractors get paid less if you work out the math, that's why we hire people as contractors, and we can't pay you comparably to staff cause then the other contractors would figure it out and cause issues.
And in some ways all of that is somewhat ok? I mean I'm working a crappy contract right now, but when I do quit for a job that pays me actual market rate everyone is going to be all shocked Pikachu face that I quit.
It's just so frustrating that companies want to hire people to make high consequence business and technical decisions often values in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and they are also banking on those same people being unable to make good decisions on their own behalf.
I get that is just how it is and I know all I can do is move jobs until I get either a contract rate that is appropriate or a salaried position but it's still so frustrating to see how we are all supposed to play the game and pretend to be wowed by getting screwed over and say thank you may I have another until you can move on. Then get told you are burning bridges by refusing to be taken advantage of anymore.
Sorry end rant thanks for reading if you hung in this long.