It's not unusual, but what I and some others find objectionable is this concept that people are get let go after 11 months to avoid a deeper contractual entanglement (eg become eligible for benefits or pension contributions or whatnot), regardless of performance.
The majority of the quality assurance/editorial people I know (that's the position this guy was in) at Amazon started out as contractors and were then promoted to full-time employment because of their performance.
While I think employing a contractor for 11 months to purposely avoid paying benefits is a dick move, its also the case that a lot of these positions don't exist for an entire year because the teams either a) automate them out of existence or b) send them out to Mechanical Turk.
This is particularly irritating to read about when full-time employees such as the manager in the story enjoy greater authority and job security despite being demonstrably less competent.
Agreed, though I think this is less a case of "this is an injustice to the workers" and more a case of "this is a dumb idea that leads to bad things all around".
The majority of the quality assurance/editorial people I know (that's the position this guy was in) at Amazon started out as contractors and were then promoted to full-time employment because of their performance.
While I think employing a contractor for 11 months to purposely avoid paying benefits is a dick move, its also the case that a lot of these positions don't exist for an entire year because the teams either a) automate them out of existence or b) send them out to Mechanical Turk.
This is particularly irritating to read about when full-time employees such as the manager in the story enjoy greater authority and job security despite being demonstrably less competent.
Agreed, though I think this is less a case of "this is an injustice to the workers" and more a case of "this is a dumb idea that leads to bad things all around".