Waymo

• Opportunity to work with emerging technologies
• Reasonable pay rates
• Excellent food provided gratis/well-furnished campus

Due to draconian contractor procedures, culture can revolve around an “us vs them” mentality. The contractor workforce outnumbers full-time employees and is offered far fewer benefits. This includes, in general:

• No PTO for contractors
• Lack of access to support clubs (including communities for marginalized groups like LGBTQ)
• Wild variances in pay
• Opaque procedures for dealing with workplace issues

Work is highly specialized and difficult to commute to other QA work.

Contractors are generally laid off after two years without fail, excepting rare opportunities for being hired into full-time work. These opportunities are not well-telegraphed and lead to a loss of good employees frequently.

There is very little benefit to going above and beyond due to the above. I witnessed several talented employees who were laid off a month or even weeks before full-time opportunities arose. Coworkers who had spent time revamping procedures or creating scripts, efforts which were not rewarded beyond brownie points with management, did not help them in the end.

Improve your contracting procedures to avoid training specialized employees only to lay them off soon after.