Orange Badge Culture At Microsoft 264
coolball writes "For those of us that have worked as a contractor (a-dash or orange badge or whatever), Seattle PI's 'Microsoft's 'orange badge' culture gets forum' article caught my eye this morning. He talks about OrangeBadges.com and Contractor's International Network, two forums that have sprung up as a meeting place (cyber & meat) for current/past/future contractors of the empire. If you have been a Microsoftee, then you would laugh out loud in recognition some of the tales he relates."
Attempt to unionize an inevitability? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Attempt to unionize an inevitability? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point? They are Microsoft contractors and temporaries usually hired by outside firms. These workers would need to unionize within their own temp agencies and then bargain for better treatment/wages/benefits with them.
I don't see the benefits of independent contractors unionizing as it would defeat the entire purpose of being an independent.
A more selective MS collective. (Score:2)
Maybe there isn't so much benefit for the potential union members, now that I think about it, but for Microsoft? Resistance makes them futile; they'll find some other temps to assimilate.
Re:Attempt to unionize an inevitability? (Score:2)
Why? Unions are by definition independent from employers. The contract workers in the Seattle area would unionize and then refuse to sign contracts with employers who also sign contracts with non-union workers.
Re:Attempt to unionize an inevitability? (Score:2)
Idealistic notions are one thing, $$$ is another.
Re:Attempt to unionize an inevitability? (Score:5, Informative)
The sort of people Microsoft wants to hire (as FTEs) are not interested in unionization. Microsoft, more than anywhere else i've worked, is a meritocracy where people are vastly rewarded for excellent personal performance. We want to hire people that excel in that environment. People that know they are bright enough that they could walk and find other gainful employment, so don't put up with things they don't have to where they are. People that have a variety of options and beleive where they are at is the best available.
That's pretty much the opposite of the sort of people that are interested in unionization.
I don't see Microsoft putting up with any kind of unionization of contract workers. The last time contractors aggregately sued MS, we amended our policy by making them sit on the bench 100 days per year (to make it crystal clear that contractors/permatemps were temporary.. a- (agency-temp) workers have to take 100 days off every year now)
There are some distinctions at MS between blue and orange that probably need to remain, but others that could probably go away. The latter are mostly individual actions.. people with poor professional behavior that treat contractors unfairly or as if they're some kind of lesser person. There need to be some differences in the way you treat the non-blues for legal/other reasons, but that shouldn't spill into how you treat them as humans. Unfortuneately it is completely possible to work at MS and not really have any sense of how to interact with people effectively [unless you define "effective" as badgering people into submission].
I've worked with great contractors and not so great contractors. Hell, I know of at least one guy that moved from blue->orange so he could take 100 days of "vacation" every year to snowboard. Not a bad sounding idea, honestly
You're so punny! (Score:2, Funny)
Or maybe he's interested in only making anion.
Wow, I want to be a contract worker for MSFT! (Score:5, Funny)
Ummm?! Sounds like you get a whole lot more when you are a contractor for Microsoft
For the record (Score:5, Informative)
Re:For the record (Score:2)
Orange badges: are they still called "dash trash"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Orange badges: are they still called "dash tras (Score:2)
Re:Orange badges: are they still called "dash tras (Score:2)
Nice attitudes...
Maybe the full timers were afraid that a contractor would take their job?
Re:Orange badges: are they still called "dash tras (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Orange badges: are they still called "dash tras (Score:3, Funny)
Is that a euphemism, like "sleeps with the fishes"?
Orange Badges? (Score:5, Funny)
Working in the belly of the beast (Score:5, Informative)
Having been a contractor in IT working for some of the "big ones" the last 10 years, it is a lot different wearing the OTHER color badge. Things like:
1. No free meals on "employee appreciation day".
2. No access to the company park/gym/pool/volleyball pits.
3. Parking 2 miles from the building entrance.
On the good side:
1. Real easy to leave and go to the next gig.
2. Money.
3. More autonomy. I am my own boss when my wife's not around.
Re:Working in the belly of the beast (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Working in the belly of the beast (Score:2)
Contract staff always brag about how good they have it -- until something happens.
Re:Working in the belly of the beast (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Working in the belly of the beast (Score:2)
Pick one.
Re:Working in the belly of the beast (Score:2, Interesting)
It's funny when you happen to ride the elevator up in the morning with one of them, they almost look like they try to appear busy so they don't have to talk to you.
instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:5, Insightful)
People recognizing your orange badge instantly makes you an 'outsider' or 'not really and employee' at Microsoft. It is in people's nature to want to belong to a group, and once they see that you are not part of their group, you are not deemed as trustworthy or good enough to be part of their select group.
If I ran Microsoft, I would make a lot of changes but first I would not make badges with an opposing colour scheme. Everyone should have the same badge, eliminating the psychological effect of being an 'outsider' or 'not really part of the same team.' One less thing to worry about and one less possibility for employees to become divisive and uncooperative.
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:3, Insightful)
carry different badges as an easy indicator (Score:2)
Re:carry different badges as an easy indicator (Score:2)
Re:carry different badges as an easy indicator (Score:2)
Microsoft not very secure? Now you're just being silly.
Silly badges (Score:2)
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:2)
That's the funnies thing I've read all week!
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:3, Informative)
In my life, maybe 5% (being generous) of the people I meet are sufficiently ethical.
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:2)
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:2)
I think the equation Microsoft is using is
"Divisive and uncooperative employees cost in $" "number of contractors that sue because they were treated as a
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:2)
change that to
while "Divisive and uncooperative employees cost in $" is less than "number of contractors that sue because they were treated as an employees" times the average out of court settlement.
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:2)
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:2)
The longtime contector is a threat because the employer may try to hire the contractor full time to reduce cost.
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:2)
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:3, Informative)
In the vast majority of cases, a typical "permanent" employee is costing somewhere between $40-60/hr, depending on skills and the location. With contract workers, billing rates (NOT what the contractor gets) routinely exceed $100 for skills beyond Level-2 helpdesk. Big companies like IBM/HP/Oracle tend to bill $150-350.
The sole advantage to contract staf
Re:instant discrimination (however subtle) (Score:2)
What color is the sky on your planet? At the contracting gig I had before this one, the contractors got all the busy/ugly/painful work while the permanent employees got all the credit. The contracting company encouraged us to bend over and take it because they were afraid of losing the contract. Putting someone in grave danger of losing their assignment has a way of keeping them quiet when you dump 3 d
Life as a contractor is good, why force the issue? (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew a guy who worked for a company as a contractor. He was billing $60 an hour, and they were giving him about 50 hours of work a week. They gave him a nice office. The guy turned around and sued the company to be recognized as an employee because he wanted the benifits. I forget the details, but his argument boiled down to "they treated me like an employee, so I am an employee, now give me my benifits or severance pay".
I'm the kind of guy who likes working on projects, then moving on to something different. What is wrong with contracts? I have been very happy working on a project for 5 or 6 months, then taking two or three weeks off before starting the next project. I have more vacation time than my friends who are employees.
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2, Informative)
And for temps it's a whole different world, of course.
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2)
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2)
I knew a guy who worked for a company as a contractor. He was billing $60 an hour, and they were giving him about 50 hours of work a week. They gave him a nice office. The guy turned around and sued the company to be recognized as an employee because he wanted the benifits.
If this is the same guy, then he worked contract for 2 or 3 years, was offered a blue badge and refused it, and sued over stock options, not benefits. This was a class action suit that cost MS a pretty penny and resulted in the 100 day
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:5, Informative)
Health insurance isn't too expensive if you realize you need it for EMERGENCIES, not for yearly check ups and all that. Drop the co-pay, pay for your doctor's visits, and use insurance only for the big things. When I put my deductible to US$5000 annually, my insurance rate dropped big time. I put a little over US$5000 in gold to pay my deductible in an emergency, and I believe I pay just over US$100 for my health insurance (31/M/ex-smoker/kidney stones). I have great coverage, but I pay my doctor cash -- and get a discount for it from his office.
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2)
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2)
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2)
Cash is king. It can save you 30-60% over your bill, as the medical office doesn't need to deal with the hassle of getting paid by the insurer.
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2)
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:3, Insightful)
The stories that I'm always fed are about contractors who are paid 180-300% what the regular coders get, eat steak every day from their ridiculous per diem and travel compensations, jerk off for a few weeks at the office, then its up to the regular staffers to fix their shoddy code for a month afterwards. And for whatever reason, some companies get stuck in these loops for a long time. A friend
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2)
Why gold? You don't have too much of a guarantee that it's increasing -- and the prices over the last two years [yahoo.com] haven't been even close to monotonic. If you're keeping it for an emergency, the value could have been anywhere from $80 to $130 per ounce, if you needed it sometime this year or last year. If you keep $5000 in bills, it'll inflate or deflate at
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2)
Re:Life as a contractor is good, why force the iss (Score:2, Insightful)
I recently lost my wife's wedding and engagement rings, and I was, of course, crucified for this rather significant error in judgement. But we didn't spend a ton of money on the set - probably $2,500 for both - and that's Canadian dollars to boot.
My in-laws think we should go through our house insurance, which i think is ludicrous. I have a $1,500 deductible, so the very best I can hope for is to squeeze $1,000 out of them,
A badge is for life, not just for contracting. (Score:3, Funny)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Funny)
In Ukraine... (Score:5, Funny)
No, you are thinking of Ukraine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution [wikipedia.org]
Contractors get the shaft everywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/ [stockmarketgarden.com]
Re:Contractors get the shaft everywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
@ IBM they're Yellow Badges, BFD (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:@ IBM they're Yellow Badges, BFD (Score:2)
IBM and Contractors (Score:5, Informative)
I recall in one of their security training videos contractors were even mocked. Some "evil" data-mining company was doing things such as stealing laptops, eavesdropping on conversations, and pretending to be members of the target company. When the tasks for the day were given out, and dumpster diving came up, someone said something along the lines of, "Well, give that to one of the contractors. Heh heh heh." Funnier yet, when the "contractor" showed up in the video, he looked more like Joe Dirt, covered with tattoos and a mullet. He was dropped off way, waaaay up the street from the target CEO's house and the truck with the other contractor went and parked next to the trash cans. So about 20 seconds of the video shows this guy walking up the street in broad daylight, sticking out like a sore thumb, only to come to where the truck was parked, dumped the trash bins into the truck and left. It was horribly ridiculous and MST3K-worthy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:IBM and Contractors (Score:2)
Doesn't Google have the Same Setup? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are the contractors treated better at one place or the other?
Color theory (Score:3, Interesting)
orange is the opposite of blue, just like red and green.
Is this intentional ?
Why is this news? Contracting is the same all over (Score:2, Offtopic)
Contracting can be fun. I highly recommend it to all recent grads. Get out there and see the world, get good at what you do, and change jobs every
Re:Why is this news? Contracting is the same all o (Score:3, Funny)
Get off Slashdot and get back to work!
I got a two-hour lunch, then meeting, then going home early...
I was an "orange to blue" badge (Score:5, Interesting)
While I was a contractor there was a site wide carnival where they trucked in mini roller coasters and other fun stuff. Contractors were literally ushered out the door and weren't even told about it beforehand.
One day when I was a full time employee all of the contractors...ALL 700 on site...were fired because of low call volume.
The class action lawsuit brought in later years by former contractors didn't surprise me one bit after that.
A great idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all companies treat contractors like Joe Dirt (Score:3, Interesting)
Obligatory IBM Slam # 2 (Score:2)
Presenting myself for the slaughter (Score:5, Informative)
Alright boys and gals, I'm here so, please, bring on the onslaught. I'm the grinning dude in the PI article, Howard that started OrangeBadges.com. DON'T ALL THROW FECES AT ME ALL AT ONCE!!!
But seriously, I'm not sure if you all realize how huge an organization Microsoft is, and how much of its workforce is made up of temp employees. Just in Redmond, WA, there are 30,000+ head counts, and between 1/3 to 1/4 of that is made up of contractors. If you also take into account of the perma-temps of the 80s and 90s, plus, due to the "work-365-days-and-take-100-days-off-with-no-guara ntees-your-position-won't-be-fille-by-another-cont ractor" perma-temp settlement, there is a huge swarm of people flowing through the orange-badge system every year. That's easily 10,000+ people who are/have worked as an orange badge at MS. If you also take into consideration all the people who WANT to, plus all the international MS orange badges, you will realize that this is a huge community of people.
Now, I know we are all supposed to hate Microsoft. Trust me, now that I am in the bastion of open-source @ Amazon.com, there is no lack of distrust of commercial licensed software, but I'm talking about real people here. So, cut me some slack, boys and girls. It's just a message board. :-)
OK, now you can all throw feces my way, and I will answer the best I can. :-)
I was once an orange badge... (Score:2)
Lousy.. (Score:2)
I don't know anything specifically about why GLEAM wouldn't allow you to join, but in general, non-blues are excluded from all kinds of things due to nobody understanding the legal issues involved and nobody being a real advocate of contractor "rights" [these are not really "rights" issues but thats the word that seems to describe the feeling best in my mind] enough to try and understan
Re:I was once an orange badge... (Score:5, Funny)
It's not just Microsoft that does this. (Score:2)
Orange Badge? Try Being a Red Badge (Score:3, Interesting)
. . . in DOD TS/SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) facility.
When I arrived at a new assignment in the former West Germany in the 1980s at a USAF TS/SCI facility, I waited six weeks for my SCI access to be verified.
In those days, a red badge was issued to anyone who's SCI access had not been verified. While in the facility, you had to be escorted everywhere and before you entered a room your escort had to announce "RED BADGE" to alert everyone to stop the secret-squirrel stuff.
And when I say "escorted everywhere," I mean everywhere, including the restroom. Red badges were encouraged to make number two BEFORE they entered the facility, or wait until they left.
MS isn't alone on Orange Badge Culture... (Score:2, Informative)
Working there as an "orange badge" is the equivalent to being charitably bussed to an expensive private school from a poor neighborhood. You are an untouchable, not to be socialized with and become the scapegoat for poor management. You don't attend department meetings that directly effect your project and workload, yo
Not restricted to Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
One of the differences that was clear on your first day, was that greenbadges had to swipe their badge every time they enter or exit the building. Bluebadges just showed it to the security guy from across the room and walked in or out.
We developed a saying: "Green badges always swipe when they are done"
There was a contractor once that used some of the 3M blue masking tape you find everywhere around Intel to turn his green stripe into a blue stripe, just to see if anyone noticed. It was two weeks later that a manager asked him "Hey - when did you get hired as a blue badge employee?"
She wasn't happy when he peeled the tape off.
Now I work at a company that has Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow badges for completely different purposes.
Red = access to secure areas such as "the vault" in the Jewelry division, the datacenter, wiring closets, etc.
Blue = employee non-secure access
Green = contractor
Yellow = temporary
However, no one really even knows what the difference in the colors mean except the security clucks.
At our company.... (Score:2)
Re:WTF (Score:2)
There are currently 137 members registered on Orange Badges: Contracting at Microsoft.
And from the below (I am too lazy to format what I cut and pasted- just look for the numbers) check out how many posts there have been!!!
Forum Name Topics Replies Last Activity Orange badge alumnis Moderator: howard This is the place for you if you were a contractor at Microsoft before and not with Microsoft anymore. 8 23 12/30 at 1:36 am Orange badge makers Moderator: howard T
Blue badge are vendors (Score:2)
Blue is for vendors/agents of another company.
Re:US Govt Badge Colors (Score:2)
Blue collar, red tape, pink slip, blue print, brown out, red hering, red neck, for non-native english speakers this stuff is really hard.
You really only need to know one... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Desperate for news? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not desperate at all...the motive is far more sinister than mere desperation.
Check out the member page [slashdot.org] for 'coolball'.
'Coolball' is obviously one of Zonk's numerous dummy accounts he uses when he wants to shove another uninteresting story down our throats, but doesn't have the balls to do it directly. Just peruse his old stories, and check out the user pages of the alleged 'contributors', and you can see for yourself that Zonk
Re:Desperate for news? (Score:5, Interesting)
We're looking for something interesting or something to do. This is a site for hackers, remember? Not just middle-managers. I want to see articles about somebody heating their house with a server farm, or HOWTO build your own embedded system from a system-on-chip or something. I mean, ever since somebody decided Slashdot has to only be about OSS, there have been more articles about fscking Microsoft than anything really interesting.
Re:Guess What (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guess What - Mod parent up (Score:2)
I think everyone assumes larger corporations like MSFT have a more rigid organizational structure. This is not news.
Re:Whiners (Score:2, Insightful)
Guess what? No one cares. Some people never had a home, period - especially a cushy historic home in a famous tourist destination.
I really hate the "you have no right to complain because other people have it worse than you" mentality. You're half a step above the "why are we discussing this when people are dyi
Re:Whiners (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Whiners (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whiners (Score:2)
Re:Not Hyperbole, more like Straw Man... (Score:2)
Re:Whiners (Score:2, Insightful)
Mind you that this money comes from our taxes so WE are giving these 'unfortunate' people luxuries that we work hard ourselves to EARN.
Now, I'm no
Re:Whiners (Score:2)
And if you honestly think he's being serious...I really have nothing to say.
Re:Whiners (Score:2, Insightful)
A statement that applies for one group (Upper Middle-class tech workers) might not apply for another group (Impoverished disaster victims). That doesn't mean the original statement is in any way incorrect.
Re:Whiners (Score:2)
No, you didn't get it straight (Score:2)
If you will kindly leave your expletives behind and learn some history, you will find that yellow badges were introduced at an early stage in the persecutions, when being Jewish affected your employment prospects or status rather than threatened your life. The point I was trying to make was that official discrimination, however unintentioned, leads to more serious discrimination. Anybody who has st
Re:You lose the argument if you mention this... (Score:2)