I read here over and over that some folks come back as contractors.
Why?
RSUs are a big junk of my blue-badge salary. Contractors don't get that.
Why would I come back to the company that laid me off ... unless there is a huge financial incentive.
What is the TC of those who return compared to their previous blue-badge TC?
Contractors are bound to a legal SOW meaning when they lay off workers they can’t dump that extra work on you and not pay you.
The RSUs? LOL, the stock has hovered at +/- $50 for years. It’s ok but it’s not worth the overtime I’m forced to work to vest.
Weigh the pro's & con's and make you own decisions.
I came back once as a contractor to basically do my old/original job, but on a different team. As a contractor, I worked a straight 40, no on-call, no OT, no Team Space check-ins, no V2MOM's, no bi-weekly 1:1's, etc. The work was the same, but there was no manager/employee political BS to deal with. Just assigned tasks w/ reasonable deadlines. But with those pro's came the higher cost of insurance, higher deductible limits, no bonus, no RSU's, no ESPP, but the same 4.01(k) matching, and no PTO. The pay rate was slightly higher which offset the higher cost of insurance, but the loss of PTO, RSU's, ESPP, and bonus made the total compensation 10-20% less overall.
I tried working for a much smaller company, and if you think Cisco plays favorites, you should try working for a company with only 400-600 employees. Get on the wrong side of someone in a company that small, if they have any power or are buddy-buddy with someone who does, your chances of moving forward just got flushed down the toilet. Between being micro-managed by a Director who bypassed my manager, the favorites who protected their "turf" by not documenting anything so that they were the only one who knew what the process was/how something worked or was configured, etc., and the cheaper benefits: less PTO, no PTO rollover, no bonus / RSU's, etc. just made it not worth being there. They tried to pass on all the dev/support costs to the customers, so we had to track all our time and allocate it to "tickets" and you had to "bill" 35+ hrs per week to customer tickets. I don't mind being busy, but I don't like getting pushback of logging hours to team meetings that kept me from working on customer tickets and having to basically work OT to offset those team meeting hours so I could bill the lost hours to customers. And they liked to get their month-end hours submitted a week before the end of the month to give accounting time to prepare their reports/bills for the customer so you had to estimate your last week of work. And if you guessed wrong, like I frequently did because that Director would come along and give me other "urgent" work during that week and then get mad because it didn't get billed because I couldn't read their mind and know that I was going to get pulled into customer XYZ and work 16-24 hrs on their project when I estimated that week's tasks.
I was happy as a contractor at Cisco other than the year-end shutdown every Dec. Then I was told my role was converting to a blue badge (employee) again, and I could either apply and stay in my role as an employee or they'd interview others and hire them instead of me, so I flipped again and had to deal w/ all the Cisco HR BS of 1:1's, V2MOM's, etc. Over time, our team got pushed to do more w/ less and the workload got to the point where I was glad to be LR'd again.
Another reason to come back as a contractor if you already have 4, 5, or more years of service and you're in your 50's, is to get your foot back in the door to get flipped back to an employee so that, if you get LR'd again, this next time you'll be eligible for the Retiree Medical Access Plan (RMAP) which is available to all terminating employees who are 55+ with 5+ years of service. Put up with the employee HR BS for a couple of years, and then take the severance and medical benefits with you as you leave to go to another company (or retire if you're old enough w/ enough income/assets to retire).
when lions don't find meat to eat, they eat grass to survive.
Jobs are scarce
RSUs are a big junk of my blue-badge salary.
s/junk/chunk/ :)
People come back as contractors is because no other choice.