Sure you can sue them. The employee contractor line is a big part of labour law, and can affect UK mandated legal protections and benefits. The only problem is that a labour lawyer starts at $400/hr. One way to get around this is to band together with other contractors in your organization and pool your money to purchase a lawyer. We typically call this a union. I was high up in my union and signed some very big cheques to lawyers.
Of course that's hard so you should just get a new job.
I got both. Managing a low complexity worker and a high complexity worker requires vastly different styles. Managing a factory production line is very different (down to Left Hand and Right Hand specific tasks!) than managing infinitely configurable software.
Netflix is not a McDonalds, and a McDonalds isn't a Ford assembly plant.
The problem I see is that morons apply the wrong methodology to a business. Typically former 19 year old McDonald's Managers (TM) apply authoritative control to a scrum shop which should be decentralized and delegated by design.
I mean, yeah? There are very few people who can go straight from my question to the answer. And pausing to collect your thoughts is much better than saying uuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm uhhh I ... uhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Why not? They need digital soldiers. They farm spec-ops from the best grunts, so this would give them a pool to recruit their information warefare people from.
The Army isn't a business and should never be run as one.
I'm amazed at how many developers need ridiculous complexity to feel like they've accomplished something. I feel that too many people are focused on building resume keywords than solving problems.
If you can solve it in 20 lines of CSS / JS then do it.
You don't get hired for, say, a role that requires Svelte / React expertise by pointing out "I did it in vanilla JS!" - so you are correct, industry sets the rules and your CV if you want a job from them, needs to reflect this.
There are also software engineering (not programming) reasons, mostly because they set standards for stuff like state management, for why they're useful - helps with future maintenance, documentation etc. when you don't have to interpret a custom self-made framework and teach it to hires.
Yep my thoughts as well. It’s great to use vanilla js for a personal website (I do) but if one is seeking employment knowing a popular framework (both backend and front end) is also critical.
It also seems worthwhile from an Org standpoint because then they can target “react” or “vue” developers in job postings who can presumably hit the ground running productivity wise.
(This is basically just echoing everything parent comment was saying)
The purpose of more complicated solutions is to prevent devs from becoming bored and leaving.
In my experience, KISS results in the easiest solution to maintain. Then I get a litany of complaints from devs that "this isn't programming" or "this is a dead end to my career" and then they leave. Which paradoxically makes it more difficult to maintain, as I have no maintainers lol.
What are you working on? Without knowing your use-case or what your codebase looks like, I have no idea if the problem is with other devs, or you are just blind to the insanity that is your codebase.
Not saying that latter is the case here, but I've ran into devs maintaining some monstrosity and then complaining about others pushing for off-the-shelf solutions not realizing that nobody wants to spend time learning some bespoke system they created that's not actually as great as they think it is.
You just need to hire older people. I’ve been doing web development for nearly 25 years. I’m at the point where I would love to just babysit some sites while spending more time on my hobbies and more time with my family.
Another poster beat me to it: hire older devs! I'm 42 and my ideal work is maintaining several systems that move rather slowly. It's chill, still responsible, and allows for creativity and inventive solutions when the need calls for it.
Not going to bash younger devs in general but the fact is that getting the job done without thinking of their future career... is usually not high in their list of priorities.
The lowest grade I got in my business degree was Information Systems. The reason I got that grade is that I made a case for in-sourcing development based on my personal experience, where we provide services for cheaper than consultants, that aligns with OUR business processes.
The only answer to any and all business IT questions in non-IT companies is to outsource. The reasoning is that it is considered a support activity on Porter's value chain, and as such should be cut cut cut cut cut cut and cut some more.
Hilariously we're also taught to adopt best-of-breed software for ERPs, CRMs, and SCM tools AND CHANGE OUR BUSINESS PROCESSES TO MATCH THE SOFTWARE. You know, like Target did when they moved to Canada, adopted SAP, and ended up failing hard, because their entire competitive advantage came from a custom in-house developed supply chain management tool that beat all of their competitors.
You know its interesting you bring this up. My first internship out of college was with Colgate-Palmolive which from what I recall was one of the largest SAP users in the US at the time (early 2010s). I heard among the grapevine that it was a massive effort to change the whole company around to the "SAP" way of doing things and that competitors (like P&G I think?) attempted but failed to implement SAP and suffered due to it. I don't know if P&G eventually managed to convert to SAP and I often wondered if Colgate could have been run better without SAP?
It was so ingrained into their operations and personally I don't think they could attract the caliber of engineer required to implement an in house system better. The lack of good devs in the industry is a massive problem for companies like Colgate. You just won't get the FAANG caliber devs working for a toothpaste company unless you really go way above and beyond in compensation and even then that might still not be enough to get the numbers you need.
My guess is that SAP(or other ERP) is better than in house for a company that has no competitors that have successfully implemented in house. As soon as you have a competitor that can implement in house better (maybe Amazon compared to their competitors?) then the balance shifts and SAP becomes a liability more than an asset. Not sure, just brainstorming.
I left after a year because coming out of an engineering college with a CS degree doing some complex stuff and then having to writing reports in ABAP depressed me immensely and resulted in one of my worst productive years in my career. I was eventually not offered a full time position because I was so depressed that I just did not complete my projects towards the end of the internship. On a positive note, Colgate was very accommodating and they treated me extremely well when I was there. It worked out though as I am much happier today doing Angular/Python dev.
Yeah its been wild seeing my grocery budget max out before the end of the month, despite having a good buffer a year before. YNAB has a great "cover overspending from" feature that got a good workout this year. Fortunately I got a raise so I used that to bump my food budget.
Anybody who doesn't demand a raise in this environment is a fool.
This is an excellent business model! Its the complete rejection of "Right of first sale" and the entire concept of ownership. Its an inversion of communism where instead of the state owning something and forcing you to rent it, a corporation does.
Its incredibly profitable for the ruling class. Too bad you aren't in it.
Of course that's hard so you should just get a new job.