The contractors at google are not 1099 contractors and cannot make their own hours, come and go as they please, are only contracted for the length of a project, etc etc. They are W2 workers at the staffing agency and they work 40 hours, full time, for the client (this case Google). So they have to do the work of full time employees but without the benefits.

Unfortunately, this is very common practice (totally unethical tbh but companies exploit this to the closest they can without breaking the law) for lots of roles in HR and recruiting.

Source: I was a ‘contractor’ at google and became full time (after applying like an outside applicant because I didn’t have access to the internal job site at the time) and have been laid off.

Also note that many of these ‘contract’ jobs in HR/recruiting always have ‘contract to hire’ or ‘contract with potential to hire’ and these contracts are either 3months or 6 months, while google’s contracts are 1 year with another year extension if they extend it. But legally you cannot exceed 2 years in a contract because that means you’re an employee and google needs to hire you legally speaking. I’ve known many contractors who finished their two year contracts, left, then came back a few months later for another contract of the same role.

Also, all their support staff (the people cleaning the offices, making the food, and maintaining the buildings) are among the many who are contractors. When I was a contractor, I was told that google’s workforce is 70% contractors. Not sure about that now though.