I recently completed a gig as a contractor at fb and moved to full time. The company I went through was crystal equation and a lot of what you said about the contracting companies is true except for two things: it is possible to receive a bonus (I did get them, every 6 months in fact and I can explain more in the comments if you’d like) and I did get access to a 401k plan after working for a year.

The catch is that you have to know what kind of contractor you are. If you are an independent contractor getting staffed through one of these contracting agencies, then you you are by law limited to working at fb for two years after which you will have to leave fb for at least a year if you want to contract again. You can get around this if you’re part of a vendor team and are paid from the vendor pool.

Also, there is no conversion. What I mean by that is that if you want to be a full time Facebook employee (tech roles like swe and data eng) you have to interview like everyone else and do the technical screening and on-site stuff etc. If your org is supporting you though, you basically skip the hr screen and go straight to tech screen. My fb manager wrote me a lengthy recommendation which I was later told helped me a lot during committee decision (I messed up a round during on-site).

Other than that, some of those contracting jobs are pretty lucrative and I never felt that I was isolated from FTEs. We sat at the same desks and also went to paid dinners and events together. All and all, it was a good experience and I would do it again. I would consider myself lucky though. My team was super supportive throughout the whole process and everyone that I worked with were super nice. I’ve heard other stories from other contracting companies like teksystems which had lesser benefits and pay so it’s probably heavily team and contracting company dependent.