That "black magic" is just different budget pools.
Taxpayers and shareholders hate seeing lots of highly paid people on the payroll, so instead, you have very few full time employees (usually managers) that fit within your limited hiring budget dictated from the top to show you're a lean and responsible organization that doesn't waste money, and then you have a lot of even more expensive external contractors to balance your needs that are part of a different budget that's less scrutinized because those are not YOUR employees, they're just soulless bills in an Excel sheet, like the one for catering, cleaning, maintenance, etc. which are rubber stamped and nobody looks at.
Blame our capitalist society for hating to see people on the payroll, assuming it automatically means inefficiency.
And even better, contractors often cost VASTLY MORE than an employee because you've got a shit ton of middle man overhead to cover (their HR, their benefits, their managers, etc).
It's darkly funny how much of modern business management is really just knowing how to get the right numbers in front of the right people. I've worked at far too many places that have someone who ONLY looks at payroll and wants to make sure it doesn't go up too much. "Everything else" isn't their concern, so all those projects get bloated with consultants that just fall under project budgets.
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> due to some unknowable black magic
That "black magic" is just different budget pools.
Taxpayers and shareholders hate seeing lots of highly paid people on the payroll, so instead, you have very few full time employees (usually managers) that fit within your limited hiring budget dictated from the top to show you're a lean and responsible organization that doesn't waste money, and then you have a lot of even more expensive external contractors to balance your needs that are part of a different budget that's less scrutinized because those are not YOUR employees, they're just soulless bills in an Excel sheet, like the one for catering, cleaning, maintenance, etc. which are rubber stamped and nobody looks at.
Blame our capitalist society for hating to see people on the payroll, assuming it automatically means inefficiency.
Yeeeeeup.
And even better, contractors often cost VASTLY MORE than an employee because you've got a shit ton of middle man overhead to cover (their HR, their benefits, their managers, etc).
It's darkly funny how much of modern business management is really just knowing how to get the right numbers in front of the right people. I've worked at far too many places that have someone who ONLY looks at payroll and wants to make sure it doesn't go up too much. "Everything else" isn't their concern, so all those projects get bloated with consultants that just fall under project budgets.