I can give you an example of "farming in".

My job just might be "farmed in".

Here's the situation now. I work for a defense contractor. They have a contract with the USAF Materiel Command to provide services and I'm one of the people covered by that contract.

When I first took this job, I worked for a contracting agency that farmed me out to the defense contractor. After 6 months, I became a full-time employee of the defense contractor - cutting the agency out of the loop. The effect on me? a $5K salary cut BUT I got benefits - health insurance was now affordable (due to a company contribution) and I got matching contributions to a 401k. On the negative side, their 'time off' policy was wickedly misrepresented to me so the salary hit cost me more than I thought it would (since I had far less paid time off than I'd originally figured) and I only found that out a few weeks ago. Of course the cut I took taking this job originally was that I had the same hourly rate as my previous job but now had triple the commute and now had to pay MA state income tax. ..and THAT job was a cut from a previous one at the same rate that had me billing some overtime.

Now I was shown what the pay scales were for where someone was guessing the job's "rate" would land (GS-12).

I'm making somwhat more than the top of that scale (if what I saw was accurate).

Right now, the defense contractor is billing me out to the government at a rate that originally included the overhead from the contracting agency.

The government could save a lot of money, I'm guessing, by hiring me directly (though I'd have to be at least one grade higher than was 'guessed at').

By the same token, the cleaning crews in this building are probably a lot cheaper than civilian employees doing the same thing.

So that's how you have it both ways. It really depends on the job that's being done.