At least they're transparent about it. Plenty of people end up working at companies with this attitude without ever knowing it. Especially in sales orgs.
My job basically prefers the Contract-to-Hire pipeline. One is often hired on as a contractor, and if things work out by the time your contract is up, then you can stay. In a sense, we are doing something similar to AppSumo.
I take issue with these because they're really just doing an endrun around labor law:
- you're going to be treated like an employee, because that's the plan, and I'd wager many Contract-to-Hire setups would fail the government's "20 Factor Test"[1]: Level of instruction, degree of integration, demands for full-time work...
- I've yet to see a non-VP+ level contract with severability clauses that require contractual compensation, i.e. most contracts are "severable without notice", no different to "At Will"
Indeed, the practical side effect of this is "We're going to hire you and we get to avoid paying you benefits for an extended period of time (the contract duration)."
There is the case where you are employed by a firm as a W-2, and you are a "contractor" in the eyes of the company you are doing the work for. And more often than not, after 6-18 months the company offers to buy out the contract to from your employer, converting you to full time.
They don't have to pay you benefits of course, but you can always market yourself at a rate that more than compensates for that. So it's not an automatic financial shafting for the contractor (unless they don't take this into account).
There is not a chance I would leave a real job for a gig like that. I can't imagine many folks who have mortgages and families to support would consider it.
Actually, I was the last junior hired -- 8 years ago. Somehow, my org is able to find mid-level to senior people.
However, we do not really have such titles since it's a very small shop. So, perhaps I am not the best at judging whom is truly a mid-level vs. senior.
I don't see how it's much different from working at a company for any period of time even as a fully onboarded employee, aside from specific legal obligations that possibly protect your employment. In any place where firing at will is legal, they can toss you at any time for almost any pretext and claim you weren't a correct fit. It applies in general even if you're fully hired, barring some specific contract (that they might anyhow wiggle their way out of).
Note the phrasing is "we run paid trials with potential teammates before bringing them on".
While at-will employment does mean you can be fired at any time, the default assumption is that your job will continue, barring something happening (like poor performance, or the company being unprofitable, or your boss being in a bad mood that day).
The phrasing here makes it sound like the default is that it's time-limited and an extended interview. Sure, technically at-will and "a tech interview" both have the same amount of job-security (exactly zero), but there's social expectations around employing and firing people, and overhead for the company, which lead to full-time employment having more security in practice.
> full-time employment having more security in practice
Not sure about other at-will states but in Utah one can apply for unemployment after losing their W2 gig. If this trial period doesn’t involve W2 paperwork then I wouldn’t think it’s comparable.
I certainly agree that we shouldn't bank (figuratively or literally) on positive social expectations, such as expecting an employer to treat us fairly.
However, AppSumo is apparently promising the opposite - they are setting the expectation that it is quite likely new hires will not work out and you should be fully prepared for termination.
If the company follows normal at-will employment practices, there would be no need to mention it.
The fact that they explicitly call out this practice is probably a sign that they lay off a larger percentage of new hires compared to the average company. Otherwise, why mention it?
Legal, medical insurance, and the general understanding that you're an employee of the company and it comes with all the benefits of being one.
True, you can get fired at anytime for no reason at all, why would anyone with any option choose a place that says they will maybe explicitly fire you after a certain period? Might as well get hired at Netflix which has a similar perform or out culture where you are guaranteed a very high salary and a generous severance.
Just go to a regular place of employment. I've never seen any place with these kinds of deviant methods and process end up be a remotely successful company or an actual good employer.
It's a slightly more explicit version of a probationary/trial period, which is very common outside the US. (You don't need them in the US, because you can be fired at any time for any reason anyway.)
This. I've had to fire someone in their probation period, and their expectation (that they had finally landed a great job and could relax) clearly didn't match our expectation (we had a new employee on probation, let's see if they work out).
It would help people more if there was a clearer expression of "this is a trial. You might not pass it".
Agree. Unless there is a breakup clause that pays the employee (er, contractor) for severance, it puts all the risk explicitly on the employee, which is horseshit.