8 ms·

>At AppSumo, we run paid trials with potential teammates before bringing them on full-time to ensure they’re the right fit. Not sure that is something I would

• replwoacause 2y ago
  I wouldn’t never work for a company that does this.
  • southernplaces7 2y ago
    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).
    • TheDong 2y ago
      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.
      • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        > 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.
      • makk 2y ago
        I’ve yet to find a way to deposit social expectations in my bank account.
        • JohnBooty 2y ago
          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. Now that's an assurance I'd take seriously.
        • materielle 2y ago
          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?
    • harshalizee 2y ago
      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.
      • Loughla 2y ago
        > 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. What other employer do you know what does this?
        • caphector 2y ago
          LinkedIn does contract to hire.
  • ameister14 2y ago
    >I wouldn’t never work for a company that does this. Your double negative is genuinely confusing me. Is this intentional, or is it an error?
    • replwoacause 2y ago
      Yikes definitely an error, I’m on mobile.
      • lylejantzi3rd 2y ago
        Darn. I thought the double negative was hilarious.
    • WalterBright 2y ago
      Not no how, not no way!
  • crowcroft 2y ago
    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.
    • tbrooks 2y ago
      Transparent in retrospect is not, in fact, transparent.
    • ben_w 2y ago
      Indeed; I've known a scientist and a developer who both had such experiences.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • hirvi74 2y ago
      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.
      • FireBeyond 2y ago
        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)." [1] https://www.oregon.gov/oda/shared/Documents/Publications/NaturalResources/20FactorTestforIndependentContractors.pdf https://www.oregon.gov/oda/shared/Documents/Publications/Nat...
  • teractiveodular 2y ago
    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.)
    • marcus_holmes 2y ago
      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".
  • makk 2y ago
    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.
• cyberax 2y ago
  "Trial periods" are actually a thing in many countries with strong employment laws, where firing people requires a cause. It helps to reduce the risk of hiring somebody, and so they are advantageous for both employers and employees. In the US? Yeah, they don't make much sense.
  • southernplaces7 2y ago
    As I mentioned in a reply above, I don't see the logic of them in the U.S. Fully onboarded or not, a company in most contexts outside of union-protected work can fire you at any time for nearly any reason or none at all. So why bother with a paid trial?
    • jessriedel 2y ago
      I don't think that reflects the practical reality. For both legal and social reasons, firing someone is way harder than not hiring them after a trial period. Bad hires are costly.
    • givemeethekeys 2y ago
      They can hire you as a contractor for a couple of weeks to avoid that mess, then give you a full-time offer / contract if things go well.
      • FireBeyond 2y ago
        What mess, exactly? Like the parent said, contractor or FTE, you're almost certainly at the mercy of "the company may terminate the agreement with immediate effect for any or no disclosed reason". More accurate: "They can hire you a contractor for 3-12 months and not have to pay you benefits for that period."
        • chiefalchemist 2y ago
          Yes, either way the relationship can be severed, by either party. But if you're a FTE you will likely be able to get unemployment. As a contractor there is zero chance that can happen. On the other hand, as a contractor you get to write off expenses, and if the client is following the law as a contractor you get a far more flexible schedule. Each has + and -.
• Eridrus 2y ago
  There's no way to make a hiring process that makes everyone happy. Though the length here was not specified, it could be e.g. 3 days that you can do while still employed.
  • Aeolun 2y ago
    Sure, but do those 3 days tell you so much more than a 30m interview? You need to work with someone much longer than that to figure out their (non-obvious) flaws.
    • Eridrus 2y ago
      They do. You get signals on how well people can work independently on a non-trivial task. How well they can understand their is being communicated to them, whether they clarify what is important, etc. How well they can get themselves unstuck vs needing to ask about everything. How motivated they actually are to work, etc. They're not perfect, and you really do need to make sure the task is targeted at what you actually want to see from the person when they join, but they definitely give more signal than 6 hours of leetcode.
  • FireBeyond 2y ago
    > 3 days that you can do while still employed That could easily put you in violation of your employment contract. And could result in your (ex-) employer coming after you, and/or your new employer. I don't necessarily agree that it should, but it absolutely could.
    • Eridrus 2y ago
      You can make work trials that are obviously not competitive if you are really concerned, e.g. contributing a needed feature to an open source project. Realistically, companies are also just not going to sue. If people are concerned about the risk of being paid, well, either you want to get paid or not, that's up to them, you can't have you cake and eat it too here.
  • xandrius 2y ago
• kovezd 2y ago
  As an employee, I've requested the same to early stage startups. No amount of interviews, will give you enough information to assess its potential.
• ehnto 2y ago
  Edit: sorry, you got this question a bunch below. I didn't read ahead. Are probation periods not a thing in the US? Maybe because of at-will termination? In Australia most roles have a 3-6 month probation period in which either party can terminate the employment agreement at will. That's essentially a "paid trial period". After that, employers have much stricter rules for what reasons they can fire you (in theory) and and both employers and employees must give 2 weeks notice or extra if agreed upon in contract.