> The hiring process is in the form of a paid, short-term consulting gig that will lead to a full-time offer if we like you and you like us. We'll give you some tasks, you'll get them done, and then we'll talk. No need to quit your day job to do this gig; we'll work around your schedule.
Interesting. I look forward to hearing if this works out long term. I'd be worried about legal implications of something like this but IANAL.
While it can be difficult on the paperwork side, it's nothing short of amazing. It helped us find high quality fits for the team AND we actually had a better understanding of skill levels.
We also used it to educate ourselves on what each employee would need in their on boarding and personal development plans.
It just looks like a consulting gig with the potential offer of a job afterwards. If the rates are good and the offer is decently compensated, it's probably a fine way to recruit for what looks to be a highly specialised position.
Probably not going to get that many low-level postgres specialists with deep experience walking through the door. If the consultant feels good about the project then they've got the chance to stick around in the long term.
Well we didn't market it like that and while technically it is consulting for a period of time, it doesn't have to feel that way.
The interview process was similar to any other company, but at the end we asked the candidate to do a short project (20 hours or less), which they would collaborate on with someone internally.
So only the best candidates made it to the project and hopefully at that point there were pretty sold on the company.
Did we lose some candidates? Sure, but we also didn't have any hires we regretted after changing to it.
This might be true for the employer, but for the employee, I think there could be serious issues. For example, my present employer would be very unhappy if I agreed to this and I have no idea how it would play out. I'm almost positive it is in violation of my present employment contract.
Did the candidate that went for it actually have full time employment? If so, did they get approval first?
We interviewed a lot candidates this way and yes all of them were employed full-time. None of the candidates we interviewed worked directly in our specific industry, so as long as they didn't work on company time of their current employer, there was no conflict.
Our time limit of 20 hours or less, also helps. The hours could be spread over many weeks if needed to ensure there wasn't a conflict.
That said, it's not unheard of that some employees have more strict contracts such as yourself and we certainly would have had to pass on those candidates or find another way to evaluate them.
We also had the luxury of being a fully distributed team (pre-covid), so collaboration could happen during the candidates off hours, with a team member that was working.
Labor must not be so fearful; play it close to your chest and cover your tracks. Change jobs if it works out, otherwise stay at current position and nobody is the wiser.
The fact that offering gig work to FT employees could have legal repercussions sounds off alarm bells about the US's unhealthy attitude towards employees. It's unfathomable to me that corporations can have so much power over one's time outside of work.
> It's unfathomable to me that corporations can have so much power over one's time outside of work.
I think this, and the general brain-drain from the broader industry, is really holding the tech sector back. So much OSS could be written if contracts weren't abusive in this way.
I mean the fundamental issue is we've created a society that's automated an INCREDIBLE amount of work, and yet the daily work week is no shorter.
We've got automated switchboards, giant robots that make cars, giant robots that do our farming, massive plants for producing power. We even have enough housing already built in this country to house 6x the total number of homeless people. It's a false economy, and we know it because we're primarily a "service" economy.
So if most of our food is produced by robots, we have enough housing, and most of our jobs just exist to push health care paperwork around. Why are we not all on 20-30 hour work weeks?! I'm pretty sure most people would be fine doing 5-10 hours a week of essential nursing or working a field or whatever outside their "primary" job if you got 10-20 hours off the rest of the week.
Do you have any pointers/docs on how to make this work? At the most basic level, how do you prevent people from wasting your money with no effort on their part e.g. by transitively contracting the task to the lowest bidder and pocketing the difference? (Not to say there are many people out there who would actually do this, but incentives clearly need to be fixed if it is feasible.)
IF I am ready to pay XXX bucks for doing a given job in N days, I don't really care about who actually did it. I do care about quality, so if it is substandard - we'll part ways with this contractor sooner or later.
But this actually may work for simple tasks, and a company in question doesn't looks like it is gonna throw simple tasks on their consultants.
It's pretty common for companies to do contract to hire (enough so that recruiters will often just write CTH in their emails). This is a variation of that which seems a lot fairer than another approach I've experienced, which was a full-day pairing exercise which effectively translated to donating a day's work to the prospective hirer (admittedly, its value to them was relatively low since you were coming in with little knowledge or context, but its value to you is presumably non-zero).
In some places. Not in Poland, as long as you're not competing with your employer. Also clauses like "we own the work you do in your personal time" have no legal implications here, because they directly contradict the labor law.
Generally you're free to do whatever you wish with your free time outside working hours and the employment contract has no power over it.
It could be a breach of contract, but it would be up to a court to decide if that part of the contact is enforceable.
Guessing it's not illegal to solicit someone under such a contract, but potentially a new hire could be ordered by a court to stop working at the new company, or a 3rd party could make claims that the outputs of their former employees are owned by said 3rd party.
A lot depends on the local labor law. Here where I live (Poland and I guess same in the rest of EU), the outputs of your work which were not directly ordered by your employer or were not part of the job are not owned by the employer (and stating that in the agreement is not enforceable), even if done during working hours or done using employer's equipment. Of course you can get fired for doing a side project in the office or using the equipment without prior agreement, but you take your side-work with you.
Important distinction, "legal implications" can mean that an action is unlawful, or that it can result in a lawsuit. This is of the latter sort. If you use your employer's hardware, or your contract forbids secondary employment (or "we own everything you do on or off the clock" type clauses), then there's a risk of your employer's lawyers coming after you.
I would expect my company to be unhappy if I were to consult for a competitor on the side. There's probably language in the employment agreement that prohibits that, and even if there isn't, it's still the kind of thing you should avoid due to conflict of interest.
But I'm not sure about an agreement not to take a similar role. If the employment agreement says that, I'm not sure that it's legally binding. Even if it is, you may be able to weasel around it with "but it's consulting, not a full-time position".
Note well: IANAL. If you're concerned, get advice from a lawyer rather than from some rando on the internet.
I doubt the person they are searching for is currently in a similar role. They want domain specific knowledge about a stable and _old_ codebase. They want the person around as a teacher mentor, and the first gig is something the business needs but would prefer to sub out. Seems like a normal accepted practice when defined that way.
Non-competes, anti-moonlighting clauses, and contract employment are all quite common and have been for a long time. The "legal implication" is that you read the contracts and follow it or work around it. Most corporate/employment lawyers, HR teams, or hiring managers should be fairly familiar with these situations.
Also, the demands listed in employment agreements are not always legally enforceable, or not legally enforceable in as broad of a way that they appear to be phrased.
I wouldn't call it not legal, but it indeed can violate the terms many employees sign when they join a company. I think it's a matter of how they frame it. If they frame it as actually doing some work for the company then I would say that would be illegal for many. But if it's framed as an interview then maybe it's OK. Not a lawyer, I assuming it's gray area.
I mean, they say outright they hire old people and they hire young people. So I think you can make the argument fairly easily that that group includes everyone and that they are not discriminating.
I don't think there is discrimination immediately evident. I think there are legal implications in actively soliciting contract work from people who currently work at other companies under full time contracts that may preclude them from doing stuff like that (ex: FAANG).
I don't think that is true. Any agreement you have with google/faang is your agreement and your punishment. You cannot bind others into the agreement. They face no legal implications.
For the most part, this is correct. One exception is "tortious interference with a contract". Let's say I work full-time for Company A, and in my employment agreement, I agree not to do any work on the side. Then let's say Company B knows that I work for Company A and knows that I am contractually prohibited from working for them. If Company B induces me to breach my employment agreement with Company A, Company A can often sue them under the "tortious interference with a contract" cause of action.
For most US jurisdictions, intent is required on the part of the obstructing party, but in a minority of jurisdictions, negligence is enough.
I suspect this is why there's a clause in most employment agreements that I've signed, where the employee has to represent that they are free to enter into the agreement.
Why can’t I solicit work from all comers, trusting that they have the responsibility to ensure that they aren’t violating any contract that they’ve agreed to (without my knowledge)?
If you are asking: "Why can't I solicit XYZ from all comers, trusting that they have the responsibility to ensure that they aren't violating any contract"
We can look at: Louis Rossmann soliciting firmware, tools, schematics, and parts from people. He's started that he feels he is, at best, in a legal grey area. At worst, he's paying people to exfiltrate intellectual property and trade secrets from Apple.
Moonlighting can look like industrial espionage if you squint really hard.
Interesting. I look forward to hearing if this works out long term. I'd be worried about legal implications of something like this but IANAL.