This is one of those examples where a totally well intentioned move is completely misunderstood.
What is the purpose of an interview? To see if someone's a good fit and works well with you. Interviews don't tell you that. Working with the people fixes that.
At least these are paid contracts. It's one thing if they were unpaid, then sure, yes it sucks. But it's the equivalent of doing a freelance gig for a couple of weeks to see not only if they like you, but if YOU like working at that company.
You can evaluate working at a company, get paid to do it, and find out all the pitfalls BEFORE you leave your existing job. What could possibly be so damn disgusting to you about this?
I think they find it disgusting because all the risk is shifted onto the employee. By the time 3-8 weeks have elapsed, the employee has definitely quit or lost their previous job, so if they don't get hired, they will be involuntarily unemployed, with no prospects because they've been busy with their "audition".
I think the problem is that full-time employment and everything around it is like keeping animals in a zoo. You hope and beg for vacation time. You pretend to work 8 (actually 10 to "look good") hours even if you finish all your work in 1. The most personal work you can hope to retain after you leave, beyond a blurb on your resume is to sneak around behind your employer's back and work on your own stuff. There is tons of politics.
The salary negotiation is itself about trading getting the employer to basically take care of you (especially in Japanese corporations, as patio11 often mentions) so you can reduce your risk. The infantile mentality inculcated in people receiving conditional welfare is present in FTE -- pg's essay about schools and jails would be applicable here. One can even argue that our education system has been designed to prepare the majority for being obedient and loyal FTE workers.
I'd rather society replaced all this with an UNCONDITIONAL basic income for everyone and everyone would be free from any age to work as a self employed contractor. That would effectively abolish the minimum wage and let people learn through doing projects where they are treated with respect, not as animals in a zoo.
I think libertarians talking about philosophical freedoms should take a serious look at actual personal freedom as defined by the range of options each person has.
> You pretend to work 8 (actually 10 to "look good") hours even if you finish all your work in 1.
Maybe my experience isn't representative, but at my job there is actually work to do: you know, hard problems that take time to think through and solve.
> The infantile mentality inculcated in people receiving conditional welfare is present in FTE
Substitute "conditional welfare" with "earned compensation".
How is it infantile to voluntarily negotiate compensation with someone for whom you will be providing value (ie. your employer) and yet not infantile to demand unconditional welfare from society as a whole?
Unconditional basic income is unconditional, so it doesn't have the downside of conditional welfare: people are afraid to earn too much money because they'll lose their welfare income, and then they're in danger of losing that new revenue and they can't get back on welfare right away so they're up the creek without a paddle. So they cling to the safety of welfare. And this + minimum wage laws keep them from developing themselves and creating monetizable value that builds on itself year after year.
And this is similar to the threat of losing your steady paycheck if you don't behave, as is evidenced in part by the great grandparent comment. There is a lot of dysfunctional politics and dynamics that comes from being in that sort of situation and environment, which pg's essay "why nerds are unpopular" describes at length. Incidentally, pg is also very anti FTE personally, likening it to eating roadkill.
Look at it like this -- can you work on your own awesome project that will change the world? Not if your employer wouldnt be pleased. Maybe you'll sneak around like a kid does. If you work for a bank, can you take a position as a CFO at a startup? I have heard people say they can't do this, or that, because their employer wouldnt like it. I've seen tons of people sitting around and pretending to work, because their employer was covering the risk, but they are afraid of losing their job. It's a conditional paycheck that by definition demands your full time for whatever odd job comes up once you're there. And they even try to make you work longer hours without valuing them as they would with a contractor.
I don't mean to say that there are absolutely no fulfilling, productive fulltime jobs. Just that the vast majority of people experience many of the downsides of FTE including the infantile mentality. Plus many of those people believe their own jobs are not productive and can be eliminated:
What's disgusting is the misuse of the "contractor" designation just as it is with Uber or Instacart.
When I work as an independent contractor I do so knowing that I am paying significantly higher taxes on that income, paying for my own health insurance, and managing my time in such a way that I can stay sane. I charge accordingly.
Is this company going to pay me the hourly rate they charge their clients during this "trial" period? Are they going to pay me extra because I'm working 40 hours a week and then doing this work overtime?
Because if not they are eventually going to find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit where they must designate these people as part time employees.
I've done an "interview" like this before, but it was 3 months not 3 weeks and they paid me my agreed upon contract rate up front for 15 hours a week work from home. They made a decision not to hire full time after the second month and let me know, but used my additional month of work. I was able to use the time and money to find a full time position during this period that was a good fit. That's fair.
What is the purpose of an interview? To see if someone's a good fit and works well with you. Interviews don't tell you that. Working with the people fixes that.
At least these are paid contracts. It's one thing if they were unpaid, then sure, yes it sucks. But it's the equivalent of doing a freelance gig for a couple of weeks to see not only if they like you, but if YOU like working at that company.
You can evaluate working at a company, get paid to do it, and find out all the pitfalls BEFORE you leave your existing job. What could possibly be so damn disgusting to you about this?