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Ask HN: Hiring scam?

20 pointssamstave33 comments

A friend of mine was hired on as a graphic designer for a company in San francisco, last friday, after 4 months of employment - she was told that Friday was the last day of her 4-month evaluation period - that the company will hire someone else into the 4-month evaluation now and then let her know if she was selected.

This was a total shock to her, and they had never mentioned anything about this prior.

This sounds highly suspect to me - that they are using people for 4-months at a time then dropping them prior to giving them any benefits.

What do you think? And what do you suggest she do?

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a) That behavior is grossly unprofessional.

b) Treat it like a firing, in all respects. I'd start looking for new employment immediately.

(Even if they came back with an offer, you should not work for a company that has that attitude with regards to FTEs. There is nothing wrong with "OK, now we're going to subject you to four months of unpaid downtime while we evaluate another guy for your job" - it is routine if you're a consultant billing several hundred an hour. If you're not, no, just no.)

c) On the plus side, she dodged a bullet there.

I agree to treat it like a firing, and that she should move on. This just sounded super fishy -- I'll ask her about the contract/agreement.

Some time ago, when my wife got pregnant, she was let go from her job and they specifically told her it was because she was pregnant. She filed suit against them (ongoing) because they specifically said it was due to the pregnancy.

Sometimes companies do really shady stuff (like to my wife) and potentially hiring people for 4-month stints. Other times, they could just be using this as an "easier" way to fire someone - which is a bit passive aggressive.

I'll have to find out which it is in this case.

An important distinction to make here is that pregnant women are effectively a protected class. Your wife wasn't able to file suit because the company had been shady; she was able to file suit because the company violated employment law. Here it's not so clear what recourse your friend might have.

You mention "protected class". Would really appreciate some details.

In most parts of the US, we have "at will" employment, which means it's legal to fire someone for almost any reason. You can fire someone because you don't like their hair, or because they drive a Ford and you like Toyota, or for any other stupid reason you can think of, with only a few exceptions.

The exceptions are called "protected classes". It's illegal to fire someone for their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation (in some states), pregnancy, or age.

or illness.

In the US, there are laws specifically protecting people from being fired from jobs for certain reasons.

These almost universally include race, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, becoming pregnant, being required to participate in a mandatory action like jury duty, and I think being recalled to the military if you are on inactive status.

If an employer violates these, the ex-employee has grounds to sue.

Sexual orientation is not universally a protected class. I don't know about non-US employment law, but at least in the US, I believe it is on a state-by-state basis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class people have not mentioned: disability (if an ADA qualified disability, such as delayed sleep phase disorder,) genetic information, age (if over 40,) family status (having kids, etc,) veteran status.

I found it disquieting that DSPS was recognized by the ADA (meaning that one can't "discriminate" against an employee that refuses to show up during core office hours if they can convince a doctor to "diagnose" their sleeping habits as DSPS). But then I did some minimal research and found that you can in fact fire someone for refusing to show up at 10AM (or whatnot); you just have to be consistent about enforcing that rule with everyone.

And so we have another reason that companies might need to adopt fascist office hours: not doing so might get them sued.

(I strongly believe in the idea of the ADA and am not suggesting that the proverbial baby be thrown out with the &c &c).

The sister of a friend was also fired the week after she informed her employer that she was pregnant. Of course, these folks didn't explicitly say she was fired because she was pregnant (this is in the US, specifically in Texas). I was surprised that this kind of stuff happens. The employer was a small business btw.

Move on.

What are her alternatives?

Even if they were legally required to keep her on longer, would she want to work for them?

Even if she could sue, does she want to be involved in a legal battle while trying to find a new job?

What is the name of the company?

The overhead of learning curve of a new person is significantly higher than benefits they would save.

Most likely reason for firing is that they did not benefit enough from your friend work (for example because the work is a mismatch between what they need and her passion).

Sounds like they're just firing her but want to make it less emotionally "unpleasant" so they're calling it the end of her evaluation period. Kind of a lame thing to do.

There is no reason to keep in an company that treats a employee like this, or at least make you feel so uncomfortable and worried.

Restaurants do this all the time in Sweden with waitresses, except they say "You were not what we were looking for." instead.

Tiny bit of background is useful here:

The US has very lax employment regulation. You can be fired for any reason at any time.

Most of Europe, the Nordic countries in particular, have stringent regulation. Continuous employment can only be terminated for cause. In the last decade or so, it has become relatively common to try to circumvent this by hiring with back-to-back temporary contracts (usually 6-12 months) which are against the spirit – and often letter – of the law; they're only supposed to be used when there is a specific reason for being temporary. This poses all kinds of problems like vacations, maternity-/paternity leave and a general lack of life security.

Lately legislation has been discovered that allows “trial periods” to be abused: the trials are often of excessive length, 4-6 months, and people can be summarily dismissed without having to give notice (normally at least a month, often longer), vacation &c. This is obviously much more common in relatively low-skill jobs where the actual training doesn't take much of an investment.

"You can be fired for any reason at any time."

I see what you are trying to say, but it's not entirely true. You can be fired for any reason, as long as it's not illegal (discriminatory, because of a disability, a pregnancy, whistleblower, union organizer, etc).

This is why often, when you get fired, the company is better off not telling you why (cover their asses). At least that's what counsel of some companies would say.

I've seen the other side of the coin in countries that have employee protections in place. Where it can be abused (ie, everyone is an independent contractor), employees lose as they have no benefits. Where it cannot, employees lose out because it's not worth it to invest in hiring people. Overall, IMO it is bad overall to give employees too much protection. In this aspect, I think the American system is as close to perfect as it gets.

Wow, that's just mean.

That company deserves to have their name dragged out into public.

I agree with much that's been said already, but I'll add this: your friend needs a hug.

What did her contract say?

I'll find out tomorrow.

It is extraordinarily unlikely that her contract is going to have anything in it that protects her from (what is in effect) constructive termination. Boilerplate employment contracts are designed specifically to avoid conferring obligations on the company.

On the plus side, at-will employment is a huge boon to those of us who start companies, and is one of the major differences between the US and Europe. So there's that.

Like everyone else is implying, the best way she can get back at them is to find a way to make sure the name of this company gets out. I wouldn't do business of any sort with a firm that employed this tactic.

It's worth adding however that contracts aren't alway bullet proof either. Contracts are supposed to be binding, but there are ways to wiggle out of clauses here and there, when you can argue that things are unreasonable. That said, knocking out clauses in a contract isn't going to help here. If there is any additional paper trail (say emails) that indicates they were misleading your, or that this is regular behavior, that may be a different matter.

But tptacek is likely correct that there probably isn't any recourse in this case.

I doubt it is in the contract, just that the overall behaviour is odd.

It doesn't matter. CA is an at-will employment state. Work contracts are not enforceable.

Contracts are always enforceable.

There are some provisions that some courts will refuse to enforce. E.g., there's a "strong public policy of the State of California" against most non-competes, and judges will simply disregard that portion of any offending contract.

http://lawzilla.com/content/noncompete.shtml

I am responding to the blanket claim that the contract is unenforceable because CA has at-will employment. That there are specific exceptions to the general rule is not important re above.

A temporary 6-month employment contract with a permanent employment option by the end of the probationary period is common practice here in South Africa.

A probationary period is common in Canada too, but it is always mentioned up-front and I have never heard of a company trying out several potential employees in a series of probationary periods.

Maybe they weren't happy with her at the end of her probationary period, but are too weak to outright fire her?

Why would you call this a scam? She got fired, that's all.

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