edit: I see other commenters are like "well, standard practice, not necessarily that terrible". Am I living in a bubble or is it just Europe?
I can envision a scenario where someone could complain for not being included in these conversations. Imagine you start a new job and the manager says “btw, we signed a contract with this vendor two weeks ago, so this is the tool you’ll use for the next three years. We thought about asking your input, but you technically weren’t an employee then.”
I fully agree, pushback/pressuring would make this unacceptable. But I'm not seeing that in the post, even before correcting for the storyteller's (understandable) bias.
In my mind, the conversation is something like:
"hey can you join this call?"
"not unless you pay me for it"
"that's tricky to set up, but we'll make it up to you when you start"
It's still OK to say no to this, but it kind of feels like you'd start off on the wrong foot. The manager isn't trying to get away with having you do actual work for free -- they are not asking for anything like reports or deliverables. It's just dialing into a few Zoom calls (and "prep", which is extremely ambiguous and could use clarification by OP).
The vacation thing can also be a very real benefit. I don't think a lot of people would take PTO in their first couple of weeks, but your manager can say "thanks for joining the call earlier this month, how about you take this Friday off?"
You are right, instead if you work at all they have to pay you for the whole week.
It’s quite normal to see people start Tuesday on payroll, finish on Thursday, and they don’t get paid those whole weeks. They typically get those days paid, even if for example you “offboard” by lunchtime on your last day of work.
From California but similar everywhere:
> Pursuant to California law, an exempt employee must receive his or her full salary for any week in which the employee performs any work without regard to the number of days, or hours worked.
https://www.yourlegalcorner.com/articles.asp?id=135&cat=emp
If employers don't like this, they can pay overtime instead.
In this case with OP, my guess is that left them two choices:
1/ Accelerate start and then as you note, pay the whole period even though it sounded like this occurred before Christmas, was only a few calls then a vacation.
2/ Pay an invoice, which is mucky since it’ll probably involve supplier setup via AP, they’re clearly a W-2 equivalent person so perhaps this complicates other things like tax or benefits, etc.
If the person is “unencumbered” (not currently employed or subject to something contractual like garden leave which prevents them assuming the new employment) and if there was real value to having them participate in the calls then certainly the easiest would be (1.) - and IME, this is how larger employers would do it.
Consider this, I don't know what this software does but a lot of the conversations around software are confidential. Did they just invite a random stranger into a call with potentially privileged information?
You can always say no or provide strict times where you can help and typically there aren't any hard feelings.
Fun fact though, many US employment contracts also insanely long and come with many restrictions. I don't see why you wouldn't just say "my current contract doesn't allow this, and it's probably in new company's interest to have a clean transition for IP law's sake" or some other vague reason
Most US employees are employed “at will” and don’t have contracts …