Oh, the employment law is a lot employee-friendlier in Canada than in the US. In particular, BC employment law (relevant to this post) is a lot friendlier than California employment law. And when you go to take them to court, the government will, under some circumstances, provide free legal services to the employee (you can look up the BC gov's Employment Standards Branch).

That said, IIRC, even BC is pretty employer-friendly for the first 3 months, in terms of notice and so on. And it appears the author thought he was entitled to stock options after 9 weeks, which is.... not typical, in my limited experience. And they company sounds like they were dicks about it, but basically, terminating the relationship and paying out your salary (but not bonuses or unvested equity) is usually legit.

If he had made it through 3 months, he'd have a right to some severance pay, and if they tried to terminate-with-cause he'd be able to sue for wrongful dismissal. Because of this, even in borderline cases, most (many?) companies go for termination-without-cause.

All the bits about reclassifying a full-timer as a contractor, though? Hells yes, that's a world of hurt for the company if they try that. Not only work direction and taxes (both huge issues), but also consider the pay consequences of trying to get 70-hour weeks out of a contractor. But I doubt that they were actually trying that; it seems so unnecessary.

The spin of the article is weird, though. He's having trouble justifying his 9 weeks? "I tried an experiment because there were some very attractive aspects about the opportunity, but it turned out that management had no experience and very unrealistic expectations, and it didn't work out." What could be simpler?

SHORT VERSION: as patio11 said: don't hurry to sign anything, and spend at least an hour reading about your legal rights, and as patio11 suggested, drop hints that you're interested in your legal rights