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Hey guys,

I need your advice about deciding wether to work as a freelancer for a startup or no.
So this French startup is couple years old and they decided to build a team in my country. I went to the interview few weeks ago and we discussed the projects, details, potential salary and everything seemed great.

Couple days ago I received a service contract from them and now I need to decide to work for them or no.

Plan is for them to come to my country, rent an office and I should go there and work for them.
The salary that they offered is medium level and they will not have any legal entity in my country. However it’s not a problem for me since I have my own LTD company so I would pay salary on my own.

However there are some cons:

My team members are being hired as freelancers, however salary is defined with a daily rate instead of hourly and we are allowed to work maximum 20 days a month. It is not clear how many hours a week/month they will expect us to work and at this point I’m afraid to rock the boat with my questions. I understand that I shouldn’t receive any health insurance, sick leave pays, vacation days, home office, pension contributions and so on. But it’s so weird that they pay per day instead of per hour. It screams with unpaid overtime.

Payment time is 30 days after invoice has been sent. So If I started working from September 01, I will send them invoice at September 30, then I will work all October and will receive my money only around end of October. Working 60 days to receive my first salary doesn’t seem nice.

Notice period is 30 days. Which is fine on my end since I can be completely free after initial notice. But in their case if they want to fire me I guess they will simply not give me any work to do and since I’m charged per day I won’t be able to send them any invoice. No employment safety, which means if after 2-3 months they don’t have anything to do I can get royally screwed. But it’s startup nature I guess?

They don’t provide a laptop to work with. I’m lucky since I have a laptop for developing mobile apps, and they said they will at least provide office to work in and a monitor.

All this situation is sending vibes of "we want to save money so we came to your country for cheap labour and now we gonna exploit you"

What complicates matters is that my sister will be working with me and It’s her first job. They agreed to pay her a decent salary and even be flexible with her studies. However this deal for me does not seem too great as I will be receiving mid level salary with no benefits that I would otherwise get.

On the other hand maybe I'm just overthinking this I can just try it out for few months and see where it goes.

Any thoughts?

Comments
  • 1
    "It is not clear how many hours a week/month they will expect us to work and at this point I’m afraid to rock the boat with my questions."

    "It isn't clear, but we might have to serve as shared whores too, but I am afraid to ask."

    It's literally something that decides this right from the get go, if after questioning still checks out, then it is worth considering - also clearly set in your contract, so you could based on that quit if they do some nasty shit.
  • 1
    Jesus, the more I read this, the more I am contemplating if my analogy wasn't far fetched lol

    Just read back what you listed and how much they offer you vs what you offer them.
  • 1
    "I will be receiving mid level salary with no benefits that I would otherwise get."

    For that alone I'd need some offer to beat the rest, why would you ruin yourself for no gain.
  • 0
    Why not just let them know what u think? Tell them that some points in the contract r bothering u and thst u want them to change them.
    If they r not at leadt coming ur way a bit u can be sure they want to duck u over someday in the future
  • 0
    You covered every negative that I thought of the more I read on. It sounds like you'd be missing out on a lot and they are giving you that offer to use a legal loophole.

    How are they able to employ your sister with a decent offer and not you? Is she working in an office in a different country?
  • 0
    @cmarshall10450 my sister never had an IT work before so this offer is great for her (twice as good starting salary and they will be flexible with her studies). In my case, I have 3+ years experience that's why this offer stinks for me.
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