Scenario: you have two offers on hand. One offer is for a full time position. The other is for "let's see how the next one to two months goes and then we'll decide if you still have a job or not." Which do you pick? All things being equal, the first offer carries significantly less risk as an employee and is clearly the better choice. If you're an employer who really wants to hire engineers, why would you give an offer that will automatically filter out a large portion of qualified candidates?

If I had the choice between a full time position with 3 days free coding prior, or "let's see how the next 1-2 months go" with no free prior coding, I'd chose the latter.

Those options both suck; I'd turn them both down. There are plenty of other places to work that will treat you like a professional.

But the reality is in many (most? all?) US states, employers can fire you for any reason. Sure you can nominally fire back with a wrongful termination suit, but the reality is you have little recourse. So really there is no difference in those two offers, other than one is being more explicit about their personnel practices.

What do I do when I quit my current job, move across the country, and then get fired 30 days later? I would likely never accept an offer at a company that tells me up front there is a good chance I will be let go in 30 or 60 days.

There is only a good chance if you misrepresented your abilities and aren't able to get up to speed in 30-90 days. If that is the case, you deserve to be let go.

Is it, though? There are so many other ways that someone might not be a good "fit." Maybe you found another, slightly better candidate who is willing to accept a lower offer. Maybe a manager or individual contributor feels that their position is threatened by the candidate. Maybe they don't attend weekly happy hour.

I can’t imagine firing a competent employee for any of those reasons. Hiring (and firing) an employee involves a lot of work and is a big onvestment. You don’t throw that all away to roll the dice on someone who might be incrementally better.

Yes but being a FTE doesn't shield you from that sort of thing either.

You run that risk with any assignment that's at will, whether it's explicitly stated or not.

The size of the chances varies wildly.

There are times it makes sense to do the high-risk ones: devs that are unproven, without great academic and work backgrounds, looking to get a foot in the door. Companies that are not well funded looking to find diamonds in the rough, since they can't attract people who already have proven themselves. I've been that dev myself, based just on a strong sense of how the CEO and myself were on the same page based on our conversations.

But it's definitely not a risk I'd take again from where I am now. At a more established place with people I know who vouch for the folks involved, there's a much lower chance of a new FTE getting canned within a few months for anything short of egregious behavior.

Bingo. This is how it was done before. 30 minute interview with some quick test questions (what's an array or linked list or what does ++ do), then if it sounded good, hire them. If they didn't work out, fire them. Simple and effective.

Of course I don't disagree. So true. I meant in the context of the interview / hiring process, short of hiring them on and thinking about it through the lens of a probationary period.