First, contract to hire is a pure negative for the employee. People can "try a company" out just fine with a full time offer and then quit if it's not a good fit.
Second, it's far easier to find good people by poaching from other companies than it is by traditional means. No one is going to quit their job for a 3 week contract even if they're really unhappy at their current job. So, with this approach, you've just removed the biggest pool of talented prospects there is.
If your company is a total bore and no one in the bay area thinks what you're doing is at all exciting, then you're right. The ONLY thing you have to offer is a signed contract with a very high number on it.
But if you're actually doing something personally exciting to someone, they will absolutely take a few days out of their routine (with compensation) to explore that. Honestly, if someone isn't excited enough about my company to put a few days into it without a full time contract, I don't want them in my company.
I've put a few YEARS of my life into my company without such a contract. I'd expect my employees to have at least a fraction of that passion.
After all, they are already being paid on those vacation days, are they not technically working for their existing company?
What happens when your new employee's old company turns round and says 'Hey, we just found out about your wonderful scheme about testing out our employees when they're still under our contract. That means our intellectual property is in your code base. That employee has no negotiation power and you clearly knew that, our price for this bespoke job is $100,000. You've already got the goods, payment terms 1 day. Thanks.'.
I would never ask people to work without compensation. And I would never ask people to work "ungodly" hours. But I do want to work with people who are really excited about tech and about home gardens, and about making stuff that was impossible possible. Not many companies offer the chance to work on a problem like that, and for some people it's really exciting.
And they should talk to me. I've already had several people offer to work on the project for free just because it interests them and they're looking to explore other career paths.
I actually have never done the "let's do a trial weekend/week contract gig" thing, although I don't understand why you're so vociferously against that approach. Even if it limits me to people who are freelancers.... there are a lot of freelancers out there! And I'm not an unreasonable guy. If someone was excited about SproutRobot I would do everything I could to find a way to get them on board!
But if someone doesn't give a shit, and can't rearrange a couple days, or a weekend to figure out if we're a good fit.... I don't see how I'm a totally evil slavedriver boss if I think that's an indication of a poor fit for my company.
What's so terrible about wanting to hire people who want to go out of their way to work for me?
Edit: And what would you think about a company that required you to fly out for a weekend to do two days of interviews? You wouldn't even get paid for that! You must think that kind of demand is abhorrent if you think hiring someone for two days to get paid to work on the product is evil.
You could say the best way for them to find this out is by doing this 3 week contract for hire idea, but that's still a risk to the candidate.
Prostitutes get paid at least. You were a rape victim.
That actually bothers me a bit. You do work as part of an interview, aren't offered a job, and aren't compensated for the work done, but the interviewing company gets to keep and use the work. I'm assuming the applicant would have had to sign something to that effect at the beginning of the interview process, but it just feels like a raw deal to me.
THANK YOU (THIS THIS THIS)
Exactly. The other thing the companies/groups do is that they hire for their needs right now instead of thinking about what they might need later... But the biggest mistake is in not thinking-outside-the-box when it comes to candidates. There's an assumption that the person you're looking for has exactly a certain background and set of skills. As an example (sorry, not a web guy), you're hiring a chip designer and you overlook the guy who's been writing software to design chips (EDA)... The chip design guys tend to think the coder doesn't know anything about chip design, but as it turns out to write software to design chips you've gotta know a lot about designing chips.
There's also the problem of selection bias. Your technical interviewers are going to look for people that resemble themselves. In a broad sense this is because they think they're smart and everyone else is dumb (and rightly so). The problem is that this strategy can be far too successful and you will invariably turn away a perfectly suitable selection of candidates along with the unsuitable ones. It's human nature and difficult to detect.
There is another form of selection bias in the interview process. You need to know that the candidate you're going to hire is going to be competent, assertive, and talented. However the exact match of skills, abilities, and personality traits that fulfill those broad categories are going to be based off of those skills, abilities, and traits you believe have helped you to be successful so far. When interviewing someone it is far too easy to check off the features a candidate is lacking and miss the ones they do have that you do not. A good hire, IMO, is someone who has some of the skills and abilities you already have and some you do not. Yet all too often, we look for people who have ALL of the skills we already have instead.
I think strategies such as the one in the article would at least by-pass many of the definicies noted above. However I think it might be impractical in some scenarios (ie: when the candidate is already in a position at another company, or when they have received attractive offers from other companies). It's a start though and I think alternative strategies should be considered more often.