Contract means no perf eval, no 'culture' events participation, no leadership trainings etc., what OP classified as HR bullshit (true).

At this point is mostly a filtering mechanism for me. The types of people that want contract are typically more used to (and want) an environment without the HR bullshit.

Some, not all, but certainly some people use work as their only form of social life and interaction. Which leads to a lot of time not working. I’m not saying this is inherently bad. It’s just not the type of company we’re building. Filtering for contract work has taken care of this so far. Will continue to evaluate as we scale up.

I think it’s a confusing way to say “hourly and work as many or few hours as they feel like”.