I know it's a regular topic but I'm trying to pull together current information and advice on a situation I admittedly became complicit in after your standard bait-and-switch story. — I'm a caregiver for an elderly parent in a small, rural town, so, a remote gig with a steady paycheck? Well, you know.
SHORTER VERSION: contract was terminated after 2 years on a growth team. I was fairly flagrantly misclassified. I did call an employment lawyer first thing and sent them all my receipts — of which there are many, from the original job posting, to my contract and the company-owned equipment agreement I had to sign to screenshots and emails. I am now waiting to hear back. They already told me to file for UC anyway as soon as my 30 days are up.
- Most of Reddit says rat the company out to the IRS. Will there actually be consequences? How long does that take? This is a Deel-like situation where I suspect nearly everyone is a contractor and most are in other countries. Yet all I see re Deel is the lawsuit, no indication the IRS is on the case. I'm worried there are no real consequences.
- Was immediately calling a lawyer also helpful or shouting into the wind?
- How much work do I actually have to do or how cooperative do I have to be during my final 30 days? It's not like any of this is a surprise but I'm still f'ing livid and am having a hard time stomaching calls. I have a long-scheduled (pre-termination) 1:1 on the calendar with the new manager and would love to not do it.
- Any other suggestions for handling the last 30 while I talk to lawyers and maybe the IRS, etc?
- Taxes. If my paycheck comes in as it should, should I pay all of my quarterlies that I was planning on for 9/15? Or can I make lighter payments? I was aggressively trying to pay down out of pocket medical expenses so everything in my savings account is earmarked for taxes. I'm obviously hesitant to take that to zero. Also my tax preparer steered me a bit wrong so I still wound up having to set up a payment plan with the IRS for $3k in taxes that I was short for last year.
The Album-Length Version
Admittedly I thought, they needed me as the only native English speaker, working pretty cheap on a marketing team for a US-based company selling a product exclusively to a US-based market. I thought I might be okay if I kept my head down and was a good, team player (it was all “team this” and “team that”). And if they left me alone, I'd leave them alone.
Wroooong.
I was recently given my 30-days notice per my contract with a SAAS company I have been working for for nearly two years. I joke that this company is like Menudo and people tend to disappear or “… will only be with us for 30 days so…” (as the Slack messages tend to go) between the one and two-year marks. And the whole termination thing, involving two managers, one of whom is new, was near comedy gold but that's a story for another day.
My position was posted on LinkedIn as a full-time job with a lengthy and breathlessly exciting description. No mention of salary or benefits but it wasn't described as contract either (I recently found the expired posting in the 'my jobs' section of my own LI profile so you can guess I PDF'd that s***).
I had gone through four rounds of interviews, including two with members of the leadership team — and each every time I made it clear that I no longer wanted to freelance and was looking for a permanent, stable position.
To my delight was offered the job after being asked my salary expectations. I said “between AA,XXX and BB,XXX.” The then-growth manager said they'd start me AA,XXX and we'd revisit compensation later.
Well, lo, if I didn't discover I was being 1099'd while I was being on-boarded in a rush and the then-growth manager was literally copying my contract from the internet. And it's kind of a joke. Their main concern is non-compete and ownership of the work but it clearly states I control my own working conditions. The last page describes my duties as (this is an example) “graphic design” and compensation as “AA,XXX/year.”
– They sent me a computer that I use.- I have a company email address and nifty signature.- I am paid twice a month by DD on the regular, company payroll run (that I don't have to beg people to pay me is one chain that held me here).
– This is 98% of my income- There is no project, just an endless pile of tasks in Jira that we address during regularly scheduled standups, grooming, and demo calls (you're never explicitly told you have to attend and no one says anything if you can't make it to one — so long as you say so in Slack — but you just know you can't do that too often).- They were vague about working hours and rarely explicitly make any demands about scheduling but I have been herded into their core hours through meeting scheduling and the expectation of being online or available for surprise calls during those hours (I have also been told to put in requests for vacation, provide notice if I'm going to be out “half the day” and give a two-weeks' heads up for medical appointments).- I'm often doing things well outside the scope of “graphic design,” including representing the company to vendors (some of whom they stiff on bills and I have received calls about on a personal number that I wound up having to supply to said vendors as the point of contact).
They don't have a legal or HR department (which everyone seems to find endlessly hilarious) though they have retained local council for some contractual disputes I discovered online. The “HR Department” is one dude working remotely on another continent. “Legal” is otherwise one very young dude also working on another continent who inherited the task of doing contracts after they Menudo'ed the last guy.
Thank you for listening. It was therapeutic.