Ask HN: Corp gives “contractor” benefits, want “employee” obligations, what now?

[Hacker News]

I am a remote worker in a country that is not the same one as any of the company offices (they have multiple offices in multiple countries).
They hired me as "contractor", but promised I would be treated as employee, to facilitate things legally.
Things went good at first, but now they been treating me as contractor regarding rights, but employee regarding what they want from me.

    - I have no vacation, no paid sick days, no leave, no benefits.
    - One of the owners (he has a huge amount of shares) explicitly told me I will never get a raise, because contractors don't get raises.

At same time:

    - I have to work in specific work hours
    - I have a manager that even micromanages my work and keep pestering me whenever I don't reply promptly, can't even go to the bathroom without my phone without this guy noticing.
    - I got a semi-leadership position, I don't have any employees under me but there is a project in the company that I own completely and make all decisions, and whenever someone else screws up on that project I am responsible (even if they don't report to me directly).
    - Whenever a project is late, I have to help and work unpaid overtime (in fact I worked the past months 12+ hour per day including weekends, also having zoom calls with clients 4:00 in the morning is a thing that happened).

Also despite my speed being faster and faster, with more and more Jira tickets completed, enormous amount of Git commits, and clients being happy with my work, my manager keeps saying I am underperformer.
To be honest I wanted to quit, but I am living paycheck to paycheck with zero savings after I had to expend them because of a family member car accident. Other employees been quitting for a while now, company has very high turnover, including losing lead engineers that didn't document their work so many new employees have no idea how the company tech actually works.
Also the jurisdiction of my contract is UK, but I don't live in UK, and I am not UK citizen, I am not sure if I even can sue them, or if I was going to sue them, what kind of lawyer I would have to look for.
Contract is full of sketchy stuff, like they owning even my personal diary if I wrote in it during my contract, or owning my private correspondence.

---

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33330811

Points: 11

# Comments: 9

Continue reading...