Ask HN: Weird consulting contract or is that how consulting works? Hello,
I was interviewing with a company (let's call them A) and it went well and we got to a very good offer.
But I have to work for them via a third company (kind of consultancy umbrella) which gave me a weird contract. weird 1: all intellectual property is to be the consulting company's property. How can that be? I mean it'd make sense to be the customers property. weird 2: I need to get a liability insurance and a very high at that. Shouldn't umbrella provide that? What the heck do they do anyway if they don't even do that? weird 3: while I work under this contract and for a year afterwards I cannot work in any capacity for ANY customer of the umbrella company (not even as a direct hire). 4. Anything going wrong, the umbrella company is indemnified and I bear the full responsibility. Again. What the heck do we need the umbrella for? Company A is a global company but the umbrella company is in UK. Dunno, it's annoying that this third party company sprang out of nowhere (why do we need a middleman here?) but it's doubly annoying to have to commit to all these legalese and extra costs. Is that a normal thing or have I bumped into a weird market spot here? Tangent: I wanted to try my luck as a contractor at some point but I now realize that you cannot really be a freelancer in the sense that a lot of companies do not hire freelancers but rather contractors working under certain umbrella companies. I find this distressing. Why a freelancer would add a middleman in the mix? I mean isn't the whole point of freelancing to cut away the middlemen? I'm confused... |