The Ukrainian IT market continues to surprise with innovative approaches to hiring and rethinking of labor legislation. This time, a Lviv defense-tech startup has offered a dream job for a Product Owner: a potential income of over a million dollars per year, provided that the candidate can survive four months without a single penny of salary.
The Ukrainian IT market continues to surprise with innovative approaches to hiring and rethinking of labor legislation. This time, a Lviv defense-tech startup has offered a dream job for a Product Owner: a potential income of over a million dollars per year, provided that the candidate can survive four months without a single penny of salary.
Recruiter Maryna Shcher spoke about the unique career opportunity on her page on the social network Threads.
According to the author of the post, the vacancy is “a bit unconventional,” but she personally vouches for the “hard-working guys” at the company. The working conditions look like a harsh survival experiment: the rate for the probationary period (which lasts four months) is exactly zero dollars.
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However, for those who do not die of hunger and pass the trial period, there is generous compensation. The company promises to reimburse these four months through ESOP (options) in the equivalent of $4,000 per month. After a year of work, the specialist is offered 5% of the company's shares (ownership) subject to the fulfillment of KPIs, as well as a fixed bonus of $1.13 for each unit of goods sold after contracting. The recruiter notes that according to the company's calculations, such a product will ultimately be able to earn about $1.3 million per year.
The IT community met such a "serious challenge" with open skepticism, and the comments section quickly turned into a sarcasm festival.
In particular, users were interested in the guarantees that the company would simply not fire a person during the last week of unpaid work. To this, the recruiter provided a concrete argument: "They are not like that, they need a person for product development, not for some games 🤷🏻♀️."
The question of why a Product Owner-level specialist would have to live without income for four months also remained unanswered. “If you don’t have a personal financial cushion, it will be difficult. That’s why we openly wrote that the conditions are such that candidates see that payment is not made immediately,” the author of the vacancy explained.
Commentators were quick to praise this startup approach:
"You can glue your hooves together in 4 months) Check the initial conditions, this is the first time I've heard such a statement in our industry, it looks like complete disrespect and distrust of the candidate," user who_knows_answer noted .
"Your stubborn guys are violating Ukrainian legislation, and you are helping them in this🤦," serhii.klimenchenko reminded of the existence of the Labor Code.
Interestingly, the author of the post positions herself as a specialist with 10 years of experience in recruiting and a career consultant. For help in finding a job, she offers paid services: for example, an "Express Consultation" in the "question-answer" format lasting up to 30 minutes will cost candidates 1,000 hryvnias. In addition, judging by the stories on her Instagram, the recruiter cooperates with the BazaIT agency, which has a separate division, BazaIT Defense, specializing in the defense sector.
