Sounds like serious disorganization, pushing boundaries, and trying to get stuff from you for free right from the start. This might be expected in a 40-person

Sounds like serious disorganization, pushing boundaries, and trying to get stuff from you for free right from the start. This might be expected in a 40-person company that was 5 ppl six months ago and heading to 100 this quarter. But a 500+ person company, hiring cohorts of 20-30+ people, supposedly preparing for an IPO? Nope. Many smaller companies have a far better process that actually gets people up to speed better. This looks -at best- like consistently haphazard scrambling, with low ethics. Also, if they want you to do work before your "start date", they can move up your start date and start paying you. If they even said, "hey, we'd like you to participate in a handful of calls the weeks before, we'll pay 1/3 of your pay as a signing bonus, is that OK with you, or do you really need a break /moving time / etc. before you start?" that'd be cool. But just expecting you to drop everything for their disorganization up front is bad. Unless there are some contrary huge positive indicators, I'd keep looking. (also note that you are concerned enough to write this, which also tells me that you kind of already know the answer and are just looking for confirmation) In any case, I wish you good fortune with your decision.