[ntrepid8]

I've had a few sales jobs where I was employed full-time (w2 not 1099) but also had an employment agreement with a defined term. Most often the term was 1 to 3 years, and if you were going to be let go it would happen when the term was over. They just would not renew your contract.

You could still be fired "for cause" but that almost never happened. The employee would almost have to commit a crime to be terminated early.

Of course you could always quit during the term if you wanted, but that meant you would have to pay back the signing bonus received when the contract was signed :)

I really did not mind this structure, but it seems like it's confined to specific industries and outside of those almost no one does it. For example, I've never seen a software dev job with this sort of structure.