Some jobs are really poorly organised and people end up in roles that barely have any expectations. I’ve know people in these types of roles, and because their managers are incompetent, they end up only needing to do work for about 30 minutes per day and then having nothing else to do for the other 7 1/2 hours that they’re on the clock.
It depends on the company, but usually, yeah. Some of these companies don’t want to deal with the intricacies of employment laws when the “employee” is in a different country or even state over here in the US. In many cases, the company would be expected to set up a business entity in the employee’s specific country or state, subjecting the company to the laws and taxes of that region.
By just labeling the “employees” as contractors, they can get around this, but it opens the company up to legal issues since it violates labour laws pretty much everywhere. I’ve actually been in this position myself several times where a company misclassified me as a contractor, and the companies try to make it seem like they’re doing you a favour by labeling you as as a contractor, but it just means you get no employment rights and you end up paying for self-employment taxes, business licenses, and other fees.