An arrangement where the client owns the finished work outright from the moment it's created, as if they made it themselves, rather than the creator keeping rights.
Work for hire flips the default. Normally the creator owns the copyright to what they make; under a valid work-for-hire arrangement, the client owns it from creation, full stop. No license, no shared rights — the client can use, change, resell, or scrap the work however they want.
For sellers, work-for-hire means you’re giving up everything, so it should be priced accordingly. Total ownership is worth more than a license, so charge for it. It also usually means you can’t reuse the work or, sometimes, even show it in your portfolio unless you carve out portfolio rights in the contract.
For buyers, this is the cleanest way to truly own what you paid for — critical for logos, source code, and anything central to your brand. But the legal term “work made for hire” is narrow in US copyright law; for independent contractors it often needs to be paired with a written copyright assignment to actually stick.
The mistake is assuming the phrase alone does the job. Get an explicit assignment of rights in writing, and for high-value work confirm the language with an attorney.