California Labor Bill, Near Passage, Is Blow to Uber and Lyft
Discussing Uber and Lyft is boring because the companies are so reviled, but this bill is much bigger than Uber and Lyft.<p>It seems the ABC contracting test is pretty detrimental to any kind of contract hiring that is done in an area which is closely related to a company’s core business.<p>Software development contracting in particular seems like it would be particularly problematic under this test.<p>I contract out work all the time which I closely manage many aspects of how the work is done, and for work which is core to my business operations, and within my core competency.<p>Mostly this is to be able to quickly scale up development capacity during a project where there are isolated pieces that can be worked on concurrently. It’s often work that I could do, but for scheduling purposes, would rather hire out.<p>I’ve also done “micro-contracting” where I break out specific problems which I could eventually figure out a solution but it’s easier to find an expert who can spend 5 hours on it while I keep moving on other pieces of the puzzle.<p>What I’m doing seems like it’s exceptionally common, and because of how ABC test is a logical AND I’m not seeing the “escape hatch” where it wouldn’t be basically preventing software contracting work for software companies.