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Comment by jameslk | Hacker News Reader

> It was obviously wrong

It sounds obviously wrong by the way you phrase it, but it's not so black and white. As a freelancer myself of the past 5 years, I prefer the independent life, being able to negotiate things as I'd like, having more varied work and having more freedom to work when and where I like. Perhaps I could make more and have better benefits as a regular employee, but that's not what I want. Maybe you don't understand and so this is "obviously wrong" to you, but not everything can be bucketed into "wrong" and "right" for everyone. This may help some but it will definitely screw over others.

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The concept of freelancers isn’t the problem. It is entirely legitimate to be a freelancer and entirely legitimate to hire a freelancer.

The problem is de-facto employees who are classed as freelancers as a way of avoiding taxes and worker-protection laws.

Yes, I would be classified as an employee according to this CA precedent for some of the clients I've worked for. I don't want this.

> But it’s part B that presents a problem for freelance journalists: someone is an independent contractor only if they perform work “outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.” In the archetypal example, a plumber fixing a restaurant toilet clearly qualifies. A freelancer journalist writing a column for a magazine? Not so much.

In my case, I've been a contract developer working for agencies before. Sometimes I want work like this.

My understanding (and experience as a contractor) is that for the service provider the benefit is being able to control the what and how of the work. This is better for the client as well especially if there is asymmetric knowledge as is often the case in tech.

However, if your are working full time and end up being made to follow the client's schedule, don't get to address technical debt, have useless meetings etc. then you might be considered an employee anyway. Which I can't understand why you _wouldn't_ want that, because it could mean overtime pay for all those crunch times that result from bad management.

So independent contractor is probably best for a tech worker if you're able to set boundaries and have autonomy, but not at all if having to work overtime and not take vacations.

> then you might be considered an employee anyway. Which I can't understand why you _wouldn't_ want that

Because it comes with a significant reduction in flexibility. If the employer has to provide health insurance then they'll pay you proportionally less, even if you already have health insurance through your spouse. If they have to pay you overtime then they may cut your hours instead, or lower your base pay to compensate, which may be worse for you than being able to continue working at the original wage.

Meanwhile if you did prefer some aspect of the arrangement the law would require then there is nothing stopping you from negotiating that to begin with in exchange for the correspondingly smaller amount of cash money. Few employers have any objection to providing you with health insurance in lieu of the same amount in cash that they would otherwise still have to pay you in order to get you to work for them.

But some employees would prefer the cash -- and the employers take some of the loss when not being able to do what both parties prefer makes the employee walk away, so they don't like it either.

I understand better than you.

I've been a freelancer, temp, or contractor for most of my working life. This spans about 20 years. For the past 10 years it's been almost all remote freelancing.

I also prefer freedoms to the degree that I can get them.

I've also lived in California for most of my life.

In about 75% of the projects I have been brought into, projects were not short term, and the non-employee status was maintained long term as a way to avoid paying for benefits. In some cases I was also building a startup, i.e., I was effectively serving the role of technical cofounder over a period of many months or a few years, but the freelancer status was leveraged as a way to ensure I did not try to gain any business interest or profit.

I'm sure people will say that it's my fault for allowing people to take advantage of me. However I do the best I can and since I do not have a large social network or savings, it has almost never made sense to quit a project and therefore drop my only source of income, on the basis of not receiving benefits or equity or whatever.

> I'm sure people will say that it's my fault for allowing people to take advantage of me.

Yes. It’s not binary, as you describe.

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