I agree, but I am talking about traditional consulting roles, not whatever gig economy roles DoorDash and GrubHub invented to get out of paying taxes.

With traditional consulting roles, you're typically sole proprietor of your business, or have a similarly structured operation. Your relationship with your clients are closer to business-to-business relationships.

AB-5 stirred the pot because professional consultants were worried that their business relationships would be reclassified as employer-employee relationships in CA.

I am pointing out that for your typical tech consultant, AB-5 won't change much, mostly because the ABC test was already a part of CA case law and consultants typically put themselves on the market to be hired by more than one client. Not only that, most professional consultant roles are explicitly exempted from AB-5 altogether.

> I am pointing out that for your typical tech consultant, AB-5 won't change much, mostly because the ABC test was already a part of CA case law and consultants typically put themselves on the market to be hired by more than one client. Not only that, most professional consultant roles are explicitly exempted from AB-5 altogether.

Unfortunately that hasn't been my experience. Maybe it's employers not understanding the law (or perhaps I don't), but there's been a lot more scrutiny with my personal contracts and I've been privy to multiple contract decisions where business owners have explicitly instructed not to award a contract to CA individuals because of the state's employment laws.

I can understand the frustration with cautious employers, but I see their skittishness as being similar to the uncertainty behind the GDPR going into effect a couple of years ago. Businesses were cautious at first, and some pretended that it was the end of the world. But here we are, the sky hasn't fallen and businesses are no longer skittish about the GDPR now that they better understand it.

Well, similarly I've had clients elect not to do business in Europe because of GDPR. It was certainly an opportunity for other companies that were willing to bring their services into compliance, but without judging the intentions or implications of the laws, it's been my experience that they do impact business decisions.