It's an enormous pain in the butt when you're trying to do business as an individual, basically. It's not just an annoyance for the contractors but a burden on the companies, too. Corporations who hire independent contractors through recruitment agencies tend to pay the agency a premium. Bruce says that one company she had been contracting with agreed to pay this extra amount because a particular manager liked her work. Although the 9th Circuit ruling was specifically aimed at Microsoft, no place has felt its impact more keenly than Silicon Valley.
Flexibility is king.
Whether purely independent, or through agencies, independent contractors and other forms of temporary workers perform a vast range of jobs that range from the menial to the highly technical. Manpower Inc., the nation's largest temp agency, has a technical services department that is growing at 40 percent a year, and the bulk of that growth is centered on Silicon Valley. Together, temps, independent contractors and other varieties of part-time workers make up the contingent work force. Today, contends Christopher Benner, a labor activist and UC-Berkeley doctoral student, some 27 to 40 percent of workers in Silicon Valley can be considered contingent. Benner sees that as a problem, since contingent workers are more vulnerable in an economic downturn than permanent staffers.