<story><title>The End of Employees</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-employees-1486050443</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>everdev</author><text>Having owned a 20+ person services business I can tell you that the paperwork&amp;#x2F;taxes&amp;#x2F;regulations around employees was frustrating. Yes, you can outsource this stuff, but why make it so complicated? Added to that, it was a virtual company with employees in 10+ states, it was a nightmare.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s comparatively much easier to just pay a contractor a higher hourly rate and let them pick their own health care, retirement, time off policy, etc.</text></comment>
<story><title>The End of Employees</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-employees-1486050443</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dv_dt</author><text>I predict that at some point some of these highly outsourced companies will face competition from a former internal &amp;quot;contracting&amp;quot; company (or sets of them) that have been doing substantial portions of the direct work.&lt;p&gt;If a company has fewer and fewer essential &amp;quot;walls&amp;quot; separating what they do at the core vs a possible competitor the risk goes up. If one categorizes a peripheral competency as something that should have been in-house then the company becomes at risk of getting quickly subsumed by a competition hiring contractors that the prime company originally trained. And it might not show up for a while unless some assumption shifts - in the meantime the short term profits might look pretty good.&lt;p&gt;Another risk might be the collapse or disruption at a contracted company where you have less control.</text></comment>