The Lesson From AB5

The big news of the week was the near passage of the California law that would require Uber, Lyft and other companies that rely on contractors to treat them more like full-time employees. Amir’s sources told him the move could add an estimated 20% to Uber’s costs. 

Some observers hailed the move as the beginning of the end of tech companies’ unbridled growth. From the cocktail party circuit in New York, you could feel the glee among media moguls discussing the law as a long-overdue reckoning for tech companies that have flouted regulations for years. It parallels a sentiment in New York Times reporter Mike Isaac’s excellent new book about Uber that I’m still working my way through. He paints Uber’s reckoning as part of the broader techlash, claiming that in recent years, “the world of uninhibited technological progress came to a screeching halt.”