Something I never see mentioned in these discussions is the surprisingly high hurdles to actually operating a distributed company. You'd think in 2021 it wouldn't be difficult to have employees doing knowledge work in multiple US states without running face-first into laws governing conducting actual business in multiple states, but that's not at all the case. International is even worse. The additional complexity and costs of having non-local employees can absolutely be prohibitive, leading some companies to just abuse 1099 status.
This obviously isn't a problem if you're FAANG or Salesforce, but for a company of 20 it is.
This obviously isn't a problem if you're FAANG or Salesforce, but for a company of 20 it is.