About this site
Fifty notes on running work done by people who are not your employees, written from the position of the business buying it. Owners, operations managers, agency and studio principals, and anybody who has found themselves managing somebody they did not hire.
What it covers
What you are actually buying, and what follows from buying a result rather than somebody's time. What happens to the arrangement when you direct the method, fix the hours, require a place, train somebody to your standard, or correct poor work the way an employer would. What is available instead in each case, and what the substitute costs in time, money and certainty. How engagements drift without anybody deciding anything, where the drift actually occurs, and what a periodic review of your own arrangements consists of.
The argument running through it
Every ordinary management instrument you reach for erodes the distinction the whole arrangement rests on. The answer is not to stop managing. It is to know which instrument you are reaching for, what it moves, what the weaker substitute costs, and to decide that deliberately rather than arriving at it over two years of individually sensible moments.
What it is not
It is not legal, tax or employment advice, and it does not tell anybody what their arrangement is. Who counts as an employee, a worker or a contractor, which tests apply, which body decides, whether one body's decision affects another, what rights and obligations attach to each category, what restrictions are enforceable and what happens when an arrangement changes over time all differ by jurisdiction, by industry and by the facts, and they change. Those are questions for somebody qualified in the place concerned.
The device at the top of every page adds nothing up, and that is deliberate. No test anywhere totals its factors the same way, and a score would be the one number a reader would act on.
The core collection focuses on contractor-management decisions. Separate, clearly labelled tool guides compare software through consistent practical criteria and current provider information.
About the examples
Every example used anywhere on this site is an illustration of what one company recorded about its own arrangements, labelled as such on the page where it appears. None of it describes any named business or any real person, and nothing here claims to say what any authority anywhere would make of anything.
Editorial approach
Examples illustrate practical working arrangements and should be checked against current contracts, local rules and qualified advice. Product comparisons use repeatable review criteria and information published by each provider.