Perhaps this is different outside the US, but this is not really a big problem inside the US from my experience. If you're doing "contract-to-hire" you do need

Perhaps this is different outside the US, but this is not really a big problem inside the US from my experience. If you're doing "contract-to-hire" you do need to be somewhat careful that you don't treat them as employees before they are, e.g. don't give them equipment (laptop etc), don't require them to arrive at a certain time, probably don't buy them lunch, etc. IANAL (this is not legal advice), but it seems quite easy to keep a software engineer correctly classified. It's not like the job "Uber driver" where the fundamental nature of the job means you can't be a contractor.