To add some color to this, I know of at least one contracting agency / consultancy that effectively operated as a guild for about 10 years. When you hired some

To add some color to this, I know of at least one contracting agency / consultancy that effectively operated as a guild for about 10 years. When you hired somebody from them, you knew you were getting the real deal. Their contracts included protection from off-the-clock hours, 4-day weeks, etc. They were also super transparent and accurate with the "level" of people you were getting. They charged a premium-level fee (read: not an exorbitant, luxury-level fee), but my company at the time was happy to pay – the marginal expense was basically insurance that nobody involved was going to be wasting their time. On every IC team they were embedded in, they got better performance reviews and 360 reviews than anybody else. I think over the years, they (tragically, IMO) appear to have drifted away from this model, because they found they could grow faster by aiming more "mid-market"; my guess is that the pool of money on the buy side in the mid-market is larger. Basically, mediocrity is the most profitable equilibrium. You have to possess some organizing principle that's more foundational than the pursuit of profit to avoid it. There's ways to do that without getting totally wonky. You could organize as a Co-Op (so you operate group-selfishly instead of leader-selfishly), register as a benefit corporation, etc.