we're avoiding hiring people from California because there's so much reporting

The only problem is externality pricing.

Building https://negationgame.com

Zero-to-one builder in SF 🇨🇦🇺🇸

not really? California just has stronger employee protection regulations and policies. if you have a good payroll/HR service, most of it is taken care of automatically.

highly recc Gusto - if you're not incorporated in CA they work with another service to help you get easily setup for employee taxes, have good HR resourcing via Mineral. i'm sure JustWorks probably has something similar too. 

you could also go directly to something like CorpNet (terrible name) for payroll taxes

also use a service like PosterElite to handle all the labor law poster compliance for any state you have employees in