I hope everyone considers themselves as working for themselves, regardless of the actual vehicle that attaches themselves to their current income stream (job or their own company or whatever...)
Even self-employed, you still have many bosses (customers, etc). In fact _those_ bosses can be harder to fire depending on contracting terms... And you might find it harder to churn out the sales to maintain a steady income stream.
Even company-employed, you still should frame things in working-for-yourself. What are you getting out of the relationship? Is the employer holding up its end for you?
The traditional, paternalistic concept of employment is outmoded. It says your career growth should be managed by your employer (don't let it...). It presumes the work you do and your job are always 100% the same (they're not). It assumes a kind of one-sided evaluation of the employee, where the employer has all the power (very untrue these days).
These stories always feel like they picked a few good anecdotes and interviews, but they wanted to present it as a national trend to make it sound like a bigger deal.
Indeed, the statistics they provide aren't as significant as the headline suggests:
> Hundreds of thousands of Americans are striking out on their own...
For reference, the United States has around 160 million employed people. 0.1% of them moving to freelancing might be significant, but is it really a new era? That was happening on the regular well before COVID.
1 in 1000 people striking out on their own doesn't really explain the "ongoing shake-up in the world of work" like they're trying to suggest.
Employers are finally starting to get bitten for squeezing labor. Even highly compensated people suffer from being squeezed. Working long hours. Not being given the resources needed. Working outside your job description. Being asked to stay late again and again. Constant anxiety about deadlines and not having physically enough time to get the job done. Not having enough time to get everything done at home since you are spent from the workday. It's like, if there is so much demand for labor, why not hire more hands? Even if you are paying more out of payroll you are getting a better rested, more engaged, less mentally disturbed labor pool for your dollar, one that's not looking desperately at linkedin for an escape route from the hell you've created.
I guess the question is whether or not employers will actually balk and start to offer better conditions, or collectively decide that they can get away with staying put with the status quo since people need to eat and afford shelter and they can get away with hiring more naive recent grads and having high turnover seemingly indefinitely.
Just... be aware of the survivorship bias in these kinds of articles.
I've been planning to go solo for more than a year. I've been saving up, and working on validating my ideas on the side while still working a full day job.
Most startups/entrepreneurs fail, so plan for that eventuality. And delay quitting that day job as long as possible.
I've obviously only gotten this advice from other sources and not from personal experience, so be skeptical...
..and remember the survivorship bias in everything you read about this topic.
If you can, dip your toes in the water before jumping in.
I run an eBay store that makes around $20k a month and is still growing, but it started as a side gig while I was still working (making less than 5k a month, but I was only working on it for maybe 8-10 hours a week).
Actually validating your ideas before fully committing is a great way to minimise risk and avoid procrastination.
I've saved enough money to wither a bad year or two before I went solo. Takes the anxiety and makes for a good night sleep, even if there is no immediate job lined up...
> “When I’m at a red light, I don’t feel like I’m rushed to get home anymore.”
This article and elsewhere I've observed that many employers are running antiquated or misled patterns that cause significant anxiety in their workers (examples are performance reviews[1], stacking unrealistic and unneccessary deadlines in attempt to push additional "performance", and excess hours for the appearances of productivity)
I wonder how many employees would be staying if their employers weren't doing dark patterns?
Been a contractor for around 3 years now working remotely for start-ups and it's the best thing ever. No bullshit algo/whiteboard interviews, no having to lie about believing in the company "mission", much more flexibility over how much do I actually work, in whatever terms I work. Good luck pitching to a regular company that you want to only work in chunks of 2 or 4 weeks, and then take 2 week breaks in-between, which is what I can do now.
Also, in general, you are treated as an equal and not as a subordinate, which is very nice.
Hi,
I am very interested in doing this. I am wondering if you have any advice for making the switch from full time? I know that my resume and experience are what these companies are looking for but I don't have a very good network and have found it harder to find companies than with FT work.
Cheers
Alex
I quit Oracle a few months ago. The good part is that I get spend more time on fun blog posts and projects like datastation [0]. The bad part is it's still challenging to find contract work that is enjoyable and pays well.
Most of all though I miss having teammates/peers. That may be the thing that drives me fastest back to full time employment.
Maybe consider registering at a local lively coworking space/accelerator? You may find like minded people you can form a cooperative with.
Also as far as the contract work that is enjoyable and pays well -- in my experience this mostly has to do with knowing the right people. People who are high up enough in an org and technical enough to be sympathetic to understand what enjoyable jobs for you would be.
they did pay well didn't they? my boss neighbor works for oracle, and he lives here in third world buying houses like buying cars. dude could just stop and become the big landlord if he wishes.
A recent article [0] draws an interesting comparison with the aftermath of the Black Death in England. Briefly, peasants just refused working the aristocracy-owned fields. No matter the (harsh) countermeasures, the situation just never went back to the pre-plague levels. As a result, the aristocracy had to sell some of the fields to the richer farmers, resulting in a much strenghtened middle class.
Bill and Melinda's Trust has locked up the majority of farm land in USA. The peasants are screwed. The middle class is gone. People think more monoculture with machines is the answer. Technology will never supplant nature, but it might cause a collapse & reboot. You can't eat AI, you can't eat a digital twin market model.
The truth of the matter is we are compensated nowhere near the value we create. And so if you work for yourself, and actually do create something that others will pay for, you will usually far exceed your normal salary.
Where does the idea that prices are a function of value even come from? Even the most basic high school microeconomics course must teach students that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves.
And it is trivial to see one’s self deriving great value from things like eating fresh fruit and produce and drinking clean water, but not paying anywhere near its “value” for it.
Edit: replace the word value with utility in my comment to get a clearer idea of what I am trying to convey. Value is too vague of an idea to use for this topic.
The key caveat is here is that changing circumstances does not mean easily reproducing the exact results from path A to B.
If someone is working at a prominent company, and (for example) making $200k while their employer is making $500k in revenue per employee, that's the personal output($) : input($) value ratio in the context of that job environment.
Shifting to working for yourself doesn't mean immediately realizing that $500k monetary value equivalent for yourself instead. It depends on the business, business model, clients, capital, sales, operations, growth, etc, etc.
In what I've observed from some colleagues that have done both, using this information as leverage for a raise or jumping ship to "climb the ladder" elsewhere can yield equally good if not better compensation results than just being your own business.
Obviously there's nothing wrong with doing that and it's personal preference, it's just more of a naive assumption that own-boss money is always going to be >= job money.
I was an entrepreneur for 10 years. I would have made more in a job. Eventually I realized I am better off creating value for others and earn a lot more. Hung up the entrepreneurial boots and life has good since. Some people can make it, some can't.
I've been my own boss for ~ 7 years. 2 of those as a contractor, the other 5 as a SAAS founder.
I've been able to take any day off I want, but I have NEVER been able to switch off. It took me about 4-5 years to finally be relatively OK with it. Annual leave is far better.
I've taken a bit of a "holiday" this year by taking a full time role for ~8 months and it's been a great opportunity to recharge and work with amazing people that are much smarter than me, but I'm already feeling the pinch to go back and do my own thing.
Having said all of the above, I'm very lucky that I'm 10+ years in the software industry and I've always got the option of a great full time role to fall back on.
All in all, so far I'm not sure it was worth it. I wouldn't have been as successful and fulfilled if I kept my full time role, but I'd be a hell of a lot happier.
We have a giant jump in the number of new businesses now.
A majority of them are more spontaneous
and less well conceived by people with much less
experience with all aspects of running your own
business.
I read that there have been several 100.000 of new
business registered.
All of those will have to try and climb on top of each other
to be heard.
Let us say that 1000 new mobile dog grooming business have been started
in Denver. They all need a van and equipment.
There are already 100 mobile dog grooming businesses, some do very well with
an established clientele, a known name, and organic growth from happy businesses. Others do not.
How will all the new dog groomers be heard?
Who will be inventive enough or rich enough to hire someone, to create a solid and successful marketing campaign?
Traditionally on average 20% of new business fail within the first year.
(Depending on type of business, some fail more often than others).
I predict we will see solid increase how many businesses fail.
A lot of people will lose their savings.
Unless something drastic changes a lot more will be without health insurance.
Within 6 months to 2 years there will be a horde of people who wish to return to being an employee of an established business, while being worse off financially.
I hope I am wrong.
(All numbers used about dog groomers are made up. Pure fiction)
Looking at the chart toward the top of the article, I couldn't help but get a similar feeling. A huge spike of self employed workers in the early 2000's that preceded the crash and Great Recession. I'd be curious to see statistics on what these self employed workers were doing in 2004-2007, but I assume many of them got into the idea of flipping houses?
Either way, I worry that in a few years time we'll see a market correction of all these self employed workers and I wonder what its impact will be. Will they just go back to corporate life? Will it even be that easy to do so?
Like everything else, this is very relative to locality. You'd be shocked at how hard it is to find any service business (pick one: plumber, well work, electrician, tree removal, etc.) to even come out to do an estimate in my area. I do a lot of tree-work for my neighboors simply because there is nobody else willing to do it. From talking with family and friends, it seems to be a common problem.
There's lots of money to be made there - in your examples, the people selling used vans (and then re-buying them cheaply from new companies going out of business), and the internet megacorps selling advertising to all the dog groomers trying to be heard. In a gold rush, most of the miners get nothing, but the people selling shovels can have a good business.
I'm actually convinced that single payer healthcare doesn't exist because companies lobby against it. It makes zero sense for healthcare to be tied to employment. But it sure makes folks hesitant to leave.
I come from a -deeply- conservative family, a large one at that, and I still don't know a single person who supports our healthcare system. The memes you read about evil republicans against it just aren't true. So what's the real reason?
Coincides with the rise of the FIRE movement as well.
It appears that humans want to not subject themselves to endless politics and meaningless bureaucracy in corporations. Given a choice, people want to live and die with dignity.
I did it, and it's equal parts terrifying and awesome. My company's going to do six figures of revenue this year, which is amazing, but I'm having to figure out things like scaling fulfillment and manufacturing that are entirely foreign to me (my background is in enterprise software, now doing ecommerce). Never a dull moment!
Feel free to reach out (email in profile) if you want to chat. I grew an e-commerce distributor to 8-digit revenue with in-house fulfillment and software development.
Edit to add: It can be such an isolating experience. We had no clue what we were doing half the time. Hard to find anyone willing to talk that had been through it.
Honestly, I've become a bit scared of growth, as that just means more work, more responsibility, more hiring. Whatever happened to my nice little lifestyle business!!?!?
Something that gets me is how to even get started down the path of being your own boss. The insane networking required to keep up a contract queue is a lot. I'd love to setup an ecommerce business or side business, but there is so much clutter out there on the internet about getting started, it's hard to find the needle in the haystack for how to do it right. I'm a web dev with about 10 years of experience, but my business know-how is basically at 0. Anyone have suggestions on where to start?
My advice is to find a company that more or less specializes in IT consulting/outsourcing and spend a couple of years learning the ropes. Get an understanding for how it operates, how they generate leads, the contract side, negotiation, etc.
Doing this will give you not only a good sense of the business side, but also whether it’s something you really want to do on your own.
Also, find a niche and specialize. Part of the reason there is so much noise is your skill set is presumably generic. Saying “I’m a senior web developer” puts you in competition with millions of others.
The competition is global as well, when it comes to the freelance market (e.g., India, Pakistan, etc.). Whereas, I’m a “Senior developer in X technology” when there are only 5-10 others who can do the same thing puts you in a league of your own.
Considering tech workers only. If a substantial number of them moves from employment to self-employment, being someone's boss may become a better deal. If this trend is systemic:
- The value of workers willing to be employed will increase, even more so in specific fields. Whatever the current compensation (dollars, flexibility,...), it's going to get better.
- As this happens, some organizations won't accept to pay a premium for their existing pool of candidates and will expand their horizon to (finally) hire previously ignored populations.
- Freelancing platforms will get even busier, and finding work will get harder and harder—especially now that these new self-employed workers compete with the entire world and not with other business units and colleagues. Many will come back from it.
- When they do, their old job won't be available anymore. Getting a new one will be stressful due to the increased competition from all the disgruntled self-employed coming back and the increased pool of cheaper candidates now preferred by employers.
I've personally made the employed → self-employed move about 3-4 years ago, and back. Although there are clear benefits to being self-employed, there are also clear ones to being a full-time employee (maybe this is more the case in Europe where I'm based, though). So, I can see why people make the move given the current context, but I can also see why a huge chunk will realize being your own boss is not necessarily as good as it sounds.
I made the switch to self-employed in 2012. Then back to employment last year, during the Covid lockdown. And recently back to self-employed again.
On the whole, I prefer the freedom of being self-employed, especially in regard to time off; I take take as much or as little time off as a want, whereas in employment, I'm limited to what my contract allows. Of course I can buy extra or have them paid out, but it's really the extra bureaucracy of working for a company that I dislike. Working for myself is easier.
But another big difference I noticed is compensation: employment was a massive pay cut. And this seems consistent with previous experiences; Dutch employers just don't want to pay that much for software engineers. As a freelancer, it's easy to make 50% more. It's not an easy comparison because I also have to pay more taxes, save up for my own retirement, pay my own disability and other insurance that's normally taken care of by the employer, but even then, the difference is stark.
If more people becoming self-employed means more employers will raise developer and other salaries, that would be awesome.
The question is really about *medical insurance*, if anyone(including his/her spouse and children) can buy a reasonable priced health insurance without a big company employer, we can all be our own bosses.
until then, it's more like a gamble if you want to fly alone.
Most are selling hours or expressing the intent to, as reflected in the articles data. If your are damn good, they sell themselves. If you’re not, you are going to regret transferring the risk of landing and retaining customers onto yourself from an employer.
What I’m most interested in is what proportion are working to create a business that scales up. IP creators, manufacturers, service businesses, products. Those are the job creation machines that our entire economy will benefit from.
Given the past year's move towards remote work and knowledge workers migrating away from big cities, I'd be very interested in how "scalable businesses" adapt. Not every emerging need can be met by a remote-only companies, cool things are going to happen when these trends collide (smaller cities becoming entrepreneurial hotspots, lean companies that attend to more niche markets, unique managerial agreements, etc.)
Observing over my approximate half of a life I've noted a very intriguing trend -- one in line with "Privatized profit, socialized losses" which I believe I first heard through Noam Chomsky.
I've noted that there has been an increasing requirement for systemic risk to be absorbed by individuals in order to keep up in capitalism. For example once upon a time one could reasonably try and retire with Bonds as a major asset grouping. Later stocks were the minimum viable investment vehicle (more risk, for basic return), some might even say now inorder to get an ok return one needs to chase risk further with things like ARKK tech stocks and cryptocurrencies.
Similarly has been observed in employment. At one time, during strong unions, a lot of the risk was forced upon the employer -- for example defined benefit pensions, or disability benefits that might have seemed extreme by today's standards. Nowadays having a single employer is basically only slightly better than being a contractor, but pays much much less -- the livable compensation now requires much greater risk of being a contractor (from self insurance, contract stability, risk of not being paid etc).
In my experience corporations and employment are for "socialising profits". As skilled developer I can make good money on my own. In employment I have to sponsor admin stuff, less productive coworkers, shareholders...
Corporations are basically form of social welfare for most people. In past there were less unproductive people attached.
I don't buy risk being shifted. Housing or gold is very conservative investment, and it had good returns.
once reagan took over, busted unions and fired those unionized air traffic controllers / workers. it was a free for all on american workers. if the president was able to do that, it signalled to corporations, that they're now the robber barons with free reign over workers. ever since then the american worker, has been a puppet. pay can only go so much, even then pay can't get ya kid into a good school, can't help ya ease anxiety over healthcare, shitty police or infrastructure.
now things in america will slowly correct, if employees / fmr employees can hold on to their new found power. but don't worry, a war is being fought in the background to strip workers of this new power. don't be surprised around mid-elections if new irs reporting laws are introduced, so the common man can be hemmed up for unpaid taxes on his new side hustles.
[+] [-] readonthegoapp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] softwaredoug|4 years ago|reply
Even self-employed, you still have many bosses (customers, etc). In fact _those_ bosses can be harder to fire depending on contracting terms... And you might find it harder to churn out the sales to maintain a steady income stream.
Even company-employed, you still should frame things in working-for-yourself. What are you getting out of the relationship? Is the employer holding up its end for you?
The traditional, paternalistic concept of employment is outmoded. It says your career growth should be managed by your employer (don't let it...). It presumes the work you do and your job are always 100% the same (they're not). It assumes a kind of one-sided evaluation of the employee, where the employer has all the power (very untrue these days).
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
Indeed, the statistics they provide aren't as significant as the headline suggests:
> Hundreds of thousands of Americans are striking out on their own...
For reference, the United States has around 160 million employed people. 0.1% of them moving to freelancing might be significant, but is it really a new era? That was happening on the regular well before COVID.
1 in 1000 people striking out on their own doesn't really explain the "ongoing shake-up in the world of work" like they're trying to suggest.
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
I guess the question is whether or not employers will actually balk and start to offer better conditions, or collectively decide that they can get away with staying put with the status quo since people need to eat and afford shelter and they can get away with hiring more naive recent grads and having high turnover seemingly indefinitely.
[+] [-] MrDresden|4 years ago|reply
I've been planning to go solo for more than a year. I've been saving up, and working on validating my ideas on the side while still working a full day job.
Most startups/entrepreneurs fail, so plan for that eventuality. And delay quitting that day job as long as possible.
I've obviously only gotten this advice from other sources and not from personal experience, so be skeptical...
..and remember the survivorship bias in everything you read about this topic.
[+] [-] AussieWog93|4 years ago|reply
I run an eBay store that makes around $20k a month and is still growing, but it started as a side gig while I was still working (making less than 5k a month, but I was only working on it for maybe 8-10 hours a week).
Actually validating your ideas before fully committing is a great way to minimise risk and avoid procrastination.
[+] [-] phasersout|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|4 years ago|reply
This article and elsewhere I've observed that many employers are running antiquated or misled patterns that cause significant anxiety in their workers (examples are performance reviews[1], stacking unrealistic and unneccessary deadlines in attempt to push additional "performance", and excess hours for the appearances of productivity)
I wonder how many employees would be staying if their employers weren't doing dark patterns?
[1]: https://lattice.com/library/how-your-brain-responds-to-perfo...
[+] [-] askonomm|4 years ago|reply
Also, in general, you are treated as an equal and not as a subordinate, which is very nice.
[+] [-] alex504|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eatonphil|4 years ago|reply
Most of all though I miss having teammates/peers. That may be the thing that drives me fastest back to full time employment.
[0] https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation
[+] [-] hardwaresofton|4 years ago|reply
Also as far as the contract work that is enjoyable and pays well -- in my experience this mostly has to do with knowing the right people. People who are high up enough in an org and technical enough to be sympathetic to understand what enjoyable jobs for you would be.
[+] [-] sh4un|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bow_vernon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lou1306|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://prospect.org/labor/great-escape-why-workers-quitting... via https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/29/ordinance-of-labourers/
[+] [-] foxhop|4 years ago|reply
Local food economy is the real economy.
[+] [-] ldjkfkdsjnv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|4 years ago|reply
And it is trivial to see one’s self deriving great value from things like eating fresh fruit and produce and drinking clean water, but not paying anywhere near its “value” for it.
Edit: replace the word value with utility in my comment to get a clearer idea of what I am trying to convey. Value is too vague of an idea to use for this topic.
[+] [-] siruncledrew|4 years ago|reply
If someone is working at a prominent company, and (for example) making $200k while their employer is making $500k in revenue per employee, that's the personal output($) : input($) value ratio in the context of that job environment.
Shifting to working for yourself doesn't mean immediately realizing that $500k monetary value equivalent for yourself instead. It depends on the business, business model, clients, capital, sales, operations, growth, etc, etc.
In what I've observed from some colleagues that have done both, using this information as leverage for a raise or jumping ship to "climb the ladder" elsewhere can yield equally good if not better compensation results than just being your own business.
Obviously there's nothing wrong with doing that and it's personal preference, it's just more of a naive assumption that own-boss money is always going to be >= job money.
[+] [-] yashg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ab-dm|4 years ago|reply
I've been able to take any day off I want, but I have NEVER been able to switch off. It took me about 4-5 years to finally be relatively OK with it. Annual leave is far better.
I've taken a bit of a "holiday" this year by taking a full time role for ~8 months and it's been a great opportunity to recharge and work with amazing people that are much smarter than me, but I'm already feeling the pinch to go back and do my own thing.
Having said all of the above, I'm very lucky that I'm 10+ years in the software industry and I've always got the option of a great full time role to fall back on.
All in all, so far I'm not sure it was worth it. I wouldn't have been as successful and fulfilled if I kept my full time role, but I'd be a hell of a lot happier.
[+] [-] ThinkBeat|4 years ago|reply
A majority of them are more spontaneous and less well conceived by people with much less experience with all aspects of running your own business.
I read that there have been several 100.000 of new business registered.
All of those will have to try and climb on top of each other to be heard.
Let us say that 1000 new mobile dog grooming business have been started in Denver. They all need a van and equipment. There are already 100 mobile dog grooming businesses, some do very well with an established clientele, a known name, and organic growth from happy businesses. Others do not.
How will all the new dog groomers be heard?
Who will be inventive enough or rich enough to hire someone, to create a solid and successful marketing campaign?
Traditionally on average 20% of new business fail within the first year. (Depending on type of business, some fail more often than others).
I predict we will see solid increase how many businesses fail. A lot of people will lose their savings. Unless something drastic changes a lot more will be without health insurance.
Within 6 months to 2 years there will be a horde of people who wish to return to being an employee of an established business, while being worse off financially.
I hope I am wrong.
(All numbers used about dog groomers are made up. Pure fiction)
[+] [-] jaypeg25|4 years ago|reply
Either way, I worry that in a few years time we'll see a market correction of all these self employed workers and I wonder what its impact will be. Will they just go back to corporate life? Will it even be that easy to do so?
[+] [-] daddylongstroke|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PeterisP|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanmorgan10|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silisili|4 years ago|reply
I come from a -deeply- conservative family, a large one at that, and I still don't know a single person who supports our healthcare system. The memes you read about evil republicans against it just aren't true. So what's the real reason?
[+] [-] dom96|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdfsd234234444|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nine_zeros|4 years ago|reply
It appears that humans want to not subject themselves to endless politics and meaningless bureaucracy in corporations. Given a choice, people want to live and die with dignity.
[+] [-] awillen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Judson|4 years ago|reply
Edit to add: It can be such an isolating experience. We had no clue what we were doing half the time. Hard to find anyone willing to talk that had been through it.
[+] [-] boplicity|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasondigitized|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mylons|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austinthetaco|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bladegash|4 years ago|reply
Doing this will give you not only a good sense of the business side, but also whether it’s something you really want to do on your own.
Also, find a niche and specialize. Part of the reason there is so much noise is your skill set is presumably generic. Saying “I’m a senior web developer” puts you in competition with millions of others.
The competition is global as well, when it comes to the freelance market (e.g., India, Pakistan, etc.). Whereas, I’m a “Senior developer in X technology” when there are only 5-10 others who can do the same thing puts you in a league of your own.
[+] [-] clement_b|4 years ago|reply
- The value of workers willing to be employed will increase, even more so in specific fields. Whatever the current compensation (dollars, flexibility,...), it's going to get better. - As this happens, some organizations won't accept to pay a premium for their existing pool of candidates and will expand their horizon to (finally) hire previously ignored populations. - Freelancing platforms will get even busier, and finding work will get harder and harder—especially now that these new self-employed workers compete with the entire world and not with other business units and colleagues. Many will come back from it. - When they do, their old job won't be available anymore. Getting a new one will be stressful due to the increased competition from all the disgruntled self-employed coming back and the increased pool of cheaper candidates now preferred by employers.
I've personally made the employed → self-employed move about 3-4 years ago, and back. Although there are clear benefits to being self-employed, there are also clear ones to being a full-time employee (maybe this is more the case in Europe where I'm based, though). So, I can see why people make the move given the current context, but I can also see why a huge chunk will realize being your own boss is not necessarily as good as it sounds.
[+] [-] mcv|4 years ago|reply
On the whole, I prefer the freedom of being self-employed, especially in regard to time off; I take take as much or as little time off as a want, whereas in employment, I'm limited to what my contract allows. Of course I can buy extra or have them paid out, but it's really the extra bureaucracy of working for a company that I dislike. Working for myself is easier.
But another big difference I noticed is compensation: employment was a massive pay cut. And this seems consistent with previous experiences; Dutch employers just don't want to pay that much for software engineers. As a freelancer, it's easy to make 50% more. It's not an easy comparison because I also have to pay more taxes, save up for my own retirement, pay my own disability and other insurance that's normally taken care of by the employer, but even then, the difference is stark.
If more people becoming self-employed means more employers will raise developer and other salaries, that would be awesome.
[+] [-] synergy20|4 years ago|reply
until then, it's more like a gamble if you want to fly alone.
[+] [-] mmaunder|4 years ago|reply
What I’m most interested in is what proportion are working to create a business that scales up. IP creators, manufacturers, service businesses, products. Those are the job creation machines that our entire economy will benefit from.
[+] [-] schnevets|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iancmceachern|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|4 years ago|reply
I've noted that there has been an increasing requirement for systemic risk to be absorbed by individuals in order to keep up in capitalism. For example once upon a time one could reasonably try and retire with Bonds as a major asset grouping. Later stocks were the minimum viable investment vehicle (more risk, for basic return), some might even say now inorder to get an ok return one needs to chase risk further with things like ARKK tech stocks and cryptocurrencies.
Similarly has been observed in employment. At one time, during strong unions, a lot of the risk was forced upon the employer -- for example defined benefit pensions, or disability benefits that might have seemed extreme by today's standards. Nowadays having a single employer is basically only slightly better than being a contractor, but pays much much less -- the livable compensation now requires much greater risk of being a contractor (from self insurance, contract stability, risk of not being paid etc).
Anyone else observed similar patterns?
[+] [-] throw63738|4 years ago|reply
Corporations are basically form of social welfare for most people. In past there were less unproductive people attached.
I don't buy risk being shifted. Housing or gold is very conservative investment, and it had good returns.
[+] [-] unmole|4 years ago|reply
Returns of broad market index funds like SPY are not considered OK now? Am I living in an alternate reality?
[+] [-] dzonga|4 years ago|reply
now things in america will slowly correct, if employees / fmr employees can hold on to their new found power. but don't worry, a war is being fought in the background to strip workers of this new power. don't be surprised around mid-elections if new irs reporting laws are introduced, so the common man can be hemmed up for unpaid taxes on his new side hustles.
[+] [-] vineyardmike|4 years ago|reply