(06-11-2012 03:31 PM)Kitsune Wrote: That depends.
I've been self-employed since adulthood (never worked for anyone else in an employment sense) and I do wonder sometimes whether it'd be good to have someone else worry where the profits were coming from while I clocked in and out at designated times.
I have done both (started my career as an employee, been freelance for the past 5 years).
What you are describing is a nice part of being an employee, but it is also an illusion. As a freelancer/entrepreneur/business owner you KNOW when things are getting bad. You can take steps to make changes, maybe they work, maybe they don't, but at least you are aware of the situation and have some control.
That security of employment is really just allowing someone else to hide from you the reality of your business. You are essentially trusting them with your livelihood. I was blissfully working at an IT consulting firm that I THOUGHT had survived the first dot com bubble, right up until the head of the firm walked in and explained that we had no more work lined up.
He was too busy "finding himself" on some self improvement kick to drum up new business until it was too late. I went from $80K per year (just out of college, back in 2000) to unemployed in 2 fucking weeks. No warning, no nothing. Everything was supposedly great with the company until it wasn't.
In my next job, working for an international bank, the cycle of layoffs was swift and brutal. I remember partying with the director of our division (a nice looking woman in her 40's) one night on a bank sponsored outing. Then the following week she (and several others in our division) get called into the office of the regional head, get escorted to their desk by security, pack all of their shit, and are out the door in under an hour. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and my director certainly didn't see it coming (or she probably wouldn't have bought that Gold Coast townhouse 4 months earlier).
For the next year, the rest of the division was on pins and needles. We didn't know if the bank was going to be acquired, we didn't know if our department was going to move to another state or another country. We didn't know what we should do so that it is the other guy and not us that is fired if there was a layoff. Aside from preemptively quitting, we had ZERO control over our future.
Seeing all of this, I fled high paying jobs for a high security job and to a position with the government. Job security was great. Overtime was non-existant. Benefits were unreal (if you included vacation, sick, and personal days we had almost 2 months off every year). I was one of those anonymous people who make government work that never gets fired.
The downside was that, aside from the low pay, there was also little room to advance. The job was secure because you were a cog in the wheel. Unfortunately, that safety comes at cost. There were opportunities for higher salary, but they came with HEAVY loss of security (almost to the level of the private sector).
What I realized was that I didn't really want security. I wanted CONTROL. I wanted to know what was happening with my business and my career. Now, if my industry slows down, I see it coming and can take steps to cope with it.
Also, as an employee, your income is often very binary. You either make X dollars (employed) or you make 0 dollars (unemployed). As a freelancer, business might slow but it never goes to zero. Right now, the minimum I need to live comfortably is about 1/3 of what I make in terms of income. I can survive adjustments in the economy that might cause a minor dip (or even a severe one) in my income.
I routinely get big offers to become an employee at some tech startup or other (programmers are in high demand), but I just could not go back to the 9-5, my fate is in your hands, lifestyle.
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