I really like James Altucher’s blog. I disagree with him some of the time, but he usually makes me think, whether I agree or not, and I appreciate that. Of course, one of the challenges in reading his blog is ignoring his heightened rhetoric. (Heightened rhetoric is great for blog traffic, but it makes ideas harder to talk about.)
My friend pointed me to the recent James Altucher post “How to be a Slave.” Its main point is that if you work for someone else, you’re trapped and getting a bad deal: you’re losing all this money you could be making in the company’s overhead and paying your boss’s salary, and then also you have to sit through boring sexual harassment seminars and dress a certain way and act a certain way. So you should go work for yourself and be free.
But it’s not that simple. First off, there is a trade-off working for a company vs. working for ourselves, and it depends on our individual personalities and circumstances which one we’ll be more comfortable with.
Working for yourself or the Man? (Photo Credit: Alan Cleaver via Compfight cc)
If you work full-time for a company, you often get paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick days) and access to cheaper and sometimes better health insurance. This is part of your compensation package, so yes, you’re paying for it, but it’s nice to have vacation days and good health insurance, so it might be compensation that you want. If you receive a salary, you know about how much money you’ll make this year. On the other hand, there’s also the possibility you could be laid off. You have an imposed structure to work within, which some people find quite appealing. Overall, people at companies are perhaps less self-directed, but the amount of self direction depends from job to job and company to company.
If you work for yourself, you do not get paid for time you don’t work, and health insurance is more of a problem (although we’re all crossing fingers it will get better in January). Basically you have to earn more money to make up for the alternate compensation methods you’re not receiving. You have complete control of your time, but this can be a double-edged sword. The amount of money you’ll make in a year tends to be more variable. You can’t be laid off, but your business might do poorly. My favorite part of working for myself is that ultimately, the decision-making is up to me. But some people don’t like calling all the shots; it can be a lot of responsibility.
In addition, it is simply not true that if you work for yourself, you automatically can spend all your time the way you like or dress the way you like or treat people like crap because they’re the opposite sex from you. It is true that you can avoid a certain amount of red tape, wasted time and money, and procedures that are inefficient and ineffective. But many people who work for themselves have clients/customers, and in order to be successful, they have to cater to these clients. I couldn’t dress like a slob as a music teacher, or no one would have hired me. I had to do tasks I didn’t enjoy to keep the business running healthily. I always tried to be polite, respectful, and professional in all my interactions with my students. If I hadn’t done these things, my business would have failed. Sure, I had more choice, and that was fabulous. I didn’t have to deal with policies that had no purpose. But I still didn’t have the leeway to consistently make poor decisions.
The irony is that even though I disagree with many of the arguments in that article, I have done what it suggests. I have never had a full-time salaried position. I like being in control of my time. I like working for myself.
But what I would like to suggest is that different people need and want different things. Some people will thrive working for a company, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Other people will do better working for themselves, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Some people will go back and forth between the two. If you’re miserable, by all means change things up.
But if it doesn’t work for you, you don’t have to live somebody else’s dream. You get to create your own.
The Practical Free Spirit 
Having a full-time salaried position seems great if you enjoy what you’re doing. Like, who cares if you could be earning three times as much money by working for yourself (also, in many cases that’s not even true, since some jobs require the coordination that can only be achieved by large corporations) as long as you’re earning a living and having fun every day.
I agree. I feel like a lot of times the conversation is only about those people who dislike their jobs, or have to deal with a toxic boss or co-workers, or an unpleasant environment. But not all salaried jobs are like that! I mean, look at you, salaried and working two days a week. 😉
What good is more money or freedom if you never get any time off? Most people who start their own business work 18 or more hours a day 6 to 7 days a week. No vacation, no sick days. If they get injured, the business fails. If they get horribly sick, the business fails.
And since the overwhelming majority of new businesses fail, a lot of people see starting a business just as crazy as legalized gambling
I work a professional salaried job where I’m very happy; business to me is painfully boring.
And that Altucher is as narcissistic as they come. I hope to never run into that guy.
Well, to be fair, I started my own business and never worked more than 40 hours a week. Indeed, once I got everything set up, I generally worked more like 25 hours per week. So this does vary.
Thank you! It’s so rare to see anyone – especially someone who’s self-employed – admit that everybody’s *not* suited to it. I love my office job – I love my coworkers, I believe in what I do, I love the (non-profit, which James seems to ignore that such places exist) company I work for, and I believe it’s doing things to help people. I love having good benefits, and paid vacations, and a reliable salary (and if part of my salary goes to my office and my lights and my building – so does yours, and his, and anybody who’s self-employed, surprise). Most of all, I love putting in my eight hours and going home to my family, knowing that I don’t have to think about work again until 8:00 tomorrow, and I don’t have to spend evenings and weekends and (paid) vacations thinking about work. I don’t have to handle the accounting, or pay the bills, or do the sales, or anything else that makes me feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable or makes my skin crawl.
And there are benefits to working for a company – he cites the 80/20 rule like it’s a bad thing, or like it’s the same people putting in less work all the time. Some days, it’s you who isn’t at 100%, because you’re tired or sick or hungover, and your coworkers make sure that the job gets done (or you can call in, and not have to work at all, an option that is much harder to take if you’re self-employed.
Thanks so much, Amber. You make many salient points. I think we each benefit from thinking clearly about what works for us and what’s important to us right now in our lives. Putting some kind of value judgment on broad categories of work-life balance issues is not helpful for promoting honest thought.
I have done both and am currently self-employed, though I think I prefer working for someone else for a lot of the reasons Amber cited. But the truth is, in this economy, you don’t always have the option. I have a very specific skillset that is less in demand in an overcrowded field that has suffered huge layoffs over the last 4 years. Finding another in-house position has been very difficult and is ongoing. In the meantime, I have built my own business up in order to survive. Things are fine and I am grateful for my clients (who sometimes can be worse to deal with than most bosses!) But working from home is isolating and lonely and my biggest challenge is limiting my social media time and so I can actually get my work done. There are benefits and downsides to both and I am lucky to be able to work for myself in the downtimes. But given a choice, I would love to be in-house again.
Yeah, I’ve been seeing a lot of news articles about the boom of part-time work recently as well. It’s always good to have more than one option, depending on how things are going.
I definitely find that working from home means keeping my social life active is critical. I don’t mind being alone for much of the day, but by the evening I’m really ready to be around people again. 🙂
I’m not sure I’m cut out for self-employment because of insufficient self-discipline. I think having a boss you have to report to other than yourself forces a certain level of discipline on you.
It’s true. I know many people who do better with externally imposed deadlines and more exterior accountability. There are certain ways to create this structure for yourself, but in my experience they do not feel the same as the real deal.