

4 Advantages of Self-Employment - productivity
http://blog.taskwise.com/2011/08/4-advantages-of-self-employment/
f you work a regular 9 to 5 job for a corporation, you may have thought more than once about starting your own business. Maybe you feel like you could perform the same tasks efficiently without office politics or gossip standing in your way....
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PaulHoule
A weak and superficial article written in a hurry to get pageviews... I mean,
another article on this site is "Why your business needs a blog"

The article entirely misses the issue of temperament. Some people really crave
the "security" of a 9-5, they need somebody to tell them what to do.

There's also the question of where your career was going. I worked for a
summer at a job shop -- one of my co-workers who'd been a web freelancer for a
few years felt that getting a job at this place, with a good team and good
salespeople, was a big step up. For me, it was a dead end job, and I turned
down the offer of a permanent job with them and got one with another firm.

In the last few years I became an expert in an obscure but growing specialty,
and that led me back into contracting, which got my career out of the
doldrums. We've all got our own path.

Now, the article entirely misses the elephant in the room with self
employment, which is health insurance. This can be a non-issue if you're 23 or
if you're married to somebody who has a real job, but for many people, health
insurance cannot be purchased on the individual market at any price.

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auxbuss
I agree with everything you've said. But I live in the EU, so the health care
issue is covered by the taxes I pay; regardless of where I pay them.

I hail from the UK, but I've lived and worked across the EU. In fact, even if
I weren't paying taxes, my health care, and that of my dependants and anyone
else, would be covered.

So, on this side of the pond, this elephant is absent.

That said, USians' resistance to universal health care mystifies me only a
little less than their returning Bush Jnr for a second term.

How can any civilized nation justify the rejection of universal health care?

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struppi
5\. Diversity. As a freelancer, I have worked on several large projects and a
couple of smaller ones in the past few years. I saw many different processes
and learned the advantages and disadvantages of them. I had to learn and use
new technologies in every project. I worked with a lot of people, some of them
really talented, some not so much, but I learned something from all of them.

All of this was interesting and exciting. Working 9-5 for a company would have
exposed me to exactly one development process and one set of technologies. Not
much to learn here, and less fun too.

~~~
jonathanwallace
Consultants may experience the same diversity.

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gexla
None of the four would be in my top four. They aren't even advantages.
Certainly not competitive advantages anyways.

Going along with the theme of employment vs self employed, I would like to add
one I think is highly important.

5\. The pivot: In the startup world, this is basically switching focus based
on the realities of your startup when you get it out into the world. You start
with x idea but you find your customers are using it for something completely
different. Based on that you change the service. Or something to that effect.
Most people here know what I'm talking about.

Entrepreneurs are able to see changes in their industry and are able to pivot
based on those changes. They independently learn new things. Try out new
technologies. Take different approaches to the problems they are trying to
solve. Explore different models for income. There are many other examples.

A real life example might be a web developer moving from hourly client work to
building a product (perhaps on the side while still doing hourly work.) That
developer might also move from web development to building Iphone apps. There
are limitless ways to change in this industry.

Unfortunately, many of the jobless are in their situation because they haven't
been able to do their own pivots. Perhaps it's because they have put their
heads in the sand and ignored industry changes. Perhaps their routine of
punching the clock has put them in a bubble where they weren't even aware that
the industry has been changing.

~~~
jonathanwallace
Pivoting seems orthogonal to self-employed. I'm gainfully employed and 'pivot'
on the side.

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jfruh
If you want evidence of the complete worthlessness of this article, here it
is: they list the self-employed tax deduction as a "tax advantage." This
despite the fact that it only partially offsets the self-employment _tax._ You
pay more taxes on self-employment income, not less.

(Technically, of course, the self-employment tax is the equivalent of the
portion of your payroll taxes that your employer pays on your behalf, which
don't appear on your paystub. In practice, of course, your employer factors
these taxes into your total compensation, and they affect what kind of salary
they offer you, so it's silly to argue that you're not the one paying them in
the long run. But the reality is that you pay more taxes on $50,000 of
freelance income than you pay on $50,000 of salary.)

