I think a lot of what newly self-employed people miss about office life can be replaced by being a regular at a co-working space tbh. I understand it's hard to make friends in adulthood, but, if you can close a sales deal / consulting gig, you can make friends pretty easily. Business relationships and personal relationships are both still relationships.
As someone who has been self-employed for nearly 2 years, I cannot relate to any of this. I love knowing and having control over all the administrative, HR, recruiting, legal, finance, or taxes tasks. I love knowing I can take time off. If I need money, I can simply make more money. Nobody owns my IP or time.
I have spent half of my career "self-employed" and 10-11 years of that working from home.
"Nobody owns my IP or time."
That's what is is. I just define it differently, my thing is when I am being controlled by someone or something (corporation), I am not free.
At the executive level, it was even as bad as shareholders pressuring me to dress certain ways (more expensive clothes, watches) or drive certain vehicles (more expensive, newer).
That's an amazing perspective from 2 years in.
A few weeks before writing this article, I tried joining a co-working space. I was there to work around people. I went and chatted with people. I went to their weekly breakfast social event. But I realized a lot of the people were in 2 or larger size companies there, so they came with their group, had lunch together, had "happy hour" time together, and went back.
I also realized that although I'm there once a week to chit chat, others are there any day to work with their colleagues.
How was your experience in going to co-working space when self-employed over the last 2 years?
Funny enough, I rarely go to a coworking space. I do not miss the confines of an office, or having relationships with colleagues. That’s probably because my bf is an hobby dev and some neighbourhood friends are devs too.
I have been to coworking enough to know what you’re talking about with company groups just doing their thing though. Gotta seek out the solopreneurs. If you have an indie hackers/beers meetup in your city, maybe befriend some folks there and cowork somewhere together. I know some of my indie friends have had coworking meetups together before.
makes sense to find the right coworking space(s) or group up with indie hackers. I recently found an indie hackers group and there was at least one person there who also missed in-person time. So maybe thats a possibility!
I found one very entrepreneurial coworking space but since I'm running a (product) consultancy and not building a product, they did not take me in.
a bit of a misleading of a title, its comparing full time work with self employment.
i was half way through this thinking, wtf? you miss anything about working full time? im in a similar position and going back to work, i don't miss any of it. its miserable thinking about going to full time work again. looking at job listings after months of freedom, it hurts, almost a physical pain haha
I don't know, back in 2016 I left my job indefinitely with no plans and after about 4 months I got pretty bored. I could have lived without a paycheck for a bit, but something in the back of my head was telling me to get back on the horse.
I think some people are naturally self starters and can thrive in the self employment space, and some people like to have the structure taken care of by someone else. There shouldn't be any judgement on someone that might miss something about full time work, there are some great benefits.
My CPA/tax guy is 89. He works 20 hours a week, more during tax season. He told me that his friend group all retired at 65-70. They made fun of him, the group of 7 or so guys. Over the next 10+ years they all died and the last few told him he was the smart one, to keep working and have a purpose.
The truth is that some people lose their purpose when they retire and some do not.
My dad retired at 60 (forced out), he's 88 now. He has a very strong purpose in his life (a sponsor for a bunch of younger men in AA) and he looks as good today as he did 20 years ago.
When I take an extended stay-at-home vacation I definitely don't feel as purposeful as I do when I'm working. I actually like getting back to work. However, I'm a founder of a 39 year old company, so it really is my work.
My grandfather is 93 years old and retired from work between 35 and 40 years ago. He never worked after retirement and enjoys good health for his 93 years.
His purpose is to read the newspaper, play cards and watch soccer on television. He also takes coffee with sambuca and drinks between 2 and 4 glasses of wine a day. Plus a liquor after dinner.
Maybe it is a matter of genetics, but I myself would gladly stop working tomorrow. It doesn't mean I would get fat on the couch, but I have a lot of interests, dreams and aspirations that have nothing to do with a company paycheck, performance evaluations and wearing a company badge.
It is useful to try to quantify processes, even when quantification is challenging. Or even when it is impossible with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
We know that longevity, assuming a "regular" life (no 2 packs of cigarettes a day, no handle of vodka a week, moderate exposure to the sun, some exercise, etc.), is strongly influenced by our genes, over which we have very little control, so far.
Assuming, for a 60-year-old woman, a gene-determined baseline probability of reaching age 90 in good health of 70% -- which, to simplify things, we take as observed frequencies, i.e., out of 1,000 women with the same set of genes, 700 reach age 90 -- how much behavior or activity x, y, z would move the needle in one direction or the other?
Since each man or woman is an island, we cannot know. But you can start thinking and pulling out reasonable numbers, based on observational studies, some intuitions, some quasi-experiments.
And I would say that continuing to work until 90 can move the needle in one direction or the other by a maximum of 5% (so, taken the 70% as baseline, we get 65-75%, because for some, like me, working is not exactly hell but at least purgatory, for others it might be the "purpose" that keeps them "alive").
Let's assume that for the woman taken on as a study subject in this comment, continuing to work for, say, 15 hours a week until the end of her life would increase her life span by two years (from 88 to 90 or from 90 to 92). But this entails other costs, less time spent with her husband or friend or children or grandchildren or dogs, which may be costs or benefits to her, since she does not like young children very much after all.
Thinking in terms of probabilities, costs and benefits is always helpful.
That's a very American attitude. There's a French expression "Life begins at retirement". Working is something you do for money, it's not the reason for being.
It's probably part of the reason why the French live longer than Americans. It's also the reason they riot when the retirement age is raised.
Quality of life between the two is pretty darn close, and probably leans better towards France most of the time. GDP per capita is higher in the US, so Americans can have more stuff, but that's hardly an indication of a happy life. Obesity in America is 40%, and this leads to a host of other healthcare issues...which the healthcare system poorly addresses, either putting patients in massive debt or into drug loops.
By what metric? I'm sure French people don't mind their work life balance, comparatively low inequality, long life expectancy, and good healthcare and infrastructure.
My colleague was telling me that the general health care system is not very good (unable to get instant attention), so it's typical to pay an extra premium for private health insurance also. He is well compensated, and I suspect he is on the top end of that marginal tax bracket.
idk how you got bored. theres so much to do! so much to learn, classes to take, places to go, books to read, chores really never end. the possibilities are endless.
But I do all those things while I also have a job...there are really so many hobbies and chores you can fit into a 16 hour day before it just becomes blah. One of my main hobbies is tennis...2 hours a day 4-5 times a week is plenty fine, I'm not going to be a professional athlete.
Your comment on possibilities being endless is one of the issues for some people...in a day where anything is possible, people get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing at all.
It is a defeatist attitude; you are surrendering to the current culture.
Let me ask a question. If you happened to win $10-20-50 million tomorrow, would you show up to work (assuming you have a "regular" job, where you have to show up on time, ask for vacation time, get a performance evaluation, semi-begging for a promotion) as you have done for the last I don't know how many years?
I don't even know if I would take the time to send my laptop back or talk to my boss about my departure. And not because I'm having a bad time at work, but it's very clear in my mind that this is something I do because I need the money. I try to "have as much fun" as I can while working, but I would have a lot more fun elsewhere.
Yeah, that can definitely be hard to fill if you have no other obligations. If you have a family though, opening up 40 hours a week for your own personal fulfillment is pretty incredible.
Some people link their whole identity to their job. The ones that build their personality and interests outside of the workplace are the ones that find the most fulfillment when unemployed.
Ah yes, feeling comfortable in a workplace environment now means that the person has no personality and interests...now that is a pretty crazy assessment!
I'd be the same. There are so many things to do, so many new experiences to feel. If I ever get retired, I'd just go back to university and start from scratch in a completely complementary field that I worked all my life so far.
for me it's a challenge to keep my personal projects focused and structured
a job helps with prioritization, as there's a driver towards a common goal and schedule
of course it can also be infuriating and frustrating.
I took time off from January to about July of last year, but by April or May I was starting to get stressed out by aimlessness. But also financial fears, and a fear of falling way behind the market in terms of tech stack and relevancy.
Also, in software development projects especially having multiple contributors can really help. i tend to stall on personal projects after some time with work (UI work especially) i simply don't want to do.
EDIT: What I'd ideally like is a job ... but built around one my personal projects/interests. How great would it be to have a product manager, a UX person, other developers, etc focused on refining something I was passionate enough to start building myself? Which I guess is one way that people end up heading down the technical cofounder path, but that is a whole... thing.
So far I've had some bad luck when my employer's interests intersected too closely with my own, because there's always the frustration that I'm putting aside my own creative ownership for someone else's who just happens to have the $$.
For me it is solely a financial motivator. I've not had any reason to expect that jobs will keep my skills marketable or allow me to develop true knowledge in a relevant tech stack. Being away from them is the only reason I've been able to really foster much of anything. Yes, there is part of working for a larger organization that can put me in a position to use more resources in the pursuit but I've yet to find a position that truly made good use of my skillset and allowed me to grow. As it is most of my jobs have been a lost opportunity cost. I'd much rather work on something where I can develop myself alongside it.
Those thoughts resonate a lot with me, thats how I thought of writing this article.
1) the drive towards a common goal
2) a group accomplishes more
3) ideally would want a job (time you are compensated for) that intersects with your interests.
Building solo products appeals to me apart from consulting. But the "solo" in it is a bit tricky haha.
This feeling of aimlessness resonates well...I mean maybe I am just a sheep that needs to be herded. Maybe it is social media showing people doing these crazy achievements which make mine feel minimal. Probably it is a mix of many things.
yeah... unfortunately github itself has become social media.
between jobs i spent a lot of time putting stuff up there. mostly personal interest and none of it complete. but found myself turning it into a bit of a portfolio. which.... i dunno, it's sad. because i do those things for personal intellectual interest, but the job market penetrates so much that even that stuff gets captured.
i hold out hope for once i can retire, and once kids are out of the house, have no mortgage, etc. then I'll be able to focus clearly enough on my personal projects hopefully in that context i'll make much better progress
I do a lot of photography and for a brief moment I found myself taking pictures mostly because I wanted to put it on IG, I caught myself and now take less pictures, but do it for what I think is arguably a better reason...which is just creating for the sake of creating!
You get used to it. If you work your whole life, having vacations or time off work is seen as unproductive time, and that you lack something in your life. People who have been working outside for most of their life, will find retirement not so fun, empty of goals and without the discipline that work brung to their life. More or less, they're less capable of feeling fine with spare time. This is my dad after 4-5 years of retirement (sum it up that in the 3rd world we are living, retirment is aprox 150usd per month, and going vacations to another continent is maybe half or more of your life savings)
I’m 4 years in and I am getting bored. How do you fill your time? (Honestly, include video games for example)
Do you stick to a routine?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve very much enjoyed traveling, climbing, games, people, etc. But I miss programming and I find that I’m not motivated enough to finish things without knowing someone will use it. Hence my current desire to find a super flexible hourly client.
I think there's definitely a difference between working in some capacity and working full time. The research they've done on unemployed people says that 1 day per week of work is enough for them to gain all the mental health benfits of work.
reading, time with friends, phone game, binge watching (usually while reading), vacations, budgeting/tracking (no fat FIRE for me), cooking, cleaning, exercise, Duolingo, etc. (i literally fired a maid, cook, and yardman to retire).
i reimplemented part of the tax code in Excel so i could do what-if analysis (didn't take that long with TurboTax as QC), did a letter Frequency analysis for wordle, and a few other very small projects just for me.
I have nursed a delusional aunt and a friend recovering from hip surgery, and hosted another relative while he tried for sobriety (yes, that takes time).
I really don't know how I fill my time, but I do. In a sense, I enjoy my life and serve as slack for friends & family
I got burnted out from contracting/consulting/self-employment, every n months looking for new gigs, having to do more personal admin/finance stuff, etc.
I went full time and I felt a sense of relief as a whole bunch of non-work work was lifted from my shoulders. Never again will I have to issue an invoice.
The admin side of things really pain me and I reflected on those as I wrote this article. Glad it resonates with your experiences and interesting that after a while you went back full time.
Every week I'm doing new admin stuff and I would rationalize it saying "This is a starting pain" or "This is only the first time". But the stream of first-time pains never end, haha!
Same, I’ve had a 6 month break from work and I don’t miss a single damn thing about it, except the pay! My lifelong chronic boredom actually went away for the first time ever. It’s really made me re-evaluate how much effort I intend to put into work when it brings me almost nothing in return.
6 months is too short to experience boredom. We have years of things we have been putting off to do. I think it takes 1-2 years before it starts to feel like too much time.
Still, I have 10+ years of evidence that employed work is boring, stressful and unfulfilling for me - so if I did feel bored after 2 years (and money wasn’t an issue) I really don’t think I would consider returning to employment to alleviate it. Being a corporate project manager is surely the very last thing most people would reach for to provide entertainment or fulfilment :)
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m never going back to a corporate job. I’m just saying there is some boredom. But it’s way better than a bad job. I just found a startup founder who needs some help. I’m putting in like 10-15 hours most weeks, on my own time, and it’s quite enjoyable
Ah didn't realize the heading misled you. When I wrote this article, these were surprises for me too. Missing meetings? missing feedback? missing physical offices?
I still don't wanna think about going to full time work again, but I still miss those aspects of full-time work vs self-employment. I would rather try lot lot harder to build a successful startup than submit resume and interview for FTE jobs.
A lot of this resonated with me as well: I'm FT remote in an organization that is a) increasingly pushing in-person collaboration and return-to-office and b) headquartered halfway around the world (+7 hr. time difference).
I, too, miss...
1. Regular discussions, since it's hard to make virtual meetings happen.
2. Physical workplaces. (We just closed our local office.)
I didn't realize my article got shared on HN. Glad it resonated with you.
Completely agreed with the improvements you are thinking of:
1> dedicated time. I love the flexibility of taking up projects that I'm interested in, anytime. vs a narrow scope of work as a FTE.
2> A lot more satisfaction and self-fulfillment.
As someone who has been self-employed for nearly 2 years, I cannot relate to any of this. I love knowing and having control over all the administrative, HR, recruiting, legal, finance, or taxes tasks. I love knowing I can take time off. If I need money, I can simply make more money. Nobody owns my IP or time.