I was just thinking about life changes over the years. I guess when something significantly good, or bad happens, its only natural to to move into a reflective mood. Want to be your own boss? You do, and so does everyone else. Deep down, no one aspires to work for someone else. Why? Because it will involve giving up some of your choices. You give up your power to direct the ship. If the boss can say do this or do that. He may say, “do it my way”. What can you really do? A smart employer will listen to your ideas first, but when it comes down to the final equation its their way or the highway.
The nicer the job, the more your employer takes input from you that they may act on. If you’re hired into a professional position, its best, because they desire to benefit from your education/experience. If you’re hired to dig or sweep or do something over and over its not the same. Your input may be accepted the first time or two, but then you need to fall in line, don’t rock the boat, etc. If you can’t do it their way for whatever reason, leave before you are asked. There is an overall advantage to working for someone else; it’s the fact that you can leave ‘it’ at work and have ‘your’ time when done for the day. You can isolate your world into two modes, work, and ‘my life’.
I made the transition to working for myself about ten years ago. This coincided with my move off grid. Making the change from regular employment to self employment was difficult. I had just finished a series of one to two year jobs at small start-up technical companies. Now moving off grid and having no “real” job for 6-7 months was disconcerting. As men, our identity seems wrapped up in ‘work’.
A Funny story about that transition time. After purchasing property, my “job” at that time, was a building project that resulted in what Jackie and I call “home”. Never mind that I worked many 12+ hour days on the project that had a definite deadline – winter.
Definitely a job, but not to my transitioning mindset. We had a part time neighbor who quizzed me about solar power for his cabin, since it was part of my project plan. I hate to confess, but being new in the area, I found funny words coming out of my mouth in a few situations. A few times at a supply store, or just chatting with a new person, I answered the “where do you work?” question poorly. I found myself justifying my job existence several times as “doing some solar power consulting” instead of saying “no job”, “house building”, or anything more accurate. Why? Insecurity, and the whole man equals job sort of thing. It’s been 10 years, and by God’s grace, I’m past that stage.
So anyway, is it better being your own boss? Like many things in life, yes and no.
First the reasons for yes. Yes you can choose what time to start and stop and what to do during that work time. No one will tell you what to do, except for government authorities. Free, freedom, yes great. If you do well, the you can benefit from your labor more than a an employee paycheck!
The reasons for no. Freedom, as many think of it, never has a dark side. Loosing or failing is never part of it. No one tells you to get up and take care of that unhappy customer cheerfully first thing in the morning. If 
you don’t and repeat this mistake too often, guess what? That freedom means you’re free to be broke and hungry is just around the corner. When you are the boss, you can’t always punch the clock and ‘check out’ of work. Too often work or its issues can follow you everywhere just like the gurney on the heart medicine commercials. “Like a second attack, always lurking around the corner.”
You know, as I write about this topic, a song from high school just popped into my head. It has lyrics that really sum up my thoughts on this comparison of being your own boss.
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Won’t Get Fooled Again – The Who
When you work for your self, instead of one boss, you may have dozens or more “bosses”, they’re called customers or clients. They say do it my way, you should!
The independence and disciplines you develop working for yourself will help greatly when you take on the big “off grid move” project. You will need the skills to do what my resume says is, “self directed, unsupervised work”, and lots of it!
What are your thoughts about working for yourself versus “the company”?? Which do you like better? why? Join the discussion below in the comments!
Related posts:
I work for myself and now as I get older discover I can’t get a ‘job’ prospective employers tend to prefer people straight out of school who can be molded into the company image instead of someone with their own ideas of how things can be done. Older meaning more experienced people tend to expect better than beginning wages which the cost accountants don’t like. All of the above tended to steer me in the direction of self employed or contract work. Having done this now for almost three decades I can’t say it greatly changes income security. I once knew someone who was hired as a draftman at age 18 and he retired from the same design office when he was 65. He died 3 months later. Not a very exiting existence. Can’t even call it a life. Being self employed usually means a richer more varied life style and going off-grid forces you to adapt and learn new things
You have that right, more challenges of every kind, and any kind, will arrive on your “desk” when self employed! Risk of death due to boredom is quite low.
I just found your site tonight, it’s a nice read .
I ended up leaving my job b/c they would not allow me to be part time. It was the best thing that has ever happened. I still worked for the same people (k-12 schools doing computer/network stuff) but got paid 3 times as much. Now 4 years later I have quit one of the schools and only work 6 hours a week
This is easily enough money to live on plus some. I have it very nice , 1 year contracts so there is some security, K-12 schools are not a mission ciritical like a corporation so it’s really the best of both worlds. I’ll prob end up leaving it though at some point ..who knows right now building our earth berm house is prority.
Yes K-12 is probably nice admin work, however, keeping things secure for 8-12th can be quite a challenge because they always find the latest script attack or vulnerability!
Very true..they have alot of free time on their hands. I tend to take a very passive approach to sercurity. As little as possible. For instance their desktops are run with administrative privilage! HOWEVER they have an app called deepfreeze. Since I have done this the kids don’t really care about attacking the system if they can do whatever they want on a machine. Then when machine restarts back to normal
I’ve had a kid use cain and able to scan our network once that was the worst case. This school I work in now has lazier kids.