31 ms·

Workers quit jobs in droves to become their own bosses

434 points by lxm 5y ago

joelbondurant 5y ago
USA brand tax cattle objects are state property and owe all productive output to the public sector. Healthcare must be denied for those who exhibit any disobedience.
DoItToMe81 5y ago
I'm not hopeful about this, honestly. Independent contracting sucks, and you're mostly treated as an employee without any of the legal protections of an employee.
- jasonkester 5y ago
  But that’s the entire value proposition of contracting. You’re basically exchanging a ~100% increase in monetary compensation for those employee benefits and job security. If you don’t value the money higher than the benefits, then you shouldn’t take the contract.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    It's not just the money, it's literally not having a boss.
    - kreelman 5y ago
      ..I understand this desire to not have a boss, but I think running a business might not provide the "no boss!" situation that's desired. I've heard it said that when you're employed by a company you have (usually) one boss, but when you have your own business, you have many bosses (demanding customers who threaten to leave and not pay if you don't do things the way/speed they want them... sounds similar to a boss). Perhaps part of the solution is getting staff to be more confidently able to say "No", or at least have a conversation/disagreement around a given issue. Not everyone wants to start a business or be a contractor. I think it's the human condition that power will be misused.. We live in a broken world unfortunately.
jeandejean 5y ago
It's hard to believe that quitting the job of head of marketing in a company for examining returned items from Amazon is an improvement at all... If this is what it means, I'm glad with my current job :-D.
readonthegoapp 5y ago
https://archive.ph/FCRdw https://archive.ph/FCRdw
awillen 5y ago
I did it, and it's equal parts terrifying and awesome. My company's going to do six figures of revenue this year, which is amazing, but I'm having to figure out things like scaling fulfillment and manufacturing that are entirely foreign to me (my background is in enterprise software, now doing ecommerce). Never a dull moment!
- mylons 5y ago
  good for you! what kind of thing are you selling? how much expertise did you have in it before?
  - awillen 5y ago
    Thanks! It's dog treat mix - our most popular product is a powdered mix that you combine with water and freeze for frozen treats. I had pretty close to zero expertise. I was an enterprise software PM, so things like setting up Shopify and finding a contract designer were in my wheelhouse, but everything involved with actual, physical goods has been new to me. Manufacturing, shipping, inventory management, fulfillment - been figuring it out from scratch. Largely going well, but definitely some hiccups along the way!
    - mylons 5y ago
      thanks for sharing the details! were you worried about entering a crowded space? is the frozen treat unique?
      - awillen 5y ago
        The nice thing is it's not an especially crowded space. There are a handful of treat mix products out there, and most are for baked treats (which we also sell, but definitely not at the level of the frozen stuff). On the frozen treat front, the biggest one is a Purina product called Frosty Paws, and I think my stuff is an easy sell against that for a few reasons. First, it's made with all sorts of unpronounceable ingredients, where my stuff is made with whole, high-quality ingredients (freeze dried meat, egg powder, whole wheat flour, etc.). Their form factor is also bigger - it basically comes in a cardboard cup that you'd get a scoop of ice cream in, which is big for a dog, compared to my bite-sized treats. Theirs is more of a birthday treat, where mine can be given regularly.
nine_zeros 5y ago
Coincides with the rise of the FIRE movement as well. It appears that humans want to not subject themselves to endless politics and meaningless bureaucracy in corporations. Given a choice, people want to live and die with dignity.
- zz865 5y ago
  FIRE movement is largely a result of crazy high salaries and a booming stock market, it wont last forever.
  - californical 5y ago
    Some will probably bail out of FI when the market slows/crashes in the short term, but some will definitely stick with it! People have been doing the same thing for 50 years, there’s just a community aspect with a name now.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    high salaries and booming stock market are the result of an increased standard of living due to technological advances. If you looked at the standard of living of a middle class person in 1975 it would be worse than someone making $15/hour today on average. More and more people are not interested in spending 50+ hours a week in bullshit jobs to just be able to buy a Mercedes and join a golf club. A lot of us are perfectly happy driving Toyotas.
  - saran2win 5y ago
    You can FIRE with any salary range with thoughtful spending (save before you spend) and common-sense investing (buy-and-hold, cash generating assets). Though the recent stock market opens up many opportunities for FIRE, it is an age-old proven way to retire or do-your-own-thing rather living paycheck-to-paycheck
    - dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
      Good point, let's all FIRE tomorrow and see what happens. That age-old "work to collectively add value to the economy" thing really gets old after awhile.
beckingz 5y ago
Given how easy it is to lose a job if the demand for work dries up, it seems rational to switch to selling work on your own terms. At least while the market is good.
- vkou 5y ago
  Depends on where you work. If you work for a large company, and depending on what you do for it, there might be enough institutional inertia that will keep you from losing your job until demand rebounds.
bluedevil2k 5y ago
The thing holding many people back from doing this is health care - Americans predominantly get their health care through their employer and the options on Obamacare are not cheap. Another reason socialized health care would benefit this country - it would boost the number of entrepreneurs and small businesses. Socialized health care desperately needs a rebranding - instead of "Socialized Health Care" or "Medicare for All", it should be called "Entrepreneur Focused Health Care" or simply "Freedom Care".
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Having done this myself, I don't really see it. Yes, health insurance is expensive, but I can also bill substantially more than my non-US counterparts can in their respective countries. Even with paying for health insurance myself, I don't see how I'd come out ahead in any other country right now unless I relocated and kept my working hours / client base in the US.
  - macNchz 5y ago
    Sure once you have solid revenue and a repeatable business model, but it certainly costs enough to have an impact on people just starting out. When I quit my job to work for myself in 2019 I was choosing between $600/mo COBRA or nominally cheaper marketplace plans with absolutely terrible coverage, just for myself. I had plenty of runway and software development is in demand so it wasn’t a huge burden, but with a family it could easily have cost $2k+/mo. I’m sure that’s enough to dissuade people from trying new things, especially in niches where it takes longer to get to profitability.
- hsn915 5y ago
  Health Freedom "Freedom Care" sounds like an oxymoron. If you need "care" you are not "free". It's not about "care", it's about risk mitigation. You are not sick now, but you have no idea when you or one of your dependents might become sick and need $$$.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
eatonphil 5y ago
I quit Oracle a few months ago. The good part is that I get spend more time on fun blog posts and projects like datastation [0]. The bad part is it's still challenging to find contract work that is enjoyable and pays well. Most of all though I miss having teammates/peers. That may be the thing that drives me fastest back to full time employment. [0] https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  Maybe consider registering at a local lively coworking space/accelerator? You may find like minded people you can form a cooperative with. Also as far as the contract work that is enjoyable and pays well -- in my experience this mostly has to do with knowing the right people. People who are high up enough in an org and technical enough to be sympathetic to understand what enjoyable jobs for you would be.
  - eatonphil 5y ago
    > Maybe consider registering at a local lively coworking space/accelerator? You may find like minded people you can form a cooperative with. I did try a coworking space but it has not been the best year to get that in-person experience. :) I'm vaguely looking into accelerators now but I'm naive so I'd kind of rather build a slow, sustainable, healthy business than get swept up in the mindset having a VC funded startup requires. > Also as far as the contract work that is enjoyable and pays well -- in my experience this mostly has to do with knowing the right people. People who are high up enough in an org and technical enough to be sympathetic to understand what enjoyable jobs for you would be. You're right and I misspoke a bit. There are definitely enough opportunities out there but you have to try things out and move on if you don't enjoy it. The last two contracts I had paid decently but I found the style of work completely demotivating. So I keep looking.
    - hardwaresofton 5y ago
      > I did try a coworking space but it has not been the best year to get that in-person experience. :) I'm vaguely looking into accelerators now but I'm naive so I'd kind of rather build a slow, sustainable, healthy business than get swept up in the mindset having a VC funded startup requires. Totally agree on the slow sustainable healthy business -- If you're going to bootstrap then I assume you've heard of the MicroConf community? You might want to get plugged in there. At the very least they've got great resources on things bootstrapped founders care about[0]. I meant to suggest hanging around the accelerator because you'd find like-minded people, not necessarily entering it by the way -- for example working as a technical advisor or contributor to the accelerator (and/or the attached VC/PE firms) itself might be interesting and give you the latitude you're looking for. > You're right and I misspoke a bit. There are definitely enough opportunities out there but you have to try things out and move on if you don't enjoy it. The last two contracts I had paid decently but I found the style of work completely demotivating. So I keep looking. No worries, I do pretty much exactly the same thing -- if I'd known a better way I would have shared it. I can agree from experience that finding companies you'd want to work at for long periods is very hard, and even more so when you have seen >3 small-to-mid-size companies and how vast the difference in architecture, experience, coworkers, environment, etc can be (especially compared to larger companies). It seems like if you have a very specific niche you want to target it's easier (i.e. try to be a patio11 type figure in one area that deeply interests you), but if you just want to find interesting problems that span areas/stacks/architectures, it can be hard to find companies that fit. Good luck out there! [0]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHoBKQDRkJcOY2BO47q5Ruw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHoBKQDRkJcOY2BO47q5Ruw
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
These stories always feel like they picked a few good anecdotes and interviews, but they wanted to present it as a national trend to make it sound like a bigger deal. Indeed, the statistics they provide aren't as significant as the headline suggests: > Hundreds of thousands of Americans are striking out on their own... For reference, the United States has around 160 million employed people. 0.1% of them moving to freelancing might be significant, but is it really a new era? That was happening on the regular well before COVID. 1 in 1000 people striking out on their own doesn't really explain the "ongoing shake-up in the world of work" like they're trying to suggest.
- Grakel 5y ago
  My favorite fake statistic in this article is "and nearly half have a college degree." They're trying to frame that paragraph to say the people are educated, and if you read it quickly it comes off that way, instead of "most of these people only have a high school diploma."
  - asdff 5y ago
    You left off the other half of the sentence that makes it more clear that there are some highly educated people in this cohort: " and nearly 4 in 10 a postgraduate degree."
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      Which means obviously fake stats. 55% high school, 35% postgrad, and only 10% college in the middle?
      - skinnymuch 5y ago
        I believe it means 4 in 10 of the college educated. I don’t remember the exact line. I’d have to go back and check. However I vouched for your dead comment and wanted to comment quickly.
  - asdfsd234234444 5y ago
encryptluks2 5y ago
Pretty soon government will move to finish taking away all public assistance if you don't take whatever job is offered. Previously worked as a hairdresser and now you don't want to be a $8/hr fry cook? No unemployment for you loser! Maybe they should stop encouraging businesses to fired people needlessly based over a target that has moved more than QAnon.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
yonatron 5y ago
Is there a non paywall version?
- dsizzle 5y ago
  https://archive.ph/FCRdw https://archive.ph/FCRdw
softwaredoug 5y ago
I hope everyone considers themselves as working for themselves, regardless of the actual vehicle that attaches themselves to their current income stream (job or their own company or whatever...) Even self-employed, you still have many bosses (customers, etc). In fact _those_ bosses can be harder to fire depending on contracting terms... And you might find it harder to churn out the sales to maintain a steady income stream. Even company-employed, you still should frame things in working-for-yourself. What are you getting out of the relationship? Is the employer holding up its end for you? The traditional, paternalistic concept of employment is outmoded. It says your career growth should be managed by your employer (don't let it...). It presumes the work you do and your job are always 100% the same (they're not). It assumes a kind of one-sided evaluation of the employee, where the employer has all the power (very untrue these days).
- voiper1 5y ago
  >It says your career growth should be managed by your employer (don't let it...) Apparently, this _used to be_ a reasonable option. But "employer loyalty" is much rarer, so now it's a totally unreasonable option.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > And you might find it harder when trying to maintain a steady income stream. This can't really be overstated enough. Contracting is one of those things that sounds super easy when you first jump and you already have a client lined up. But maintaining a steady stream of work is often far more difficult than people expect. Getting consulting clients is a completely different skillset than doing consulting work. If you're not the type of person who enjoys networking, cold outreach, selling yourself, and chasing deals then the consulting life probably won't be as fun as it may sound on the internet.
  - jasonkester 5y ago
    You can get around this by simply interviewing for a regular dev gig, then telling them you’d prefer to come on board on a contract. That’s how I’ve negotiated my last several gigs, and it nicely sidesteps the business development issue.
undoxxing3256 5y ago
My wife recently quit her job. She loved her job, she was passionate about it, her coworkers were wonderful. Then her employer go acquired, they hired a new manager who is abusive and micro-managing. She's classified as a frontline worker, and even got her first vaccine back in Jan 2021. Her reason for quitting wasn't just that her manager was bad, its that despite all the hard work the team put in, management just didn't care. They wouldn't even give ger a raise matching inflation, and they gave her a one time bonus of $640. Considering that she has to work close to 55 - 60 hrs per week, and sometimes even weekends. So I'm not surprised that people are quitting terrible jobs where employees are used up, and spit out.
- megablast 5y ago
  She lived a job where she was working 60 hrs a week?? That’s insane. And it crazy people accept that.
ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
The truth of the matter is we are compensated nowhere near the value we create. And so if you work for yourself, and actually do create something that others will pay for, you will usually far exceed your normal salary.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Where does the idea that prices are a function of value even come from? Even the most basic high school microeconomics course must teach students that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves. And it is trivial to see one’s self deriving great value from things like eating fresh fruit and produce and drinking clean water, but not paying anywhere near its “value” for it. Edit: replace the word value with utility in my comment to get a clearer idea of what I am trying to convey. Value is too vague of an idea to use for this topic.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Where does the idea that prices are a function of value even come from? Basic economics. > Even the most basic high school microeconomics course must teach students that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves. Demand curve is marginal (internalized) value @ quantity, so saying that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves is exactly saying that they are a function of value at market-clearing quantity, plus telling you where markey-clearing quantity comes from.
    - shukantpal 5y ago
      “Value” is subjective - the price is derived from the market-defined value. The OP is talking about the value they perceive their work to be. In that sense, prices are not a function of an individual’s perceived value of work.
      - tomrod 5y ago
        > “Value” is subjective Correct. This is the law of demand, and why price curves slope down with most goods (luxury goods excluded).
maerF0x0 5y ago
Observing over my approximate half of a life I've noted a very intriguing trend -- one in line with "Privatized profit, socialized losses" which I believe I first heard through Noam Chomsky. I've noted that there has been an increasing requirement for systemic risk to be absorbed by individuals in order to keep up in capitalism. For example once upon a time one could reasonably try and retire with Bonds as a major asset grouping. Later stocks were the minimum viable investment vehicle (more risk, for basic return), some might even say now inorder to get an ok return one needs to chase risk further with things like ARKK tech stocks and cryptocurrencies. Similarly has been observed in employment. At one time, during strong unions, a lot of the risk was forced upon the employer -- for example defined benefit pensions, or disability benefits that might have seemed extreme by today's standards. Nowadays having a single employer is basically only slightly better than being a contractor, but pays much much less -- the livable compensation now requires much greater risk of being a contractor (from self insurance, contract stability, risk of not being paid etc). Anyone else observed similar patterns?
- throw63738 5y ago
  In my experience corporations and employment are for "socialising profits". As skilled developer I can make good money on my own. In employment I have to sponsor admin stuff, less productive coworkers, shareholders... Corporations are basically form of social welfare for most people. In past there were less unproductive people attached. I don't buy risk being shifted. Housing or gold is very conservative investment, and it had good returns.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > Corporations are basically form of social welfare for most people. In past there were less unproductive people attached. Very true! Unfortunately, those people were almost literally left in the dirt, so of course we wanted society to provide them welfare... and we have all the issues of socialism and free riders. We need to separate welfare of people (which is natural to have free riders, but also necessary cost of a society to maintain itself) and employment/corps who shouldn't be filling the job of welfare providers.
maerF0x0 5y ago
> “When I’m at a red light, I don’t feel like I’m rushed to get home anymore.” This article and elsewhere I've observed that many employers are running antiquated or misled patterns that cause significant anxiety in their workers (examples are performance reviews[1], stacking unrealistic and unneccessary deadlines in attempt to push additional "performance", and excess hours for the appearances of productivity) I wonder how many employees would be staying if their employers weren't doing dark patterns? [1]: https://lattice.com/library/how-your-brain-responds-to-performance-reviews https://lattice.com/library/how-your-brain-responds-to-perfo...
- kqr 5y ago
  Just from personal experience: more. The past few years I've worked at a company that really values its employees and does none (or at least very few) of those destructive common things. They also do a surprising number of things right in terms of how to actually motivate people (the autonomy, mastery, purpose stuff.) For the first time in my life, I didn't feel the desire to find a new employer at the two year mark.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    Nice! Did you get lucky or did you have a plan to seek out such a company?
    - kqr 5y ago
      100 % luck. I didn't even know such a company existed before this. I was looking for a change in general, hit an unlucky streak of bad interviews, and then this company apparently saw something good in what was yet another interview I bombed, asked what they could offer to pay me such that it would be easier for me to make a decision, and that was that!
      - quickthrower2 5y ago
        Cool. I had the same luck after many bad jobs. The working world in general and including programming tends to lack empathy by default so it’s nice when you find a company that has it and wants to foster a good culture. It’s hard to tell in advance but any kind of bad vibe … in my experience my gut has been good but it’s a matter of trusting it and having the courage to turn back an offer that is “logically” good.
austinthetaco 5y ago
Something that gets me is how to even get started down the path of being your own boss. The insane networking required to keep up a contract queue is a lot. I'd love to setup an ecommerce business or side business, but there is so much clutter out there on the internet about getting started, it's hard to find the needle in the haystack for how to do it right. I'm a web dev with about 10 years of experience, but my business know-how is basically at 0. Anyone have suggestions on where to start?
- brentm 5y ago
  Where to start really depends on what your goals are but you mention no knowledge of business. You'd probably quickly realize you know more than you give your self credit for. If you want to check out a classic primer there is as book called The Personal MBA. It's a super high level overview/quick read and does a good job covering a bunch of basic business topics.
- bladegash 5y ago
  My advice is to find a company that more or less specializes in IT consulting/outsourcing and spend a couple of years learning the ropes. Get an understanding for how it operates, how they generate leads, the contract side, negotiation, etc. Doing this will give you not only a good sense of the business side, but also whether it’s something you really want to do on your own. Also, find a niche and specialize. Part of the reason there is so much noise is your skill set is presumably generic. Saying “I’m a senior web developer” puts you in competition with millions of others. The competition is global as well, when it comes to the freelance market (e.g., India, Pakistan, etc.). Whereas, I’m a “Senior developer in X technology” when there are only 5-10 others who can do the same thing puts you in a league of your own.
- fmitchell0 5y ago
  One suggestion is to do a half-step instead of full leap. Find a small business or smaller shop to work for (even accept less pay and use a little savings so you know how that feels), raise your hand to do stuff you normally wouldn't do (if you're an engineer, volunteer to help with sales, marketing, customer service, etc.), make nice with the owners, and constantly learn what they do. Once you get their playbook, jump out on your own or side hustle practicing it until you're ready. That is what I did. It took a few years, but I'm happy I did.
jordanmorgan10 5y ago
I would be my own boss right now if health insurance for a family of five didn’t cost a small fortune. But it does.
- asdfsd234234444 5y ago
  Only in the US.
- silisili 5y ago
  I'm actually convinced that single payer healthcare doesn't exist because companies lobby against it. It makes zero sense for healthcare to be tied to employment. But it sure makes folks hesitant to leave. I come from a -deeply- conservative family, a large one at that, and I still don't know a single person who supports our healthcare system. The memes you read about evil republicans against it just aren't true. So what's the real reason?
  - tdeck 5y ago
    Doctors' groups have consistently lobbied against it because they fear it will reduce their power and earning potential. That's the most influential lobby. The AMA killed Truman's national health plan and lobbied hard against Medicare.
  - mcv 5y ago
    Well, the Republicans in Congress do vote against single-payer healthcare. Probably because companies lobby against it. And while conservative families may want better healthcare, they're not going to get it as long as they vote for Republican politicians. Or moderate Democrats for that matter, because they're really not so different when it comes to corporate lobbying. If you want actual representation, you first need to change the system.
  - dan_mctree 5y ago
    For some reason both Republican and Democrat politicians seem more economically right-wing and more corporatist than either of their bases. I wonder if that's a natural consequence of the giant part of the voter base that feels obligated to vote for one of the two parties for social/tribal reasons alone. Without these voters pressuring their parties to align more with them in economic terms too, the effect of corporate pressure may be felt more strongly by politicians, leading to a drift to corporatism.
mmaunder 5y ago
Most are selling hours or expressing the intent to, as reflected in the articles data. If your are damn good, they sell themselves. If you’re not, you are going to regret transferring the risk of landing and retaining customers onto yourself from an employer. What I’m most interested in is what proportion are working to create a business that scales up. IP creators, manufacturers, service businesses, products. Those are the job creation machines that our entire economy will benefit from.
- iancmceachern 5y ago
  Yes, the rest is just consulting (spoken with love as I am one)
- schnevets 5y ago
  Given the past year's move towards remote work and knowledge workers migrating away from big cities, I'd be very interested in how "scalable businesses" adapt. Not every emerging need can be met by a remote-only companies, cool things are going to happen when these trends collide (smaller cities becoming entrepreneurial hotspots, lean companies that attend to more niche markets, unique managerial agreements, etc.)
hanniabu 5y ago
Any good resources on how to start freelancing from the business side? That's what always held me back, the anxiety of being up either seeing up the structure or filing/accounting wrong and a cascade of issues and headaches following me because of that.
- asdff 5y ago
  Find a good tax professional in your area.
- tixocloud 5y ago
  What resources are you looking for in particular? There are plenty that apply to freelancers/consultants that would apply with a quick Google search. Ideally, it would be useful to setup a corporation to limit personal liability and keep your finances/accounting organized (I.e. use 1 account for everything, keep track of key dates to file things, keep a log of all finances, schedule time for admin)
- iancmceachern 5y ago
  I dont have any links but I'd be willing to help you.
asdff 5y ago
Employers are finally starting to get bitten for squeezing labor. Even highly compensated people suffer from being squeezed. Working long hours. Not being given the resources needed. Working outside your job description. Being asked to stay late again and again. Constant anxiety about deadlines and not having physically enough time to get the job done. Not having enough time to get everything done at home since you are spent from the workday. It's like, if there is so much demand for labor, why not hire more hands? Even if you are paying more out of payroll you are getting a better rested, more engaged, less mentally disturbed labor pool for your dollar, one that's not looking desperately at linkedin for an escape route from the hell you've created. I guess the question is whether or not employers will actually balk and start to offer better conditions, or collectively decide that they can get away with staying put with the status quo since people need to eat and afford shelter and they can get away with hiring more naive recent grads and having high turnover seemingly indefinitely.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jcims 5y ago
I didn’t navigate the paywall but may have the gist from the comments. One thing that i don’t see mentioned is that this route can help people that have a criminal record get back in the game. I took over running a small consulting firm for a bit over ten years and aside from the DoD and one bank, nobody ever asked for background checks of our employees.
askonomm 5y ago
Been a contractor for around 3 years now working remotely for start-ups and it's the best thing ever. No bullshit algo/whiteboard interviews, no having to lie about believing in the company "mission", much more flexibility over how much do I actually work, in whatever terms I work. Good luck pitching to a regular company that you want to only work in chunks of 2 or 4 weeks, and then take 2 week breaks in-between, which is what I can do now. Also, in general, you are treated as an equal and not as a subordinate, which is very nice.
- alex504 5y ago
  Hi, I am very interested in doing this. I am wondering if you have any advice for making the switch from full time? I know that my resume and experience are what these companies are looking for but I don't have a very good network and have found it harder to find companies than with FT work. Cheers Alex
  - askonomm 5y ago
    Open source work has helped me a ton. I'm active in the Clojure community and create open-source projects, as well as collaborate with other Clojurians every now and then, which builds credibility. My Github and references is 90% of my "sales". So once I had credibility, and my references prepared (they will always ask for references), I started contacting start-ups in the Clojurians Slack channel, and elsewhere where I found Clojure start-ups. The difference was that from the very beginning I communicated myself as a contractor, and not as a potential employee. Start-ups are pretty open to contractors, and part-time contractors, I've found. Probably because we mostly bill by the hour, and they don't have to pay any employee-related taxes on us, so they don't really lose anything with that. They pay for the work we actually do, and we get paid for the work we actually do. I don't know if this helps at all, but feel free to hit me up for more details if you want, my contact info is on my profile :)
  - davzie 5y ago
    Hey. I actually started a YouTube channel specifically for this. I started freelancing and contracting around 10 years ago and found it really hard to understand how to approach everything so I’m basically spewing off my thoughts on that process and the things I’ve learned over the last 10 years. It’s a bit UK specific but the general mindset and lessons will still be relevant: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFreelanceSoftwareShow https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFreelanceSoftwareShow
mempko 5y ago
This may confuse many HN folks but everyone being their own boss is what socialism is really about. Getting away from wage labor was always a goal. But if you follow the media, they will tell you it's about big government. I suggest people read about Democracy at Work and Richard Wolf's work.
- visarga 5y ago
  In what country has this enlightened socialism been proven to work? In my opinion socialism cares more about who's winning at class struggle than people themselves, putting ideas/ideology over real life and long term economic growth. We all know it's bullshit because of the high level of government corruption and general impoverishment of population, they talk big ideals while suppressing dissent. When you're hungry and turn on the TV and it says you're living the golden age you kind of develop a sense for bs.
  - Majestic121 5y ago
    Nordic countries are usually an example of socialism working well : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model > The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden).[1] This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining[2] based on the economic foundations of social corporatism,[3][4] with a high percentage of the workforce unionized and a sizable percentage of the population employed by the public sector (roughly 30% of the work force in areas such as healthcare, education, and government).[5] Although it was developed in the 1930s under the leadership of social democrats,[6] the Nordic model began to gain attention after World War II. > As of 2020, all of the Nordic countries rank highly on the inequality-adjusted HDI and the Global Peace Index as well as being ranked in the top 10 on the World Happiness Report.[12] If you mean something closer to communism, then I agree with you, but I think socialism is wider than that.
    - mcv 5y ago
      Less successful than the Nordic model but still much better than Soviet Russia, was Tito's Yugoslavia. I'm not an expert on it, but I believe it was big on cooperative ownership by the workers, rather than the state. But I don't think there's ever been a country where everybody was either self-employed or co-owner of their workplace. And maybe it's not even feasible to get there, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea to try to move at least somewhat in that direction. Everybody being completely dependent on massive corporations certainly isn't great either.
hardwaresofton 5y ago
I wonder if seeing articles like these annoys the vast majority of people (underrepresented on HN of course) who are not comfortable enough with their finances or in life in general to do something as risky as this. This narrative of people quitting jobs en-masse is great fodder but just doesn't seem to come out in the numbers[0]. Is it that office work is just such a small percentage that it wouldn't show up? Are people who are quitting their jobs to drive for Uber or other such gig-economy jobs being counted (in my opinion they shouldn't be)? [0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=JbGZ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=JbGZ
black_13 5y ago
Parrot droppings
ab-dm 5y ago
I've been my own boss for ~ 7 years. 2 of those as a contractor, the other 5 as a SAAS founder. I've been able to take any day off I want, but I have NEVER been able to switch off. It took me about 4-5 years to finally be relatively OK with it. Annual leave is far better. I've taken a bit of a "holiday" this year by taking a full time role for ~8 months and it's been a great opportunity to recharge and work with amazing people that are much smarter than me, but I'm already feeling the pinch to go back and do my own thing. Having said all of the above, I'm very lucky that I'm 10+ years in the software industry and I've always got the option of a great full time role to fall back on. All in all, so far I'm not sure it was worth it. I wouldn't have been as successful and fulfilled if I kept my full time role, but I'd be a hell of a lot happier.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I know what you mean. My support demands are quite low and just 9 to 5 and Monday to Friday but I can never completely switch off. I'd like to go on holiday without a phone and laptop. Having said that I've never had the same level of autonomy in previous jobs. This has outweighed all the downsides.
- mtVessel 5y ago
  Did I read this right? You took a full-time job as a "holiday" from the stresses of being your own boss? I guess the grass truly is always greener.
  - ab-dm 5y ago
    Yep, and it's been great!
jimt1234 5y ago
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." I feel like it's the best of times to be in business for oneself. The ease of access to customers and services blows my mind compared to, say, 20 years ago. However, I also feel it's the worst of times because of the high cost of health insurance. I've met countless smart, talented people that aborted business plans when they saw the high cost of health insurance. (I also find it odd that the article doesn't mention that. :shrug:) I guess the best strategy is to marry someone with good health insurance. ;)
ThinkBeat 5y ago
We have a giant jump in the number of new businesses now. A majority of them are more spontaneous and less well conceived by people with much less experience with all aspects of running your own business. I read that there have been several 100.000 of new business registered. All of those will have to try and climb on top of each other to be heard. Let us say that 1000 new mobile dog grooming business have been started in Denver. They all need a van and equipment. There are already 100 mobile dog grooming businesses, some do very well with an established clientele, a known name, and organic growth from happy businesses. Others do not. How will all the new dog groomers be heard? Who will be inventive enough or rich enough to hire someone, to create a solid and successful marketing campaign? Traditionally on average 20% of new business fail within the first year. (Depending on type of business, some fail more often than others). I predict we will see solid increase how many businesses fail. A lot of people will lose their savings. Unless something drastic changes a lot more will be without health insurance. Within 6 months to 2 years there will be a horde of people who wish to return to being an employee of an established business, while being worse off financially. I hope I am wrong. (All numbers used about dog groomers are made up. Pure fiction)
- jaypeg25 5y ago
  Looking at the chart toward the top of the article, I couldn't help but get a similar feeling. A huge spike of self employed workers in the early 2000's that preceded the crash and Great Recession. I'd be curious to see statistics on what these self employed workers were doing in 2004-2007, but I assume many of them got into the idea of flipping houses? Either way, I worry that in a few years time we'll see a market correction of all these self employed workers and I wonder what its impact will be. Will they just go back to corporate life? Will it even be that easy to do so?
- PeterisP 5y ago
  There's lots of money to be made there - in your examples, the people selling used vans (and then re-buying them cheaply from new companies going out of business), and the internet megacorps selling advertising to all the dog groomers trying to be heard. In a gold rush, most of the miners get nothing, but the people selling shovels can have a good business.
MrDresden 5y ago
Just... be aware of the survivorship bias in these kinds of articles. I've been planning to go solo for more than a year. I've been saving up, and working on validating my ideas on the side while still working a full day job. Most startups/entrepreneurs fail, so plan for that eventuality. And delay quitting that day job as long as possible. I've obviously only gotten this advice from other sources and not from personal experience, so be skeptical... ..and remember the survivorship bias in everything you read about this topic.
- phasersout 5y ago
  I've saved enough money to wither a bad year or two before I went solo. Takes the anxiety and makes for a good night sleep, even if there is no immediate job lined up...
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  If you can, dip your toes in the water before jumping in. I run an eBay store that makes around $20k a month and is still growing, but it started as a side gig while I was still working (making less than 5k a month, but I was only working on it for maybe 8-10 hours a week). Actually validating your ideas before fully committing is a great way to minimise risk and avoid procrastination.
  - altdataseller 5y ago
    Nice, what are the gross/profit margins of an eBay store? Know it depends on what you sell but always interested in launching one.
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      >Nice, what are the gross/profit margins of an eBay store? For us (retro games), it's about 50% overall. Of course, this varies greatly from product to product. Interestingly, most of our higher value products tend to also be higher margin. We've increased revenues significantly by focussing more energy on getting promotions right for said high value, high margin listings. >Know it depends on what you sell but always interested in launching one. Then do it. Buy something undervalued from Facebook Marketplace and flip it, or import a small batch of a product with low local competition from Alibaba. You can optimise from there, but starting small is absolutely a great way to learn the ropes. Worst case scenario, you've lost a couple of hundred bucks and learned a valuable life lesson.
clement_b 5y ago
Considering tech workers only. If a substantial number of them moves from employment to self-employment, being someone's boss may become a better deal. If this trend is systemic: - The value of workers willing to be employed will increase, even more so in specific fields. Whatever the current compensation (dollars, flexibility,...), it's going to get better. - As this happens, some organizations won't accept to pay a premium for their existing pool of candidates and will expand their horizon to (finally) hire previously ignored populations. - Freelancing platforms will get even busier, and finding work will get harder and harder—especially now that these new self-employed workers compete with the entire world and not with other business units and colleagues. Many will come back from it. - When they do, their old job won't be available anymore. Getting a new one will be stressful due to the increased competition from all the disgruntled self-employed coming back and the increased pool of cheaper candidates now preferred by employers. I've personally made the employed → self-employed move about 3-4 years ago, and back. Although there are clear benefits to being self-employed, there are also clear ones to being a full-time employee (maybe this is more the case in Europe where I'm based, though). So, I can see why people make the move given the current context, but I can also see why a huge chunk will realize being your own boss is not necessarily as good as it sounds.
- mcv 5y ago
  I made the switch to self-employed in 2012. Then back to employment last year, during the Covid lockdown. And recently back to self-employed again. On the whole, I prefer the freedom of being self-employed, especially in regard to time off; I take take as much or as little time off as a want, whereas in employment, I'm limited to what my contract allows. Of course I can buy extra or have them paid out, but it's really the extra bureaucracy of working for a company that I dislike. Working for myself is easier. But another big difference I noticed is compensation: employment was a massive pay cut. And this seems consistent with previous experiences; Dutch employers just don't want to pay that much for software engineers. As a freelancer, it's easy to make 50% more. It's not an easy comparison because I also have to pay more taxes, save up for my own retirement, pay my own disability and other insurance that's normally taken care of by the employer, but even then, the difference is stark. If more people becoming self-employed means more employers will raise developer and other salaries, that would be awesome.
intricatedetail 5y ago
Some governments lobbied by big business smear self employment as a way of avoiding taxes. In my country they restricted service based business with revenue tax (over 50% effective) and no ability to claim expenses. The legislation is so complex, corporations avoid buying services out of fear of getting a fine and business goes to big corporations that provide workers on demand. It's funny that these big corporations are actually involved in tax avoidance, but corrupt government say nothing about that. So far at least 35% quit self employment as it is pointless.
mshanu 5y ago
Most of the organisations expects their employee to demand than being offered. Take promotion for that matter, how many organisation have the culture of offering without demanding
lou1306 5y ago
A recent article [0] draws an interesting comparison with the aftermath of the Black Death in England. Briefly, peasants just refused working the aristocracy-owned fields. No matter the (harsh) countermeasures, the situation just never went back to the pre-plague levels. As a result, the aristocracy had to sell some of the fields to the richer farmers, resulting in a much strenghtened middle class. [0] https://prospect.org/labor/great-escape-why-workers-quitting-pandemic-trauma/ https://prospect.org/labor/great-escape-why-workers-quitting... via https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/29/ordinance-of-labourers/ https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/29/ordinance-of-labourers/
- foxhop 5y ago
  Bill and Melinda's Trust has locked up the majority of farm land in USA. The peasants are screwed. The middle class is gone. People think more monoculture with machines is the answer. Technology will never supplant nature, but it might cause a collapse & reboot. You can't eat AI, you can't eat a digital twin market model. Local food economy is the real economy.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    >Bill and Melinda's Trust has locked up the majority of farm land in USA. source? https://newspunch.com/billionaire-globalist-bill-gates-suddenly-becomes-americas-biggest-owner-of-farmland/ https://newspunch.com/billionaire-globalist-bill-gates-sudde... This article says the Gates' or their foundation might have a few hundred thousand acres, but the USA has orders of magnitude more farmland. https://stacker.com/stories/1578/states-most-farmland https://stacker.com/stories/1578/states-most-farmland
    - jd3 5y ago
      I remember reading about this on HN earlier in the year — according to LandReport, "[t]he cofounder of Microsoft and his wife rank as America’s largest private farmland owners." https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/ https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farml... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779681 I think the gotcha here is that they rank as the largest /private/ farmland owners, not the largest singular owner of farmland (including corporate farming conglomerates). I think this story went "viral" through this BusinesssInsider article from May 2021. https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-land-portfolio-biggest-private-farmland-owner-in-america-2021-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-land-portfolio-bi...
pythonbase 5y ago
So if everyone become their own bosses, who's gonna work for them?
synergy20 5y ago
The question is really about *medical insurance*, if anyone(including his/her spouse and children) can buy a reasonable priced health insurance without a big company employer, we can all be our own bosses. until then, it's more like a gamble if you want to fly alone.
Invictus0 5y ago
Economic boom leads to increase in entrepreneurship. News at 11.
alecbz 5y ago
Something that keeps me from wanting to work for myself is how much I think I value/need to be working with other people. Both just as a form of social interaction, because my work is important to me and thus naturally I find I can connect well with people I work with, but also because I find a lot of my motivation and energy often comes from being a part of a team. As I write that it's kinda weird in that socially I feel very much like an introvert (social interaction is very valuable to me but it does "use up" energy), but I guess I'm a "work extrovert"?
black_13 5y ago
Wsj and many of the types on this place live in their own universe. How is someone working in say warehouse or nabisco plant going to quit there job to become there own boss? This is a dangerous fiction.

434 points by lxm 5y ago

USA brand tax cattle objects are state property and owe all productive output to the public sector. Healthcare must be denied for those who exhibit any disobedience.

DoItToMe81 5y ago

I'm not hopeful about this, honestly. Independent contracting sucks, and you're mostly treated as an employee without any of the legal protections of an employee.

jasonkester 5y ago
But that’s the entire value proposition of contracting. You’re basically exchanging a ~100% increase in monetary compensation for those employee benefits and job security. If you don’t value the money higher than the benefits, then you shouldn’t take the contract.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  It's not just the money, it's literally not having a boss.
  - kreelman 5y ago
    ..I understand this desire to not have a boss, but I think running a business might not provide the "no boss!" situation that's desired. I've heard it said that when you're employed by a company you have (usually) one boss, but when you have your own business, you have many bosses (demanding customers who threaten to leave and not pay if you don't do things the way/speed they want them... sounds similar to a boss). Perhaps part of the solution is getting staff to be more confidently able to say "No", or at least have a conversation/disagreement around a given issue. Not everyone wants to start a business or be a contractor. I think it's the human condition that power will be misused.. We live in a broken world unfortunately.

jeandejean 5y ago

It's hard to believe that quitting the job of head of marketing in a company for examining returned items from Amazon is an improvement at all... If this is what it means, I'm glad with my current job :-D.

readonthegoapp 5y ago

https://archive.ph/FCRdw https://archive.ph/FCRdw

awillen 5y ago

I did it, and it's equal parts terrifying and awesome. My company's going to do six figures of revenue this year, which is amazing, but I'm having to figure out things like scaling fulfillment and manufacturing that are entirely foreign to me (my background is in enterprise software, now doing ecommerce). Never a dull moment!

mylons 5y ago
good for you! what kind of thing are you selling? how much expertise did you have in it before?
- awillen 5y ago
  Thanks! It's dog treat mix - our most popular product is a powdered mix that you combine with water and freeze for frozen treats. I had pretty close to zero expertise. I was an enterprise software PM, so things like setting up Shopify and finding a contract designer were in my wheelhouse, but everything involved with actual, physical goods has been new to me. Manufacturing, shipping, inventory management, fulfillment - been figuring it out from scratch. Largely going well, but definitely some hiccups along the way!
  - mylons 5y ago
    thanks for sharing the details! were you worried about entering a crowded space? is the frozen treat unique?
    - awillen 5y ago
      The nice thing is it's not an especially crowded space. There are a handful of treat mix products out there, and most are for baked treats (which we also sell, but definitely not at the level of the frozen stuff). On the frozen treat front, the biggest one is a Purina product called Frosty Paws, and I think my stuff is an easy sell against that for a few reasons. First, it's made with all sorts of unpronounceable ingredients, where my stuff is made with whole, high-quality ingredients (freeze dried meat, egg powder, whole wheat flour, etc.). Their form factor is also bigger - it basically comes in a cardboard cup that you'd get a scoop of ice cream in, which is big for a dog, compared to my bite-sized treats. Theirs is more of a birthday treat, where mine can be given regularly.

nine_zeros 5y ago

Coincides with the rise of the FIRE movement as well. It appears that humans want to not subject themselves to endless politics and meaningless bureaucracy in corporations. Given a choice, people want to live and die with dignity.

zz865 5y ago
FIRE movement is largely a result of crazy high salaries and a booming stock market, it wont last forever.
- californical 5y ago
  Some will probably bail out of FI when the market slows/crashes in the short term, but some will definitely stick with it! People have been doing the same thing for 50 years, there’s just a community aspect with a name now.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  high salaries and booming stock market are the result of an increased standard of living due to technological advances. If you looked at the standard of living of a middle class person in 1975 it would be worse than someone making $15/hour today on average. More and more people are not interested in spending 50+ hours a week in bullshit jobs to just be able to buy a Mercedes and join a golf club. A lot of us are perfectly happy driving Toyotas.
- saran2win 5y ago
  You can FIRE with any salary range with thoughtful spending (save before you spend) and common-sense investing (buy-and-hold, cash generating assets). Though the recent stock market opens up many opportunities for FIRE, it is an age-old proven way to retire or do-your-own-thing rather living paycheck-to-paycheck
  - dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
    Good point, let's all FIRE tomorrow and see what happens. That age-old "work to collectively add value to the economy" thing really gets old after awhile.

beckingz 5y ago

Given how easy it is to lose a job if the demand for work dries up, it seems rational to switch to selling work on your own terms. At least while the market is good.

vkou 5y ago
Depends on where you work. If you work for a large company, and depending on what you do for it, there might be enough institutional inertia that will keep you from losing your job until demand rebounds.

bluedevil2k 5y ago

The thing holding many people back from doing this is health care - Americans predominantly get their health care through their employer and the options on Obamacare are not cheap. Another reason socialized health care would benefit this country - it would boost the number of entrepreneurs and small businesses. Socialized health care desperately needs a rebranding - instead of "Socialized Health Care" or "Medicare for All", it should be called "Entrepreneur Focused Health Care" or simply "Freedom Care".

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Having done this myself, I don't really see it. Yes, health insurance is expensive, but I can also bill substantially more than my non-US counterparts can in their respective countries. Even with paying for health insurance myself, I don't see how I'd come out ahead in any other country right now unless I relocated and kept my working hours / client base in the US.
- macNchz 5y ago
  Sure once you have solid revenue and a repeatable business model, but it certainly costs enough to have an impact on people just starting out. When I quit my job to work for myself in 2019 I was choosing between $600/mo COBRA or nominally cheaper marketplace plans with absolutely terrible coverage, just for myself. I had plenty of runway and software development is in demand so it wasn’t a huge burden, but with a family it could easily have cost $2k+/mo. I’m sure that’s enough to dissuade people from trying new things, especially in niches where it takes longer to get to profitability.
hsn915 5y ago
Health Freedom "Freedom Care" sounds like an oxymoron. If you need "care" you are not "free". It's not about "care", it's about risk mitigation. You are not sick now, but you have no idea when you or one of your dependents might become sick and need $$$.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

eatonphil 5y ago

I quit Oracle a few months ago. The good part is that I get spend more time on fun blog posts and projects like datastation [0]. The bad part is it's still challenging to find contract work that is enjoyable and pays well. Most of all though I miss having teammates/peers. That may be the thing that drives me fastest back to full time employment. [0] https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation https://github.com/multiprocessio/datastation

hardwaresofton 5y ago
Maybe consider registering at a local lively coworking space/accelerator? You may find like minded people you can form a cooperative with. Also as far as the contract work that is enjoyable and pays well -- in my experience this mostly has to do with knowing the right people. People who are high up enough in an org and technical enough to be sympathetic to understand what enjoyable jobs for you would be.
- eatonphil 5y ago
  > Maybe consider registering at a local lively coworking space/accelerator? You may find like minded people you can form a cooperative with. I did try a coworking space but it has not been the best year to get that in-person experience. :) I'm vaguely looking into accelerators now but I'm naive so I'd kind of rather build a slow, sustainable, healthy business than get swept up in the mindset having a VC funded startup requires. > Also as far as the contract work that is enjoyable and pays well -- in my experience this mostly has to do with knowing the right people. People who are high up enough in an org and technical enough to be sympathetic to understand what enjoyable jobs for you would be. You're right and I misspoke a bit. There are definitely enough opportunities out there but you have to try things out and move on if you don't enjoy it. The last two contracts I had paid decently but I found the style of work completely demotivating. So I keep looking.
  - hardwaresofton 5y ago
    > I did try a coworking space but it has not been the best year to get that in-person experience. :) I'm vaguely looking into accelerators now but I'm naive so I'd kind of rather build a slow, sustainable, healthy business than get swept up in the mindset having a VC funded startup requires. Totally agree on the slow sustainable healthy business -- If you're going to bootstrap then I assume you've heard of the MicroConf community? You might want to get plugged in there. At the very least they've got great resources on things bootstrapped founders care about[0]. I meant to suggest hanging around the accelerator because you'd find like-minded people, not necessarily entering it by the way -- for example working as a technical advisor or contributor to the accelerator (and/or the attached VC/PE firms) itself might be interesting and give you the latitude you're looking for. > You're right and I misspoke a bit. There are definitely enough opportunities out there but you have to try things out and move on if you don't enjoy it. The last two contracts I had paid decently but I found the style of work completely demotivating. So I keep looking. No worries, I do pretty much exactly the same thing -- if I'd known a better way I would have shared it. I can agree from experience that finding companies you'd want to work at for long periods is very hard, and even more so when you have seen >3 small-to-mid-size companies and how vast the difference in architecture, experience, coworkers, environment, etc can be (especially compared to larger companies). It seems like if you have a very specific niche you want to target it's easier (i.e. try to be a patio11 type figure in one area that deeply interests you), but if you just want to find interesting problems that span areas/stacks/architectures, it can be hard to find companies that fit. Good luck out there! [0]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHoBKQDRkJcOY2BO47q5Ruw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHoBKQDRkJcOY2BO47q5Ruw

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

These stories always feel like they picked a few good anecdotes and interviews, but they wanted to present it as a national trend to make it sound like a bigger deal. Indeed, the statistics they provide aren't as significant as the headline suggests: > Hundreds of thousands of Americans are striking out on their own... For reference, the United States has around 160 million employed people. 0.1% of them moving to freelancing might be significant, but is it really a new era? That was happening on the regular well before COVID. 1 in 1000 people striking out on their own doesn't really explain the "ongoing shake-up in the world of work" like they're trying to suggest.

Grakel 5y ago
My favorite fake statistic in this article is "and nearly half have a college degree." They're trying to frame that paragraph to say the people are educated, and if you read it quickly it comes off that way, instead of "most of these people only have a high school diploma."
- asdff 5y ago
  You left off the other half of the sentence that makes it more clear that there are some highly educated people in this cohort: " and nearly 4 in 10 a postgraduate degree."
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Which means obviously fake stats. 55% high school, 35% postgrad, and only 10% college in the middle?
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      I believe it means 4 in 10 of the college educated. I don’t remember the exact line. I’d have to go back and check. However I vouched for your dead comment and wanted to comment quickly.
- asdfsd234234444 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago

Pretty soon government will move to finish taking away all public assistance if you don't take whatever job is offered. Previously worked as a hairdresser and now you don't want to be a $8/hr fry cook? No unemployment for you loser! Maybe they should stop encouraging businesses to fired people needlessly based over a target that has moved more than QAnon.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

yonatron 5y ago

Is there a non paywall version?

dsizzle 5y ago
https://archive.ph/FCRdw https://archive.ph/FCRdw

softwaredoug 5y ago

I hope everyone considers themselves as working for themselves, regardless of the actual vehicle that attaches themselves to their current income stream (job or their own company or whatever...) Even self-employed, you still have many bosses (customers, etc). In fact _those_ bosses can be harder to fire depending on contracting terms... And you might find it harder to churn out the sales to maintain a steady income stream. Even company-employed, you still should frame things in working-for-yourself. What are you getting out of the relationship? Is the employer holding up its end for you? The traditional, paternalistic concept of employment is outmoded. It says your career growth should be managed by your employer (don't let it...). It presumes the work you do and your job are always 100% the same (they're not). It assumes a kind of one-sided evaluation of the employee, where the employer has all the power (very untrue these days).

voiper1 5y ago
>It says your career growth should be managed by your employer (don't let it...) Apparently, this _used to be_ a reasonable option. But "employer loyalty" is much rarer, so now it's a totally unreasonable option.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> And you might find it harder when trying to maintain a steady income stream. This can't really be overstated enough. Contracting is one of those things that sounds super easy when you first jump and you already have a client lined up. But maintaining a steady stream of work is often far more difficult than people expect. Getting consulting clients is a completely different skillset than doing consulting work. If you're not the type of person who enjoys networking, cold outreach, selling yourself, and chasing deals then the consulting life probably won't be as fun as it may sound on the internet.
- jasonkester 5y ago
  You can get around this by simply interviewing for a regular dev gig, then telling them you’d prefer to come on board on a contract. That’s how I’ve negotiated my last several gigs, and it nicely sidesteps the business development issue.

undoxxing3256 5y ago

My wife recently quit her job. She loved her job, she was passionate about it, her coworkers were wonderful. Then her employer go acquired, they hired a new manager who is abusive and micro-managing. She's classified as a frontline worker, and even got her first vaccine back in Jan 2021. Her reason for quitting wasn't just that her manager was bad, its that despite all the hard work the team put in, management just didn't care. They wouldn't even give ger a raise matching inflation, and they gave her a one time bonus of $640. Considering that she has to work close to 55 - 60 hrs per week, and sometimes even weekends. So I'm not surprised that people are quitting terrible jobs where employees are used up, and spit out.

megablast 5y ago
She lived a job where she was working 60 hrs a week?? That’s insane. And it crazy people accept that.

ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago

The truth of the matter is we are compensated nowhere near the value we create. And so if you work for yourself, and actually do create something that others will pay for, you will usually far exceed your normal salary.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Where does the idea that prices are a function of value even come from? Even the most basic high school microeconomics course must teach students that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves. And it is trivial to see one’s self deriving great value from things like eating fresh fruit and produce and drinking clean water, but not paying anywhere near its “value” for it. Edit: replace the word value with utility in my comment to get a clearer idea of what I am trying to convey. Value is too vague of an idea to use for this topic.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Where does the idea that prices are a function of value even come from? Basic economics. > Even the most basic high school microeconomics course must teach students that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves. Demand curve is marginal (internalized) value @ quantity, so saying that prices are the intersection of supply and demand curves is exactly saying that they are a function of value at market-clearing quantity, plus telling you where markey-clearing quantity comes from.
  - shukantpal 5y ago
    “Value” is subjective - the price is derived from the market-defined value. The OP is talking about the value they perceive their work to be. In that sense, prices are not a function of an individual’s perceived value of work.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      > “Value” is subjective Correct. This is the law of demand, and why price curves slope down with most goods (luxury goods excluded).

maerF0x0 5y ago

Observing over my approximate half of a life I've noted a very intriguing trend -- one in line with "Privatized profit, socialized losses" which I believe I first heard through Noam Chomsky. I've noted that there has been an increasing requirement for systemic risk to be absorbed by individuals in order to keep up in capitalism. For example once upon a time one could reasonably try and retire with Bonds as a major asset grouping. Later stocks were the minimum viable investment vehicle (more risk, for basic return), some might even say now inorder to get an ok return one needs to chase risk further with things like ARKK tech stocks and cryptocurrencies. Similarly has been observed in employment. At one time, during strong unions, a lot of the risk was forced upon the employer -- for example defined benefit pensions, or disability benefits that might have seemed extreme by today's standards. Nowadays having a single employer is basically only slightly better than being a contractor, but pays much much less -- the livable compensation now requires much greater risk of being a contractor (from self insurance, contract stability, risk of not being paid etc). Anyone else observed similar patterns?

throw63738 5y ago
In my experience corporations and employment are for "socialising profits". As skilled developer I can make good money on my own. In employment I have to sponsor admin stuff, less productive coworkers, shareholders... Corporations are basically form of social welfare for most people. In past there were less unproductive people attached. I don't buy risk being shifted. Housing or gold is very conservative investment, and it had good returns.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > Corporations are basically form of social welfare for most people. In past there were less unproductive people attached. Very true! Unfortunately, those people were almost literally left in the dirt, so of course we wanted society to provide them welfare... and we have all the issues of socialism and free riders. We need to separate welfare of people (which is natural to have free riders, but also necessary cost of a society to maintain itself) and employment/corps who shouldn't be filling the job of welfare providers.

maerF0x0 5y ago

> “When I’m at a red light, I don’t feel like I’m rushed to get home anymore.” This article and elsewhere I've observed that many employers are running antiquated or misled patterns that cause significant anxiety in their workers (examples are performance reviews[1], stacking unrealistic and unneccessary deadlines in attempt to push additional "performance", and excess hours for the appearances of productivity) I wonder how many employees would be staying if their employers weren't doing dark patterns? [1]: https://lattice.com/library/how-your-brain-responds-to-performance-reviews https://lattice.com/library/how-your-brain-responds-to-perfo...

kqr 5y ago
Just from personal experience: more. The past few years I've worked at a company that really values its employees and does none (or at least very few) of those destructive common things. They also do a surprising number of things right in terms of how to actually motivate people (the autonomy, mastery, purpose stuff.) For the first time in my life, I didn't feel the desire to find a new employer at the two year mark.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Nice! Did you get lucky or did you have a plan to seek out such a company?
  - kqr 5y ago
    100 % luck. I didn't even know such a company existed before this. I was looking for a change in general, hit an unlucky streak of bad interviews, and then this company apparently saw something good in what was yet another interview I bombed, asked what they could offer to pay me such that it would be easier for me to make a decision, and that was that!
    - quickthrower2 5y ago
      Cool. I had the same luck after many bad jobs. The working world in general and including programming tends to lack empathy by default so it’s nice when you find a company that has it and wants to foster a good culture. It’s hard to tell in advance but any kind of bad vibe … in my experience my gut has been good but it’s a matter of trusting it and having the courage to turn back an offer that is “logically” good.

austinthetaco 5y ago

Something that gets me is how to even get started down the path of being your own boss. The insane networking required to keep up a contract queue is a lot. I'd love to setup an ecommerce business or side business, but there is so much clutter out there on the internet about getting started, it's hard to find the needle in the haystack for how to do it right. I'm a web dev with about 10 years of experience, but my business know-how is basically at 0. Anyone have suggestions on where to start?

brentm 5y ago
Where to start really depends on what your goals are but you mention no knowledge of business. You'd probably quickly realize you know more than you give your self credit for. If you want to check out a classic primer there is as book called The Personal MBA. It's a super high level overview/quick read and does a good job covering a bunch of basic business topics.
bladegash 5y ago
My advice is to find a company that more or less specializes in IT consulting/outsourcing and spend a couple of years learning the ropes. Get an understanding for how it operates, how they generate leads, the contract side, negotiation, etc. Doing this will give you not only a good sense of the business side, but also whether it’s something you really want to do on your own. Also, find a niche and specialize. Part of the reason there is so much noise is your skill set is presumably generic. Saying “I’m a senior web developer” puts you in competition with millions of others. The competition is global as well, when it comes to the freelance market (e.g., India, Pakistan, etc.). Whereas, I’m a “Senior developer in X technology” when there are only 5-10 others who can do the same thing puts you in a league of your own.
fmitchell0 5y ago
One suggestion is to do a half-step instead of full leap. Find a small business or smaller shop to work for (even accept less pay and use a little savings so you know how that feels), raise your hand to do stuff you normally wouldn't do (if you're an engineer, volunteer to help with sales, marketing, customer service, etc.), make nice with the owners, and constantly learn what they do. Once you get their playbook, jump out on your own or side hustle practicing it until you're ready. That is what I did. It took a few years, but I'm happy I did.

jordanmorgan10 5y ago

I would be my own boss right now if health insurance for a family of five didn’t cost a small fortune. But it does.

asdfsd234234444 5y ago
Only in the US.
silisili 5y ago
I'm actually convinced that single payer healthcare doesn't exist because companies lobby against it. It makes zero sense for healthcare to be tied to employment. But it sure makes folks hesitant to leave. I come from a -deeply- conservative family, a large one at that, and I still don't know a single person who supports our healthcare system. The memes you read about evil republicans against it just aren't true. So what's the real reason?
- tdeck 5y ago
  Doctors' groups have consistently lobbied against it because they fear it will reduce their power and earning potential. That's the most influential lobby. The AMA killed Truman's national health plan and lobbied hard against Medicare.
- mcv 5y ago
  Well, the Republicans in Congress do vote against single-payer healthcare. Probably because companies lobby against it. And while conservative families may want better healthcare, they're not going to get it as long as they vote for Republican politicians. Or moderate Democrats for that matter, because they're really not so different when it comes to corporate lobbying. If you want actual representation, you first need to change the system.
- dan_mctree 5y ago
  For some reason both Republican and Democrat politicians seem more economically right-wing and more corporatist than either of their bases. I wonder if that's a natural consequence of the giant part of the voter base that feels obligated to vote for one of the two parties for social/tribal reasons alone. Without these voters pressuring their parties to align more with them in economic terms too, the effect of corporate pressure may be felt more strongly by politicians, leading to a drift to corporatism.

mmaunder 5y ago

Most are selling hours or expressing the intent to, as reflected in the articles data. If your are damn good, they sell themselves. If you’re not, you are going to regret transferring the risk of landing and retaining customers onto yourself from an employer. What I’m most interested in is what proportion are working to create a business that scales up. IP creators, manufacturers, service businesses, products. Those are the job creation machines that our entire economy will benefit from.

iancmceachern 5y ago
Yes, the rest is just consulting (spoken with love as I am one)
schnevets 5y ago
Given the past year's move towards remote work and knowledge workers migrating away from big cities, I'd be very interested in how "scalable businesses" adapt. Not every emerging need can be met by a remote-only companies, cool things are going to happen when these trends collide (smaller cities becoming entrepreneurial hotspots, lean companies that attend to more niche markets, unique managerial agreements, etc.)

hanniabu 5y ago

Any good resources on how to start freelancing from the business side? That's what always held me back, the anxiety of being up either seeing up the structure or filing/accounting wrong and a cascade of issues and headaches following me because of that.

asdff 5y ago
Find a good tax professional in your area.
tixocloud 5y ago
What resources are you looking for in particular? There are plenty that apply to freelancers/consultants that would apply with a quick Google search. Ideally, it would be useful to setup a corporation to limit personal liability and keep your finances/accounting organized (I.e. use 1 account for everything, keep track of key dates to file things, keep a log of all finances, schedule time for admin)
iancmceachern 5y ago
I dont have any links but I'd be willing to help you.

asdff 5y ago

Employers are finally starting to get bitten for squeezing labor. Even highly compensated people suffer from being squeezed. Working long hours. Not being given the resources needed. Working outside your job description. Being asked to stay late again and again. Constant anxiety about deadlines and not having physically enough time to get the job done. Not having enough time to get everything done at home since you are spent from the workday. It's like, if there is so much demand for labor, why not hire more hands? Even if you are paying more out of payroll you are getting a better rested, more engaged, less mentally disturbed labor pool for your dollar, one that's not looking desperately at linkedin for an escape route from the hell you've created. I guess the question is whether or not employers will actually balk and start to offer better conditions, or collectively decide that they can get away with staying put with the status quo since people need to eat and afford shelter and they can get away with hiring more naive recent grads and having high turnover seemingly indefinitely.

deleted 5y ago

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jcims 5y ago

I didn’t navigate the paywall but may have the gist from the comments. One thing that i don’t see mentioned is that this route can help people that have a criminal record get back in the game. I took over running a small consulting firm for a bit over ten years and aside from the DoD and one bank, nobody ever asked for background checks of our employees.

askonomm 5y ago

Been a contractor for around 3 years now working remotely for start-ups and it's the best thing ever. No bullshit algo/whiteboard interviews, no having to lie about believing in the company "mission", much more flexibility over how much do I actually work, in whatever terms I work. Good luck pitching to a regular company that you want to only work in chunks of 2 or 4 weeks, and then take 2 week breaks in-between, which is what I can do now. Also, in general, you are treated as an equal and not as a subordinate, which is very nice.

alex504 5y ago
Hi, I am very interested in doing this. I am wondering if you have any advice for making the switch from full time? I know that my resume and experience are what these companies are looking for but I don't have a very good network and have found it harder to find companies than with FT work. Cheers Alex
- askonomm 5y ago
  Open source work has helped me a ton. I'm active in the Clojure community and create open-source projects, as well as collaborate with other Clojurians every now and then, which builds credibility. My Github and references is 90% of my "sales". So once I had credibility, and my references prepared (they will always ask for references), I started contacting start-ups in the Clojurians Slack channel, and elsewhere where I found Clojure start-ups. The difference was that from the very beginning I communicated myself as a contractor, and not as a potential employee. Start-ups are pretty open to contractors, and part-time contractors, I've found. Probably because we mostly bill by the hour, and they don't have to pay any employee-related taxes on us, so they don't really lose anything with that. They pay for the work we actually do, and we get paid for the work we actually do. I don't know if this helps at all, but feel free to hit me up for more details if you want, my contact info is on my profile :)
- davzie 5y ago
  Hey. I actually started a YouTube channel specifically for this. I started freelancing and contracting around 10 years ago and found it really hard to understand how to approach everything so I’m basically spewing off my thoughts on that process and the things I’ve learned over the last 10 years. It’s a bit UK specific but the general mindset and lessons will still be relevant: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFreelanceSoftwareShow https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFreelanceSoftwareShow

mempko 5y ago

This may confuse many HN folks but everyone being their own boss is what socialism is really about. Getting away from wage labor was always a goal. But if you follow the media, they will tell you it's about big government. I suggest people read about Democracy at Work and Richard Wolf's work.

visarga 5y ago
In what country has this enlightened socialism been proven to work? In my opinion socialism cares more about who's winning at class struggle than people themselves, putting ideas/ideology over real life and long term economic growth. We all know it's bullshit because of the high level of government corruption and general impoverishment of population, they talk big ideals while suppressing dissent. When you're hungry and turn on the TV and it says you're living the golden age you kind of develop a sense for bs.
- Majestic121 5y ago
  Nordic countries are usually an example of socialism working well : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model > The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden).[1] This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining[2] based on the economic foundations of social corporatism,[3][4] with a high percentage of the workforce unionized and a sizable percentage of the population employed by the public sector (roughly 30% of the work force in areas such as healthcare, education, and government).[5] Although it was developed in the 1930s under the leadership of social democrats,[6] the Nordic model began to gain attention after World War II. > As of 2020, all of the Nordic countries rank highly on the inequality-adjusted HDI and the Global Peace Index as well as being ranked in the top 10 on the World Happiness Report.[12] If you mean something closer to communism, then I agree with you, but I think socialism is wider than that.
  - mcv 5y ago
    Less successful than the Nordic model but still much better than Soviet Russia, was Tito's Yugoslavia. I'm not an expert on it, but I believe it was big on cooperative ownership by the workers, rather than the state. But I don't think there's ever been a country where everybody was either self-employed or co-owner of their workplace. And maybe it's not even feasible to get there, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea to try to move at least somewhat in that direction. Everybody being completely dependent on massive corporations certainly isn't great either.

hardwaresofton 5y ago

I wonder if seeing articles like these annoys the vast majority of people (underrepresented on HN of course) who are not comfortable enough with their finances or in life in general to do something as risky as this. This narrative of people quitting jobs en-masse is great fodder but just doesn't seem to come out in the numbers[0]. Is it that office work is just such a small percentage that it wouldn't show up? Are people who are quitting their jobs to drive for Uber or other such gig-economy jobs being counted (in my opinion they shouldn't be)? [0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=JbGZ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=JbGZ

black_13 5y ago

Parrot droppings

ab-dm 5y ago

I've been my own boss for ~ 7 years. 2 of those as a contractor, the other 5 as a SAAS founder. I've been able to take any day off I want, but I have NEVER been able to switch off. It took me about 4-5 years to finally be relatively OK with it. Annual leave is far better. I've taken a bit of a "holiday" this year by taking a full time role for ~8 months and it's been a great opportunity to recharge and work with amazing people that are much smarter than me, but I'm already feeling the pinch to go back and do my own thing. Having said all of the above, I'm very lucky that I'm 10+ years in the software industry and I've always got the option of a great full time role to fall back on. All in all, so far I'm not sure it was worth it. I wouldn't have been as successful and fulfilled if I kept my full time role, but I'd be a hell of a lot happier.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I know what you mean. My support demands are quite low and just 9 to 5 and Monday to Friday but I can never completely switch off. I'd like to go on holiday without a phone and laptop. Having said that I've never had the same level of autonomy in previous jobs. This has outweighed all the downsides.
mtVessel 5y ago
Did I read this right? You took a full-time job as a "holiday" from the stresses of being your own boss? I guess the grass truly is always greener.
- ab-dm 5y ago
  Yep, and it's been great!

jimt1234 5y ago

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." I feel like it's the best of times to be in business for oneself. The ease of access to customers and services blows my mind compared to, say, 20 years ago. However, I also feel it's the worst of times because of the high cost of health insurance. I've met countless smart, talented people that aborted business plans when they saw the high cost of health insurance. (I also find it odd that the article doesn't mention that. :shrug:) I guess the best strategy is to marry someone with good health insurance. ;)

ThinkBeat 5y ago

We have a giant jump in the number of new businesses now. A majority of them are more spontaneous and less well conceived by people with much less experience with all aspects of running your own business. I read that there have been several 100.000 of new business registered. All of those will have to try and climb on top of each other to be heard. Let us say that 1000 new mobile dog grooming business have been started in Denver. They all need a van and equipment. There are already 100 mobile dog grooming businesses, some do very well with an established clientele, a known name, and organic growth from happy businesses. Others do not. How will all the new dog groomers be heard? Who will be inventive enough or rich enough to hire someone, to create a solid and successful marketing campaign? Traditionally on average 20% of new business fail within the first year. (Depending on type of business, some fail more often than others). I predict we will see solid increase how many businesses fail. A lot of people will lose their savings. Unless something drastic changes a lot more will be without health insurance. Within 6 months to 2 years there will be a horde of people who wish to return to being an employee of an established business, while being worse off financially. I hope I am wrong. (All numbers used about dog groomers are made up. Pure fiction)

jaypeg25 5y ago
Looking at the chart toward the top of the article, I couldn't help but get a similar feeling. A huge spike of self employed workers in the early 2000's that preceded the crash and Great Recession. I'd be curious to see statistics on what these self employed workers were doing in 2004-2007, but I assume many of them got into the idea of flipping houses? Either way, I worry that in a few years time we'll see a market correction of all these self employed workers and I wonder what its impact will be. Will they just go back to corporate life? Will it even be that easy to do so?
PeterisP 5y ago
There's lots of money to be made there - in your examples, the people selling used vans (and then re-buying them cheaply from new companies going out of business), and the internet megacorps selling advertising to all the dog groomers trying to be heard. In a gold rush, most of the miners get nothing, but the people selling shovels can have a good business.

MrDresden 5y ago

Just... be aware of the survivorship bias in these kinds of articles. I've been planning to go solo for more than a year. I've been saving up, and working on validating my ideas on the side while still working a full day job. Most startups/entrepreneurs fail, so plan for that eventuality. And delay quitting that day job as long as possible. I've obviously only gotten this advice from other sources and not from personal experience, so be skeptical... ..and remember the survivorship bias in everything you read about this topic.

phasersout 5y ago
I've saved enough money to wither a bad year or two before I went solo. Takes the anxiety and makes for a good night sleep, even if there is no immediate job lined up...
AussieWog93 5y ago
If you can, dip your toes in the water before jumping in. I run an eBay store that makes around $20k a month and is still growing, but it started as a side gig while I was still working (making less than 5k a month, but I was only working on it for maybe 8-10 hours a week). Actually validating your ideas before fully committing is a great way to minimise risk and avoid procrastination.
- altdataseller 5y ago
  Nice, what are the gross/profit margins of an eBay store? Know it depends on what you sell but always interested in launching one.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >Nice, what are the gross/profit margins of an eBay store? For us (retro games), it's about 50% overall. Of course, this varies greatly from product to product. Interestingly, most of our higher value products tend to also be higher margin. We've increased revenues significantly by focussing more energy on getting promotions right for said high value, high margin listings. >Know it depends on what you sell but always interested in launching one. Then do it. Buy something undervalued from Facebook Marketplace and flip it, or import a small batch of a product with low local competition from Alibaba. You can optimise from there, but starting small is absolutely a great way to learn the ropes. Worst case scenario, you've lost a couple of hundred bucks and learned a valuable life lesson.

clement_b 5y ago

Considering tech workers only. If a substantial number of them moves from employment to self-employment, being someone's boss may become a better deal. If this trend is systemic: - The value of workers willing to be employed will increase, even more so in specific fields. Whatever the current compensation (dollars, flexibility,...), it's going to get better. - As this happens, some organizations won't accept to pay a premium for their existing pool of candidates and will expand their horizon to (finally) hire previously ignored populations. - Freelancing platforms will get even busier, and finding work will get harder and harder—especially now that these new self-employed workers compete with the entire world and not with other business units and colleagues. Many will come back from it. - When they do, their old job won't be available anymore. Getting a new one will be stressful due to the increased competition from all the disgruntled self-employed coming back and the increased pool of cheaper candidates now preferred by employers. I've personally made the employed → self-employed move about 3-4 years ago, and back. Although there are clear benefits to being self-employed, there are also clear ones to being a full-time employee (maybe this is more the case in Europe where I'm based, though). So, I can see why people make the move given the current context, but I can also see why a huge chunk will realize being your own boss is not necessarily as good as it sounds.

mcv 5y ago
I made the switch to self-employed in 2012. Then back to employment last year, during the Covid lockdown. And recently back to self-employed again. On the whole, I prefer the freedom of being self-employed, especially in regard to time off; I take take as much or as little time off as a want, whereas in employment, I'm limited to what my contract allows. Of course I can buy extra or have them paid out, but it's really the extra bureaucracy of working for a company that I dislike. Working for myself is easier. But another big difference I noticed is compensation: employment was a massive pay cut. And this seems consistent with previous experiences; Dutch employers just don't want to pay that much for software engineers. As a freelancer, it's easy to make 50% more. It's not an easy comparison because I also have to pay more taxes, save up for my own retirement, pay my own disability and other insurance that's normally taken care of by the employer, but even then, the difference is stark. If more people becoming self-employed means more employers will raise developer and other salaries, that would be awesome.

intricatedetail 5y ago

Some governments lobbied by big business smear self employment as a way of avoiding taxes. In my country they restricted service based business with revenue tax (over 50% effective) and no ability to claim expenses. The legislation is so complex, corporations avoid buying services out of fear of getting a fine and business goes to big corporations that provide workers on demand. It's funny that these big corporations are actually involved in tax avoidance, but corrupt government say nothing about that. So far at least 35% quit self employment as it is pointless.

mshanu 5y ago

Most of the organisations expects their employee to demand than being offered. Take promotion for that matter, how many organisation have the culture of offering without demanding

lou1306 5y ago

A recent article [0] draws an interesting comparison with the aftermath of the Black Death in England. Briefly, peasants just refused working the aristocracy-owned fields. No matter the (harsh) countermeasures, the situation just never went back to the pre-plague levels. As a result, the aristocracy had to sell some of the fields to the richer farmers, resulting in a much strenghtened middle class. [0] https://prospect.org/labor/great-escape-why-workers-quitting-pandemic-trauma/ https://prospect.org/labor/great-escape-why-workers-quitting... via https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/29/ordinance-of-labourers/ https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/29/ordinance-of-labourers/

foxhop 5y ago
Bill and Melinda's Trust has locked up the majority of farm land in USA. The peasants are screwed. The middle class is gone. People think more monoculture with machines is the answer. Technology will never supplant nature, but it might cause a collapse & reboot. You can't eat AI, you can't eat a digital twin market model. Local food economy is the real economy.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  >Bill and Melinda's Trust has locked up the majority of farm land in USA. source? https://newspunch.com/billionaire-globalist-bill-gates-suddenly-becomes-americas-biggest-owner-of-farmland/ https://newspunch.com/billionaire-globalist-bill-gates-sudde... This article says the Gates' or their foundation might have a few hundred thousand acres, but the USA has orders of magnitude more farmland. https://stacker.com/stories/1578/states-most-farmland https://stacker.com/stories/1578/states-most-farmland
  - jd3 5y ago
    I remember reading about this on HN earlier in the year — according to LandReport, "[t]he cofounder of Microsoft and his wife rank as America’s largest private farmland owners." https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/ https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farml... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779681 I think the gotcha here is that they rank as the largest /private/ farmland owners, not the largest singular owner of farmland (including corporate farming conglomerates). I think this story went "viral" through this BusinesssInsider article from May 2021. https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-land-portfolio-biggest-private-farmland-owner-in-america-2021-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-land-portfolio-bi...

pythonbase 5y ago

So if everyone become their own bosses, who's gonna work for them?

synergy20 5y ago

The question is really about *medical insurance*, if anyone(including his/her spouse and children) can buy a reasonable priced health insurance without a big company employer, we can all be our own bosses. until then, it's more like a gamble if you want to fly alone.

Invictus0 5y ago

Economic boom leads to increase in entrepreneurship. News at 11.

alecbz 5y ago

Something that keeps me from wanting to work for myself is how much I think I value/need to be working with other people. Both just as a form of social interaction, because my work is important to me and thus naturally I find I can connect well with people I work with, but also because I find a lot of my motivation and energy often comes from being a part of a team. As I write that it's kinda weird in that socially I feel very much like an introvert (social interaction is very valuable to me but it does "use up" energy), but I guess I'm a "work extrovert"?

black_13 5y ago

Wsj and many of the types on this place live in their own universe. How is someone working in say warehouse or nabisco plant going to quit there job to become there own boss? This is a dangerous fiction.