Just my personal anecdote. I find it much less tenuous and stressful compared to most jobs. The key may be that I'm doing consulting and not trying to market a

Just my personal anecdote. I find it much less tenuous and stressful compared to most jobs. The key may be that I'm doing consulting and not trying to market a product. Day to day I'm not really a part of the team. If the project ultimately fails I don't have to deal with the aftermath, or the project has already failed by the time I'm brought in and I'm just cleaning up a mess. Regardless, it's not really my neck on the line. It's ultimately the company's fault and I will do my level best to help them, but that's the end of it. Switching to consulting REALLY helped my mental health in this way: If the company makes a bad decision, I don't care anymore. I feel like many (most) employees feel a lot of negative emotion when they believe management is making a bad decision. That's totally gone now. Regarding tenuous, I feel like I have much more job security compared to a regular employee. More people want my time than I have time. So if one of them bails on me, I just go down the list of relationships. In effect, I have multiple "employers." Worst case scenario I just get a regular job somewhere for a few years. If you're a person who doesn't interview well or is otherwise not confident in your ability to go back to a regular job easily I can see why this would be stressful.