Re: The fear of "Too Late"

[Enail]

I was more asking on the comparison between the two.

On the surface, working for myself and being my own boss sounds awesome, but under the surface, I actually need something that people will pay for, will have to constantly try to find new work at worst, have to handle taxes and all that stuff. That sounds like a lot more work, and a lot less do-able.

It's also being framed as a choice between "you could do this or that" when I don't think I have anything either choice would want anyways.

For self-employment, at least, you'd have to develop some in-demand skills. But formal education is often less important and many skills well-suited to freelance work are things you can teach yourself pretty conveniently. Taxes can be a little complicated for the self-employed, but not so complicated you couldn't learn what you need to pretty easily (or pay someone to do them if you're earning enough). Finding new work does involve a certain amount of hustle, which you might find hard, but depending on the field, that may be something you'd largely do online, which lets you play on your strength at written communication.

So you have to pay thousands of dollars for a report card to make it easy on employers? :p

Something like  Employers want to hire someone who makes their life easy, so you make it easy for them to hire you. It does also function similarly to experience, giving you a lot of general skills that translate fairly well to the working world.

[bomaye]

Maybe I should've gone into thousands of dollars of debt way back in the day just to get that report card then

I think you are getting ahead of yourself a bit. You need to decide whether or not you are going to aim for a job that requires prior training or one that does not (eg. service industry, janitorial, food service). Then decide if you would prefer working for someone else or working for yourself. Both options have challenges and both have benefits.

Yuuuuuuupppppp

[Enail]

It's still an option.

[reboot]

I have only been self-employed from a labor law view (contractor or subcontractor with large national and international development groups), so only have second hand knowledge of what it is like. My impression is that it can be pretty stressful if you are trying to support yourself/your family because success or failure rests solely on you and your ability to attract business and everything ends up being your responsibility (e.g. scheduling, taxes, insurance, legal issues). Your hours tends to be longer than for those employed by others but more flexible since you put them in whenever you can.

Working for other people offloads some of that responsibility in exchange for autonomy. I have had great bosses, good bosses, competent assholes, OK bosses, nice but incompetent bosses, and (in my current position) an incompetent asshole. The impact of a bad boss (here defined as incompetent asshole) depends on your experience level, your duties, and your ability to hop jobs. It is worse if you are early career and have fewer options because not only do you have to put up with them, you learn less because they are incompetent. Competent assholes may not be a pleasure to work with, but at least you learn something.

Job type also dictates a lot. Lower valued jobs like service industry, retail, assembly line, adminustrative work, etc are stricter on scheduling while professional level are more flexible (e.g. work 8 hours somewhere between 7am-6pm, if you leave early make up hours another day). However, professional level jobs can eat into your off work time and weekends, especially if they are project based rather than service based.

[bomaye]

I have only been self-employed from a labor law view (contractor or subcontractor with large national and international development groups), so only have second hand knowledge of what it is like. My impression is that it can be pretty stressful if you are trying to support yourself/your family because success or failure rests solely on you and your ability to attract business and everything ends up being your responsibility (e.g. scheduling, taxes, insurance, legal issues). Your hours tends to be longer than for those employed by others but more flexible since you put them in whenever you can.

I think the cons would far outweigh the pros. I don't plan on having a family of my own, I have kind of a thing where if I suddenly have even a tiny bit of money I'm not trusting someone else with access to my wallet so I think that kind of tanks the long-term prospects for any kind of relationship. That would leave just taking care of myself, which if it's just me, I can easily fall into states where that shit just don't matter. I think I'd take self employed as in running my own business or finding my own freelance work off the options.

Working for other people offloads some of that responsibility in exchange for autonomy. I have had great bosses, good bosses, competent assholes, OK bosses, nice but incompetent bosses, and (in my current position) an incompetent asshole. The impact of a bad boss (here defined as incompetent asshole) depends on your experience level, your duties, and your ability to hop jobs. It is worse if you are early career and have fewer options because not only do you have to put up with them, you learn less because they are incompetent. Competent assholes may not be a pleasure to work with, but at least you learn something.

I tend to value competence more than anything else and believe things operate from the top-down. I think about it a bit more and this one kind of worries me a lot less.

Job type also dictates a lot. Lower valued jobs like service industry, retail, assembly line, adminustrative work, etc are stricter on scheduling while professional level are more flexible (e.g. work 8 hours somewhere between 7am-6pm, if you leave early make up hours another day). However, professional level jobs can eat into your off work time and weekends, especially if they are project based rather than service based.

I guess the pro to the "being on someone else's schedule" con is that there are eventually going to "fuck off, leave me alone" days. Self-employed/freelance/whatever feels like the weight will always be on the shoulders because you're on your own time all the time.

[reboot]

It is definitely a trade off. For me, given the financial instability of my background and lack of a family safety net, I picked being an employee. I could do full time contracting and make a lot more money, but the trade off of having off and on work and not having a home (since I would be moving around overseas) was not worth it to me. However, I am also in a position where I can call in to work from home or take leave pretty easily. On my "off" days I usually just work on mindless tasks that need to be done but I never get around to (e.g. cleaning my desk, renaming files in a standardized manner, reading all the reports that are FYI/background info)

[celette482]

I played around with the idea of self-employment for awhile. some of my majorest concerns (access to employer health care) wouldn't be an issue in Canada. That safety net Reboot is talking about is crucial- I wouldn't have even considered it at all if Mr. Celette didn't have a super stable job so that my income could be variable and without benefits.

It requires a LOT of self-discipline. A lot. Both to keep yourself motivated and to know when to stop. The people I know who are self-employed work harder and longer than anyone else, often because they feel like they can't stop working and their free time could be monetized.

It sounds from other posts that you want to be able to turn off and return to your life when you aren't working. That's the joy of having a boss, particularly in the sort of field where you don't get called in. Lots of profession-professions have an expectation (at least in the US, probably in Canada too) that you're always on-call, and it's somewhat crappy.

[bomaye]

I played around with the idea of self-employment for awhile. some of my majorest concerns (access to employer health care) wouldn't be an issue in Canada. That safety net Reboot is talking about is crucial- I wouldn't have even considered it at all if Mr. Celette didn't have a super stable job so that my income could be variable and without benefits.

It requires a LOT of self-discipline. A lot. Both to keep yourself motivated and to know when to stop. The people I know who are self-employed work harder and longer than anyone else, often because they feel like they can't stop working and their free time could be monetized.

I might be able to summon self-discipline for that kind of thing short-term, but long-term there will eventually be a point where I'll go "Fuck off" to it and probably fall behind on maintaining it.

Monetizing free time sounds like a special circle of hell too

It sounds from other posts that you want to be able to turn off and return to your life when you aren't working. That's the joy of having a boss, particularly in the sort of field where you don't get called in. Lots of profession-professions have an expectation (at least in the US, probably in Canada too) that you're always on-call, and it's somewhat crappy.

What's a "profession-profession"?

[Wondering]

I think she means an office sort of job with a salary (and generally no union), instead of hourly wage jobs, whether in an office or not.

[celette482]

Yes- salaried work. I'm a lawyer, but there's also the expectation for our legal secretaries and paralegals (for example) that they "stick around until the job is done"

That can obviously lead to a lot of abuse, depending on the boss.

But, the distinction is specifically within the American labor law context (salaried jobs/jobs over a certain amount don't get paid overtime, it's complicated)

[Enail]

It depends a lot on the job, though, and the general field. Not all salaried jobs require overtime. A lot of the more "high-powered" or high-paying ones do, but plenty don't.

[bomaye]

Yeahhhhhh, I'm not sure that's for me either. Unpaid work is charity, I'd probably be more likely to make myself as useful as possible, and then give my two-weeks at an important point where it's needed, just to either leverage for better conditions or watch them go up in flames

[reboot]

It is kind of complicated, though, because salaried people are paid more and considered compensated for extra hours through money or benefits, at least in the US. Hourly workers tend to be paid less, but are required to be given overtime if they go over 40 hrs per week. Their work schedules tend to be more rigid and have a greater emphasis on being on time, exact allowed time for lunch, not leaving early. Salaried people have more flexibility in that sort of thing, but are expected to do the hours when needed, so you can come in late, leave early, long lunch, etc as long as you have the work done.

Once again a trade off.

[bomaye]

Oh, benefits.

That's a fair trade-off then.

[Enail]

I do think the 'work overtime' thing varies a lot depending on the job, too, though. At my last job, I was salaried, but worked slightly lower than full-time and was very strict about my hours. Since I was very serious about not having longer hours, I had to be careful I didn't take on more big projects than I could do in the allotted time, which limited my advancement to some degree, but it worked pretty well.

Even in Canada with healthcare, getting an extended health plan can be a huge deal since it can offer drug coverage (or additional drug coverage in provinces that have some coverage), dental and many other things that may not be covered with the basic health plan, like optometry and physiotherapy.

[jcorozza]

Yeah, the job I just started is salaried, and we don't do overtime. If some sort of emergency occurs, and we have to stay late one day, my supervisor will let us come in late the next day to compensate. Another huge benefit that salaried workers get that many hourly ones don't is sick days - I've worked a lot of jobs where being sick either meant I was going to lose money, or go to work sick (I usually went with option 2, which tended to just drag out the sickness because I wasn't taking time of for rest to actually get better).

[reboot]

My current job requires more hours because I am a boss and end up doing a lot of my nonmangerial work after my staff is gone for the day. My staff (all salaried) generally work 40-45 hours a week depending on what is going on. Sometimes we have work on weekends/nights, so I let them take equivalent hours off during the week. They come to work between 7-9 and leave 4-6 depending on start time. I honestly do not pay much attention as long as work gets done and they are at the meetings they are scheduled to cover. The times they work more, we are all working more and then we have downtime where they can work some shorter days.

It depends on the field, the type of job and the size of the business.

[bomaye]

Yepppp, nothing is making it more clear or less anxiety-inducing.

It doesn't help that my sister walked into a job interview with the wrong qualifications and the wrong style of dress and still got a decent paying job out of it.

[Enail]

Doesn't that show that sometimes the criteria aren't as stringent as the job ad makes them sound? That's a good thing, even if it's also creating comparison pressure.

[bomaye]

Sort of. She's a really likeable person and doesn't really worry about too much. The kind of person who just accidentally bumps into good situations.

[Enail]

Maybe when you're at the point of looking for something, if you're not going only for distance work, she can help you practice interviewing?

It sounds like you've run aground a bit. Do you want to maybe sum up what you've got so far, and then we can help you figure out a next step?

[bomaye]

That's kind of the thing, both of her interviews were things that are out of character for me. She showed up to one just kind of as-is without trying too hard, showed up to the other in a huff and was so excitable about talked like she already had the job that the owners hired her.

I'm not an excitable or likeable person like that, especially in stressful situations around people I don't know. What works for her is not going to work for me.

I dunno, I don't think there's much that can help. I don't want a direction because I just want to be left alone, going to school is debt with no guaranteed payoff, and part-time or "wage-slave" style jobs is just an opening to get mocked for it and pile on stress, which is all why I stayed inside for years in the first place.

I'm not well-adjusted enough for this stuff.

[Werel]

Who knows, there could very well be an interviewer out there who's delighted to see an unexcited, unlikeable person walk through the door talking like he's already lost the job.

I don't want a direction because I just want to be left alone

Then it's time to start strategizing survival, like figuring out whether you can actually handle the standard of living that comes with just collecting disability or unemployment for the long-term (dunno how feasible that is in Canada), and whether you can find left-alone ways to supplement whatever income you can scrape up.

FWIW, I'm not convinced there's anything inherently wrong with wanting to just be left alone, but it's pretty difficult to swing in practice.

[bomaye]

Then it's time to start strategizing survival, like figuring out whether you can actually handle the standard of living that comes with just collecting disability or unemployment for the long-term (dunno how feasible that is in Canada), and whether you can find left-alone ways to supplement whatever income you can scrape up.

Even if for some reason I could, I'd never collect disability unless I was actually physically disabled. It's not fair to the people who actually need it.

As I understand unemployment, you actually need employment to build it up first, and I think our government rigged it so that it's hard to collect it if you're just some life-failure like me (which, again, people actually need that too)

FWIW, I'm not convinced there's anything inherently wrong with wanting to just be left alone, but it's pretty difficult to swing in practice.

Yuuuuup.

I'm probably gonna be embarrassed about this tomorrow, I didn't get any sleep last night plus am full of caffeine. Take at least half of what I say with a grain of salt

[Enail]

As I understand unemployment, you actually need employment to build it up first, and I think our government rigged it so that it's hard to collect it if you're just some life-failure like me (which, again, people actually need that too)

If you find you aren't able to work - which, try not to be too quick to decide you can't, there are lots of different things you can try - but if you really can't, then that means you're one of the people it's for. You can call it life-failure if you want to (though I recommend against it ) but everyone deserves to be able to live.

I'm probably gonna be embarrassed about this tomorrow, I didn't get any sleep last night plus am full of caffeine. Take at least half of what I say with a grain of salt

Get some rest and let us know what you're thinking about it tomorrow, then. Things rarely look their best on no sleep and caffeine.

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