Sick And Tired Of My Job: Working For Yourself vs. Working For Someone Else

I’ve been thinking about being self-employed a lot lately.

Since I’ve been acquiring an online education with the folks at Wealthy Affiliate, the prospect of being my own boss seems more attainable than ever. And it couldn’t come soon enough. I am quite sick of working for someone else’s dream.

What does it mean to work for myself, though? Is it really better to not be associated with a corporation? Or is it better to just suck it up and deal with the crap at work?

I think these are just some of the important questions we need to ask ourselves when we are aiming at self-employment.

The truth is, there are pros and cons that need to considered with both ways of making a living. We must think about these things critically. I’ve listed some important points to consider.

Working For Yourself

Yes! Waking up whenever you want. Taking time off whenever you want. No boss to answer to! No annoying coworkers that you have to tolerate!

You get to express yourself however you want. Endless personal freedom.

It seems like every employee’s dream.

It makes you think, though. Is it really possible to have complete freedom, and also make a living?

I’ve come to the conclusion that people who work for themselves have to hustle even harder than those that work for a company.

Let me explain. When you work for a company, you are placed into a hierarchy in which you fulfill your specific role within it. That means you don’t have to worry about accounting, you don’t have to worry about human resources, you don’t have to worry about managing your coworkers, you don’t have to worry about the company logo and advertisement, and so on.

These are a lot of things that don’t have to be thought about, but you still get paid a pay check, whether or not those other things get done.

Mind you, if you do work for yourself, and if it’s in the field of something like, say, online marketing, there won’t be all those departments anyway, but there will still be responsibilities that need to be considered. A lot of these responsibilities are not considered until you really think about what it is like to be making a living with your own business.

But the main responsibility that we must take in consideration when we work for ourselves is “quality of work”.

You have to be your own boss

Having no boss to answer to is nice, but that also means we must be honest to ourselves about how well we are doing. If you think about it, that’s one of the things your boss does (if you have a reasonable boss, and not a tyrant, in which case you’re getting unnecessarily oppressed).

When you work for your boss, in a company, you are afforded the chance to slip in your efforts, and he will be there to let you know that you need to get things together.

Every time you do something that is not up to speed, like come in late, not giving your best effort, or missing too many days of work, your boss is there to let you know and help you correct that behavior.

Whereas if you are working for your own company, that lack of quality will ultimately destroy your business if you do not have the self-awareness to detect it.

Or, if you are trying to attain self-employment by building up a company, you might never get to that point at all because of your lack of self-honesty.

There is a reason why so many small businesses fail! I believe that one of the major reasons is that people do not know how to hold themselves to a high standard.

In reality, learning to lead ourselves might be more difficult than answering to a superior. This is something to consider when thinking about being self-employed.

Along with judging our quality of work, a boss also ensures that we follow a plan that is beneficial for us and for the company as a whole. This takes a lot of the pressure off of making the right choices. In fact, we do not really need to make too many choices at a job.

We only need to do a good job in what is assigned to us.

Yes, being told what to do sucks. But do you know what needs to be done and for what reasons? That needs to be addressed before we can move to being our own boss.

Working for someone else

Working for a company that someone else owns. Yes, there are a lot of things you don’t control. There is even a level of oppression to it.

We must conform to the culture of our work places and sometimes even have to avoid talking about certain things. Sounds like a boring and complicated time. Jobs can be soul-sucking to say the least.

Although, hear me out, there are benefits.

The first thing is: security.

You get benefits, and you also get free perks that come with whatever your job is related to.

A lot of the upper level management, where all the real headache is, is also taken care for you. And when things fail, you barely hear a peep about it.

So yes, you do get somewhat oppressed at work, but at the same time, the oppressive hierarchy also takes care of you. It keeps all that chaos at bay, while giving you a steady pay check and only asks for your obedience and loyalty.

Taking that security for granted

Unfortunately, being stuck in a situation where you work for someone else is kind of like being an adult that lives with his parents for too long.

We never quite learn how to fend for ourselves, and in the case of being self-employed, learn how to lead ourselves.

There is something invigorating about self-discipline, and having vision for your own life. Whereas, when we follow orders to fulfill a vision that we did not participate in creating, there is a certain zombie-like state that possesses us.

Resentment might even rise because we seem to be taking action for no reason other than because “the boss said so”. The person with the vision, and the higher ranked employees who embody this vision will always get paid more, while the employee who fulfill just a role in this vision will always wonder why they do all the “work” but get paid pennies to the dollar.

Resentment arises.

This paradigm of thinking is prevalent in the employer-employee relationship. Those with the vision, and self-motivation towards achieving this vision, will always reap greater rewards than those that need to be constantly motivated by a “carrot” (pay check).

You can argue that the whole free enterprise mindset that the west was built upon was so that we can progress from a state of employee: lost, and being taken care of, to the state of entrepreneur: where we have a vision for our self and using self-discipline, work towards it.

If you know what it takes, you can choose

Maybe if you fully realize what it will take to be self-employed, you might actually make the decision to just move up the ranks of a corporation or learn a highly paid skill and work for a company that values that skill.

After a lot of time thinking about entrepreneurship, it’s really starting to seem like it isn’t cut out for everyone. Of course, I believe everyone has the potential to start their own business. But, is it the best possible decision towards making a living? That’s a tough question that we all need to answer for ourselves after careful self-analysis and critical thinking.

The corporation will oppress us and we will sacrifice individuality for security. Is that security worth never learning independence and developing the grit that it takes to fend for yourself in the entrepreneurial world? What if we’re not capable of being that gritty? What if the lack of security causes too much anxiety? These are tough questions we have to ask before deciding which path to pursue.

I hope this article gave you some food for thought. Obviously, if you are thinking about working for yourself, that means there is something that attracts you towards that lifestyle.

Just don’t underestimate the price you will have to pay to achieve it.

Let me know in the comments what you think of these points I’ve made and if there are more points you are taking into consideration! I’d love to hear from other future entrepreneurs!