The employee mindset is disempowering; TL;DR don't be an employee
Quote from Transitioned on April 24, 2022, 9:12 pm100% and the nasty part about free lancing in particular they never tell you is that 50% of your time is spent trying to gain or understand clients ie non. billable
Yep, true that.
Basically, you take your own main expertise and then split it into three:
- Salesman
- Account manager
- Your own expertise
Of course sometimes it's still the best choice for someone, but most certainly not always
Yes, Lucio my profession is one of those, you are right. I never thought about it.
However, it depends on your work setting. I work in a university hospital (less autonomy) in paediatrics (less autonomy because it's kids) as a resident physician (less autonomy). So if you work in a community hospital in adult medicine as an attending physicians you definitely enjoy more autonomy than I do.
It's true that sometimes I tend to forget that the corporate world is also very hierarchical and there is plenty of micro-managing there as well.
Got it, fair points, John.
Can't compare, but I would guess -and may certainly be wrong- that you're still above average in autonomy and self-direction than the average of all salaried work.
Taking Ali out of context from this thread to make a point.
This is one of my main reasons for preferring entrepreneurship and/or solo work:
Quote from Ali Scarlett on April 24, 2022, 10:27 pm
- My father (who is the head of the company) wanted me to refrain from saying anything to her because he was afraid we'd lose her as a client if we did: so, compared to her walking away and bearing the responsibility of having secretly gone against my father's wishes, this was a fairly green outcome to me.
When it's your thing, you can say "fuck it, I'll lose the customer, but I'm not going to take shit".
You may even go extreme and say "I'd rather sleep under a bridge than take shit".
But if you have an employer, most of them (some exceptions may apply) the message is: you eat that shit up and make the customer happy.
A second similar issue I had when doing sales in startups is that you'll often have to wade into a very grey area of persuasion and "truth bending".
When you have a buggy product and zero customers, or when you're one customer away from bankruptcy, then... You may be forced into situations you don't want.
Bending those truths was something that I never liked.
And doing it for people I didn't respect was the proverbial insult over injury.
That's a very interesting a topic.
On one hand, I agree with all of you that there are shades of grey and exceptions. I also believe that you can be an employee and display high levels of proactivity and personal development, I have personally met such people. On the other hand, I would also say from experience that this is more rare than common.
Let's take the concept of locus of control:
- If you have an external locus of control, you believe that what happens to you is the result of luck or fate, or is determined by people in authority.
- If you have an internal locus of control, you believe that you’re in full control of the events in your life.
My guess is that employees have on average a more external locus of control as compared to entrepreneurs, which seems to be supported by research. And this makes sense, as believing you're in control of your life will make you more prone to take risk, do what you want as opposed to what other people tell you to do, and also probably more ambitious.
leaderoffun wrote:
Is it safe to assume that employees are less well-developed than anyone who is independent (an entrepreneur)?
Well, I am as biased as you as I am also an entrepreneur. But I would say that this ability to develop an internal locus of control seems to coincide with some stages on psychological development scales such as Spiral Dynamics (stage Orange). Nonetheless, I believe it's very difficult to be a successful entrepreneur without having developed an internal locus of control.
On a side note, I also believe that young men nowadays are growing more entitled, neurotic and less industrious on average than previous generations which to me sounds like a global increase of external locus of control. This could be related to testosterone levels in men nowadays being significantly lower than from 1 or 2 generations ago.