Wish you had a job and are not self employed?

[Undirection]

We run our own small company and sometimes its very hard, sometimes it's very good.

The past few weeks we have had 2 relatives staying with us, both are employed and working from home. Neither did much work at all and are on good London salaries. Each one goes into the office 1-2 days a week. One showed me their new mega office in London which looks frankly amazing. The other said yesterday that they didn't have anything to do and other said they had one call for 30 mins and that was it.

Sitting with them in our office, it's hard not think that not having to earn our money and just be an employee seems a damn sight easier than I remember, especially with all the WFH set up.

I've worked in corporates for a long time and while I wouldn't go back, but just seeing how much of an easy life it is is quite deflating.

[TheBinarySheep]

For me, I couldn't be employed again. I love the flexibility and control that being self employed brings.

[dontlookdown]

No doubt that the self employed work harder as a rule, and have fewer perks.

But being able to make your own decisions is v liberating and allows you to actually be an adult. IME many of my corporate clients are full of dependent people in gilded cages with not that much to really do but who have to appear to be v busy, because busy-ness equals status. No wonder they are all so anxious and stressed.

If you are the kind of person who prefers to actually work hard rather than pretend to, and who CBA with brown nosing the boss to get on, then self employment is probably the more compatible option. Has been for me anyway - 20yrs in corporate life and now 6yrs self employed.

[Frimley111R]

dontlookdown said:

If you are the kind of person who prefers to actually work hard rather than pretend to, and who CBA with brown nosing the boss to get on, then self employment is probably the more compatible option. Has been for me anyway - 20yrs in corporate life and now 6yrs self employed.

Same for me but like the OP, sometimes I do envy the employees who just have a day off without a care in the world or do nothing most days and yet get paid anyway.

It took me way too log to work out that in the corporate world hard work isn't enough to progress you. At least if you are self employed it is.

[jdizz]

What you're missing is the years they've put into their job to be in that position, its not like that for everyone, and if you expect to stroll into a job on "London Wages" and WFH with a 30 min call a day, you're very much mistaken.

[krisdelta]

I really enjoyed running my own business for 5 years or so, but IR35 put a pragmatic end to that for my main client base and therefore me. I am enjoying being an "employee" again and I am no less busy than when I ran my own business.

I think there is more opportunity to coast in a big corporate. Obviously, if you do it when running ones own business, it wont last long!

[MattyD803]

"Liberation", "Freedom", "Independence" is all well and good....and as someone who is self employed, that's all true....I certainly don't wish to back to the corporate world any time soon for those reasons alone.....but lets be frank here....what are they taking home each month compared to you?

I don't know what line of work you/they are in, but in Consulting Engineering, its quite normal for someone working as a self employed design engineer outside of IR35 to clear at least twice that of a permie's take home. To this extent, I simply couldn't afford to be a permie, even if I wanted to, hence it is never even a consideration.

Sorry but I am at a point where I only got to work for the money.....not the training, politics or to be a manager signing off timesheets, recruiting people, sitting in board meetings, conducting PDRs etc - I'd never want to drop over half my take home money to go through that BS.

Edited by MattyD803 on Thursday 9th September 09:22

[V8mate]

Undirection said:

We run our own small company and sometimes its very hard, sometimes it's very good.

The past few weeks we have had 2 relatives staying with us, both are employed and working from home. Neither did much work at all and are on good London salaries. Each one goes into the office 1-2 days a week. One showed me their new mega office in London which looks frankly amazing. The other said yesterday that they didn't have anything to do and other said they had one call for 30 mins and that was it.

Sitting with them in our office, it's hard not think that not having to earn our money and just be an employee seems a damn sight easier than I remember, especially with all the WFH set up.

I've worked in corporates for a long time and while I wouldn't go back, but just seeing how much of an easy life it is is quite deflating.

I think there's a huge, undiscussed issue about productivity. I've always been very vocal about the British corporate cancer that is 'middle management', and I think the productivity issue stems from it.

The last 20 years, I've worked almost exactly 50:50 across public and private sector, and there's little difference, IME. I would say that, on average over that period, I've been actively engaged in my work for about 1 day per week.

Back in 2014(?) it got so bad that I leap-frogged my boss and went to the director to have to the following conversation:

Me: Do you know much work I actually do each month?
Dir: No - tell me
Me: About 1 day per month
Dir: Riiiight.
Me: And do you know what I do the rest of the time?
Dir: No..?
Me: I surf the internet

(I had 11,000 colleagues and Pistonheads was the top ranking webpage in the organisation )

Anyway, he said he'd investigate.
Six weeks (yes, six weeks) later, I was summoned to see him (and my boss was present too)

Dir: We've investigated the issue you raised and can confirm that you are appropriately deployed. You can go back to your desk now.
Me: Ok.

jdizz said:

What you're missing is the years they've put into their job to be in that position, its not like that for everyone, and if you expect to stroll into a job on "London Wages" and WFH with a 30 min call a day, you're very much mistaken.

I'm not sure that's the case. My 30-year old daughter - who has been oft-regaled with my tales of earning a top salary to do very little - contacted me a few weeks ago to say that she too struggles to do a day's work each week. She's reasonably well paid - just shy of the 40% bracket - and said that across two employers (both multinational brands), there hasn't be sufficient work for 2-3 years.

[gazza5]

Sometimes I wish I worked for a large organisation, the amount people get paid for every little staggers me, but, if I'm honest, I couldn't put up with all the brown nose bullst etc.

As for all the political correctness etc (oh the stories I have heard to meet diversity quotas etc, names for certain groups of people etc) quite frankly I probably wouldn't last 5 minutes as I simply wouldn't be able to remember all the different names.

[MOMACC]

If you're in a corporate and hold the relationship between the company and the client it can be quite easy to delegate a lot of the work and not have to do too much.

If an account makes the firm £1,000,000 then the £100k salary to do very little is still good value for the business.

A lot of the time, especially relationship management, corporates will be taking clients to events out of normal 9-5 hours, missing weekends with the family etc.

Personally I'd want that person to be involved in more areas of the business / coaching / mentoring if they only have 30 minutes of work to do.

[Simpo Two]

Undirection said:

Sitting with them in our office, it's hard not think that not having to earn our money and just be an employee seems a damn sight easier than I remember, especially with all the WFH set up.

I've worked in corporates for a long time and while I wouldn't go back, but just seeing how much of an easy life it is is quite deflating.

Covid has obviously caused massive upheaval, but if a company is consistently paying staff to do virtually nothing, that is their incompetence. If nothing else it will reduce their profitability.

I know a few people at the lower end of the PAYE scale who certainly do work for their money, some taking work home in the evenings to make up for absentees or lazy/incapable colleagues. You can only blame management/HR.

[Eric Mc]

I would prefer to work hard and earn more for the benefit of myself rather than the benefit of a boss who I most likely don't like or respect.

[ReverendCounter]

V8mate said:

Dir: We've investigated the issue you raised and can confirm that you are appropriately deployed. You can go back to your desk now.
Me: Ok.

Basically your employer is keen to keep you, to stop you from going to a competitor and realising your full potential with them.

It happens in other industries - recording artists have been given deals by labels, purely to stop them from signing to other labels.

[Shnozz]

Frimley111R said:

dontlookdown said:

If you are the kind of person who prefers to actually work hard rather than pretend to, and who CBA with brown nosing the boss to get on, then self employment is probably the more compatible option. Has been for me anyway - 20yrs in corporate life and now 6yrs self employed.

Same for me but like the OP, sometimes I do envy the employees who just have a day off without a care in the world or do nothing most days and yet get paid anyway.

Yep - at times I long for a paid holiday. In fact any holiday as never am I strictly non-reachable. A monthly pay cheque regardless would be wonderful. No additional stress of accounting, VAT returns and all the copious amounts of extra admin you don't have as a PAYE.

Self employment brings a decent degree of freedom, which to me is the big perk. However, I do think its a grass is greener and I look at many friends earning decent wonga for not doing much and lament how I would swap shoes.

[Frimley111R]

Simpo Two said:

Covid has obviously caused massive upheaval, but if a company is consistently paying staff to do virtually nothing, that is their incompetence. If nothing else it will reduce their profitability.
.

IME once a company is nicely profitable no-one cares about people who do nothing. A friend of mine works for a pharma company and the money that gets pissed away on office stuff is ridiculous. To them, it's not real money, its just numbers to them.

[Simpo Two]

Frimley111R said:

IME once a company is nicely profitable no-one cares about people who do nothing. A friend of mine works for a pharma company and the money that gets pissed away on office stuff is ridiculous. To them, it's not real money, its just numbers to them.

Well I suppose at least all those staff earning vast sums to do very little will be paying tax to HM Treasury and spending the rest, thereby keeping the economy going... so those less fortunate can afford £9.35 for a prescription.

Ironic that the pharma companies are loaded whist the NHS is skint... But one is run by the fires of commerce, the other by civil servants, so not surprising I guess.

[Frimley111R]

Just remembered this: I worked for a region of British Gas in the 80s. We had 7,000 staff (12 regions) and got rid of 2,000 staff. One manager remarked that he couldn't tell the difference! He was right, neither could I. 2,000 people not working for the same 'company' and nothing seemed to change. Incredible.

[mmm-five]

I started self-employed work in a temporary role in 1989...I'm still doing it!

The quiet (i.e. not being on a contract) times are worrying, but I usually get a good 3-5 years of solid work which lets me save enough for the quieter times.

Without doubt, there was only ever one company where I thought I'd happily become an employee if the right position came up - at the time it was a privately-owned pharmaceutical with a very customer-focused view and concentrated on under-researched illnesses, they also weren't trying to make a fortune off these products...of course they had to be profitable, and getting a return on development of a drug that was only used 1000 times a year worldwide was never going to be cheap.

But they looked after their staff, had thoughtful development reviews (rather than an up or out approach some had), and were happy for someone to stay exactly where they were if they felt content at that level.

The huge company I'm working at now has so many performance & development reviews that it probably takes each individual a month a year to prepare for them...and then they announce another re-org (we've had 5 in 3 years so far - some departmental, some corporate, some supply chain) that screws up everyone's plans anyway...as one hand does not/cannot speak to the other due to regional legislation on employee consultations.

Have found work through temping agencies, recruitment agencies, social media/linkedin networking, etc., but it's mainly word of mouth now and I get fed up with all the crap coming through linkedin where they'd pick up on a couple of words in your profile (e.g. Oil & Gas industry) and not bother reading the context (e.g. sandwich maker on an oil rig) so would end up asking you to apply for a role in Oil & Gas commodities management.

[anonymous-user]

After running my own business for 20 years I think I'm unemployable.

There's pro's and cons obviously.

We were hit very hard in the last recession and it was the most awful time of my life.

However, I managed to see it through (just). I nearly threw in the towel but the thought of going back to a cooperate horrified me .

Thankfully I have managed to recession proof us (to a degree) and now only work mornings.

[Simpo Two]

digimeistter said:

After running my own business for 20 years I think I'm unemployable.

I should hope so, it means you've been doing it right