You've read many articles I'm sure about
advantages and disadvantages of working for yourself from your own home. Many of them I've written myself, in fact. But how many articles have you read that give equal time to advantages of working for someone else compared to working for yourself?This article seeks to redress imbalance by comparing and contrasting respective pros and cons of running your own home-based business and working for someone else.
COMMUTING
When you work for yourself from home, your commute is, at most, a few steps from one end of house to other. When you work in a traditional paid "job" your commute may be a five minute drive or it may be an hour and a half or worse. Both ways. That can add up to a substantial chunk of time over course of a week, a month or a year.
CHILDREN
If you work from home, you can be around for your kids. If you work outside home, you may be spending a fortune on childcare if your kids are too young for school and worrying about what they're up to between end of school day and when you get home if they're not.
On other hand, having kids around while trying to run a professional business from home can be a major distraction and constant source of interruption. You may find you need to use childminding services occasionally to take care of business undisturbed.
INDEPENDENCE AND AUTONOMY
When you work for yourself, you call shots, you make decisions and you do it without anyone looking over your shoulder and breathing down your neck. When you work outside home, you are subject to decisions (good and bad), whims and control of your boss. Your boss dictates your regimen.
On other hand, along with decision-making autonomy comes an awful burden. If you get it wrong, you may not make any money this week.
WORKING HOURS
When you work for yourself, you can set your own hours - both actual hours you work and number. When you work for a boss, you work when and for how long you're told (within limits, obviously).
Although setting your own hours may sound like freedom to you, all too often working your own hours translates into working all hours so you need to be able to set limits for yourself.
Also, when your boss dictates your hours, that may or may not fit in with your body clock. One of real advantages of working for yourself is that you can choose to work during your peak concentration time and not at all during your sluggish times of day. If your peak time is 5:00 am through to 10:00 am, you can work those hours and another couple sometime in afternoon catching up on brainless type tasks. If you work for someone else, you work when you're told and if that doesn't work with your body clock, too bad.
STATUS
If you're a professional in paid workforce, you may enjoy a certain status and prestige, if that's important to you. On other hand, working for yourself you may find it difficult to be taken seriously at all. Again, whether that's a relevant factor depends on how important things like "status", "image" etc. are to you. If they are important, take this seriously. Although it may sound shallow, if it's going to be a thorn in your side, give it some serious thought.
BOUNDARIES
When you work for someone else, you have a ready-made structure. There is a time for work, and there is a time to go home. When you work for yourself, these boundaries can become blurred over time, so much so that you may find you have difficulty turning work off since you are, after all, living in your work environment and vice versa.
PERSONAL DISCIPLINE
If you're a personally disciplined person, working from home will probably suit you very well. But if you find it difficult to motivate yourself to do what has to be done and you find yourself procrastinating over starting a particular work- related task, you may find distractions of being at home particularly difficult to resist. If you find yourself doing laundry and gardening when you should be working, this may be a problem for you.
CASH FLOW
This is one of biggies. THE big advantage of working for someone else is that you have a regular paycheck coming in. Leaving aside any worry of downsizing, assuming you do your job competently, you can reasonably expect to receive a certain, known amount of money at regular intervals. When you work for yourself, however, amount of money you make and when you receive it can be, at best, spasmodic.
On other hand, money you make from working from someone else is limited to your salary. When you work for yourself, sky's limit provided you are successful at what you do.
EXPENSES
When you work for someone else, your boss is responsible for capital expenditure and day to day expenses and you don't have to worry about it or even think about it, for that matter. When you work for yourself, however, you're responsible for buying your capital equipment (computer, photocopier, fax machine) and paying for repairs as needed. You're responsible for paying your own electricity and phone bills, printing costs and advertising expenses ... you name it, it falls on you.
BENEFITS
Similarly, when you work for someone else you get to participate in your employer's pension plan, you get paid health insurance and vacations as well as numerous other benefits. When you work for yourself, to get any of these things you have to pay for them out of your own pocket.
RISK MANAGEMENT
Your employer pays for various insurances to protect business unit from risk. The types of insurance taken out will depend on nature of business but will include, at a minimum, products liability, business interruption and like. Again, as a home business owner, you must foot bill for this expenditure.
LICENSES
Your employer is responsible for ensuring that business obtains and maintains all necessary business licenses. If you're boss, this is your responsibility.
VACATIONS
When you're an employee, you get paid vacations. When you're self-employed you don't. And even if you decide to take a couple of weeks off, who's going to run business in your absence? Can you really just walk away for two weeks? In reality, when you work for yourself, true vacations are a thing of past.
