Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

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You’ve read many articles I’m sure about the advantages and
disadvantages of working for yourself from your own home.
Many of them I’ve written myself,Guest Posting in fact. But how many
articles have you read that give equal time to the advantages
of working for someone else compared to working for yourself?

This article seeks to redress the imbalance by comparing and
contrasting the 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 the house to the 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 the 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 the 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 the end of the school day
and when you get home if they’re not.

On the 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 the shots, you make the
decisions and you do it without anyone looking over your
shoulder and breathing down your neck. When you work
outside the home, you are subject to the decisions (good and
bad), whims and control of your boss. Your boss dictates your
regimen.

On the 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 the actual hours you work and the 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 the 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 the day. If your peak time is 5:00 am
through to 10:00 am, you can work those hours and another
couple sometime in the 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 the paid workforce, you may enjoy
a certain status and prestige, if that’s important to you. On
the 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 the 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 the 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, the amount of money you make
and when you receive it can be, at best, spasmodic.

On the other hand, the money you make from working from
someone else is limited to your salary. When you work for
yourself, the sky’s the 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. Trovare lavoro