The End of Employees
wsj.com
wsj.com
Work in tech as a full time employee at a megacorp or well funded start up and in many ways your value has never been higher. On the other hand some companies are outsourcing entire IT departments.
The same thing has happened in law: attorneys salaries are bimodal, where top law grads moving to corporate white shoe firms start with strong 6 figure salaries and the rest at much lower levels of remuneration.
This bifurcation of society is certainly due to very real economic forces (outsized success for firms addressing a global market), but it absolutely cannot be socially stable in the long term.
No. Global inequality has been decreasing in the past 2 decades. There used to be a bifurcation in income but now there isn't. https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ourwor... (Note that it uses absolute population numbers)
As for a subcontractor, however, I enjoy high mobility. The client sucks? Stick to it until the next release cycle and work for another one the next week. You like working remotely? Look for a full-time client that offers that, or work for multiple who enjoys not having to pay rent for your ass in their offices.
The trick is to find a company, or consortium, which actively seeks clients and offer them services. This means they are constantly "recruiting" and moving people in-between projects. You don't have to be an employee within said company, you just have to be able to bill your hours to said company/consortium. Having my own company allows me to seek clients within the EU as well as overseas, if I wish to work those hours. It also allows me to drive prices higher than average, since I provide the advantage of "disposable workforce". That later part would be an issue, if I wasn't in connection with such company groups I mentioned earlier.
Your mileage may vary. I have to put it forth that I have no desire for kids, or owning my own house, so that removes a lot of stress and monetary obligations. I understand this is not the norm, though I do not understand why. We have it way better with my partner than couples with kids, and our observations over the years enforced our hunch that people generally start families because they have no idea where they want to go in life. So they try new things, which is nice, but maybe they should start with raising vegetables in their gardens, which is a daily, year-around responsibility. You gotta water and check for weeds, invaders every day, no matter how tired you might feel. If you give up two months in because the kale died due to overwatering and you never checking resources online, or the brussel sprouts never started budding because you never checked that in needs sulfur in the ground, well, maybe raising kids ain't for you either.
I disagree with this, and I cite reality as proof: what western governments are actually successfully promoting native procreation? Governments might give some lip-service to native procreation, but they sure don't do much, and as a result, people aren't procreating. Look at Japan for instance: they're in NPG now, so whatever half-hearted attempts the government is making aren't having much of an effect. Even here in the US we'd be NPG if it weren't for immigrants.
What exactly does the government do to promote native procreation anyway? Here again in the US, I sure don't see much. I see 1) a child tax credit that doesn't amount to much if you're not poor, and certainly doesn't come close to making up for the cost of having a kid; 2) different tax treatment for married couples, but while this gives you a small benefit if one partner doesn't work, it ends up being a big penalty if both work. On the other hand, I see: 1) government-run public schools which are an utter disaster, where you can expect your kids to be tormented to the point of suicide; 2) government enforcers arresting parents who let their kids play outside for "child neglect"; 3) astronomical college tuition costs and a student-loan trap; 4) fewer and fewer jobs, meaning you're more and more likely to have your kids living with you well into adulthood and beyond and unable to take care of themselves; 5) astronomical day-care costs so that one partner's entire income is used just so they can leave the kid in day-care while they work; 6) companies which penalize workers and their long-term careers for taking time off for raising kids (which is why people work just to pay for day-care in #5); 7) a horrible and expensive healthcare system where you'll get socked with thousands or tens of thousands in medical bills just for having a single kid, even with insurance; 8) a high possibility of divorce (probably contributed to greatly by all these societal stressors I mentioned above), which would leave one parent struggling to raise the kid(s) by themselves with a single income.
All in all, having kids is a gigantic risk, an enormous expense, and the government isn't helping much with it, and instead is making it much more expensive and risky with its actions (e.g., by giving us a terrible and expensive healthcare system).
I don't know where you live in the EU, but in the Netherlands, where I live, paying mortgage can be as affordable as renting. So, unless you're in the nomad lifestyle, you still gotta pay a fixed monthly housing cost, unless you live on the streets or with your parents. Both options sound terrible to me. So the stable income/expense cash-flow need to be there anyway.
In reality of course you have a dedicated group who have a different company's name on the paycheck. And less interest on either company's success.
It's like the open plan office idea. Great in the academic literature, but terrible in practice.
The open floor plans are terrible in practice, but is there actually any academic literature that says otherwise?
For example:
>...In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction.
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-t...
Contractors aren't necessarily cheaper, but the "more predictable costs" come from fewer regs to follow.