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Comment by georgieporgie | Hacker News Reader

What is the difference? I am having a little trouble drawing the distinction.

Employment means you are employed. If you start a company, you are an employee of said company ("self-employed" is a misnomer if you have a corporation). "A project," implies that there is not a company, otherwise you would say that you started a company. "A project," does not constitute employment.

You can talk about edge cases of pet projects making sales, but it doesn't change the fact that claiming a project as employment experience is unlikely to get you very far.

Again, I am not saying that people should not work on projects. Just don't confuse projects with employment.

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On a resume, you would state that you worked under "Your Name", and you can elaborate by describing "A project" to stick with generally accepted formatting rules, but in day to day dialog I have to disagree with your assertions.

A project is exactly how I describe what I am working on, whether I am being paid by someone else or if I am paying myself – someone is always paying for your time, even if that someone is you. I'm sure even you would agree that my day job projects are employment.

I believe my question still remains. If not all projects are employment, when does working on a project become employment? What criteria need to be met?

I believe my question still remains. If not all projects are employment, when does working on a project become employment? What criteria need to be met?

I believe I answered that very clearly in my last response. One likely works on projects as part of employment. One may work on projects outside of employment. 'Project' does not imply 'employment' though typically 'employment' does imply 'project'.

If you start a business, you legally become employed by that business. If you work on a project without a business, you have not constituted employment. As for interviewing, even if you start a business and work on a project, with no completed product or sales to speak of, I think you'll still have a difficult time claiming legitimacy.

> One likely works on projects as part of employment. One may work on projects outside of employment.

I guess my confusion in your original response comes from the notion in my belief that all work is employment. Although I do believe I have a little bit of a better understanding of where you are coming from now.

With that said, even when I'm hacking away for fun on purely personal projects, I still consider that an act under the umbrella of my business – which does happens to be a corporation in my case, but it need not be. If the project turns into something that is marketable, it will be sold under my business. That also adds to the confusion of where to draw the line.

Ultimately, I strongly believe the employer is going to be interested in what you have been doing no matter what the circumstances. If it is interesting and applicable to the job, it is not going to matter who commissioned the work or how much you were paid to do it and it is certainly going to look a lot better than a job at McDonalds.

Agreed.

What about when people are employed to work on a project?

It's not a semantic game, contractors are hired this way all the time. Programming skills like most crafts can be applied equally to paid and unpaid work. When you get hired for a programming job, presumably the main concern is whether you can program, which has nothing to do with whether or not you were previously employed to do it (that has more to do with your cashflow situation).

What about when people are employed to work on a project?

Then they are employed. Working on a project without an employer is not employment. Working on contract for an employer is generally referred to as "self-employment" although, technically, if you're operating under your own business, you're an employee of your own business. I really don't understand why HN is so upset by this distinction. Everyone here is perfectly happy to distinguish between "project" and "start-up" but not, apparently, "project" and "employment".

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