Self-employment, or the illusion of freedom
libcom.org
libcom.org
The beauty of being self employed and working for multiple clients means that, if you are constantly promoting your skills, you can accelerate your way up the proverbial ladder.
If you get a "real job", you might have an opportunity for a raise or a promotion once every year; 6 months at best.
Working for yourself, you can have that opportunity every day. If your client wants to maintain freedom with you by hiring you as a freelancer, then there's no reason you can't do the same with them. Only committing 10-20 hours a week to a client allows you to do that.
Get a client for $10/hr at 20 hours a week, then start shopping for a client at $15/hr at 15 hours a week. Once you find that, look for a $30/hr client at 20 hours a week. When you find that, dump the $10/hr client and start looking for a $40/hr client.
THAT is how you climb the ladder. And it doesn't just have to be about money - you can substitute money for creative freedom or benefits or working conditions or whatever you're in the labor market for.
This article is a personal account of an office worker in the film industry in France.
Interesting, maybe, but not what you were probably expecting here.
This passage in particular is where it begins to get more general
" The whole “start-your-own-company, be-your-own-boss” racket is heavily pushed by government agencies and all kinds of employers. It was first put forth as a solution to high unemployment unemployment and then, less openly, as a route to cut costs and erode worker solidarity and class consciousness. It relies on people’s underlying hatred of work, personified by the boss, and sells the dream of autonomy by telling people that they can become their own, fake, boss. The reality is different."
But not relevant to the startup world in the few countries I'm familiar with.
I've worked in France. Lovely place, but it's a socialist country with next to no startup culture (note, I was there more than ten years ago). I don't mean "socialist" as a pejorative, except to the extent that it inhibits the startup culture, and even then only for the HN audience.
Just suggesting that many people on HN, reading the title, would have expected a very different and more relevant article.
I don't agree with the characterization of govt and attitudes toward work and bosses in your quoted passage...not in my anecdotal experience, outside of France.
But one truth is clear: working "for yourself" and having "no boss" is almost always just code for having no administrative support and having to please multiple customers with significant, open-ended, and sometimes conflicting demands. Learning to manage these situations is clearly more effort than "getting a job", so it's not attractive or successful for everyone.