Today was the last day of Nokia as we knew it | Hacker News Reader

Today was the last day of Nokia as we knew it

kneeland.me

294 pointssirkneeland101 comments

In the minds of most Finns, Nokia ceased to exist a long time ago.

Not saying that this was not personally significant for sirkneeland, and it's a nicely written piece. For myself, for the past few years, Nokia has ceased to exist a little bit more every day. This is just one more of those days.

Somehow, I feel this is appropriate here:

  The computer center is empty,
  Silent except for the whine of the cooling fans.
  I walk the rows of CPUs,
  My skin prickling with magnetic flux.
  I open a door, cold and hard,
  And watch the lights dancing on the panels.
  A machine without soul, men call it,
  But its soul is the sweat of my comrades,
  Within it lie the years of our lives,
  Disappointment, friendship, sadness, joy,
  The algorithmic exultations,
  The long nights filled with thankless toil,
  I hear the echoes of sighs and laughter,
  And in the darkened offices
  The terminals shine like stars.

– Geoffrey James, The Zen of Programming (1988)

Thank you for the kind words. Yes, my Finnish friends (and thanks to Nokia I have many) have expressed similar sentiments about when Nokia "died" to them. But for me it hit me today, when as I walked out the doors of the office I realized that while I would walk out of the same doors ~24 hours later, I would never walk out the doors of Nokia ever again.

What really struck me, was that for the first time, even though I've read it a thousand times before, was the fact that Nokia had one of those impossible goals.

Connecting people, is somewhat like the Microsoft vision of giving everyone a personal computer. And while there are people in certain parts of the 3rd world that doesn't have mobile phones, I would say Nokia did an amazing job to get a mobile phone into everyone's hands.

My dad worked for Ericsson, so I've never owned a Nokia phone, you were the "evil rivals" after all, but I bow my head to Nokia for what they did, for how many people they connected with mobile phones.

Nokia might not have been the company that profited from SmartPhones, but they were the company that created the market for SmartPhones.

I work for Ericsson - we are now allowed other phones after the partnership with Sony dissolved.. That said, the patent lawsuits related to Samsung have previously interfered with the selection.

I do not know much of how it is now. My dad went to Aastra Technologies 5+ years ago. I did enjoy being one of the first boys in school to get a phone, even though everyone followed up with getting a Nokia 3310 and I was left with the "unpopular" phone.

What an excellent way to ignore valuable input.

If your employees would rather have your competitors product then you need to get to work rather than to forbid them to use it you need to make it so they would prefer to use their own.

Back then, Ericsson (And later, Sony Ericsson) was working really hard to make great phones, as well, and they certainly did. I never felt like I was lacking with my Ericsson phones even if it wasn't the same as everyone else's Nokia 3310.

Just like it's hard to make the new Facebook, it was hard to beat Nokia. Remember, back then, everyone was using Nokia 3310. It didn't just take a better product to become the thing everyone wanted to have, because everyone didn't want a mobile phone. They wanted a Nokia mobile phone.

Nokia was one of the smartphone pioneers with their 770 Internet Tablets. It's hard to understand why they embraced Microsoft when the last product from this line, the N9, was so widely acclaimed and IMHO doomed to succeed.

"There is always a last time for everything."

- Arthur C. Clarke in "The Nine Billion Names of God"

My favorite poem for endings:

  Sometimes I think
  we could have gone on.
  All of us. Trying. Forever.

  But they didn't fill
  the desert with pyramids.
  They just built some. Some.

  They're not still out there,
  building them now. Everyone,
  everywhere, gets up, and goes home.

  Yet we must not
  diabolize time. Right?
  We must not curse the passage of time.

(Jennifer Michael Hecht, "On the Strength of All Conviction and the Stamina of Love")

Hey, that's a very nice piece. Thanks for sharing. This is by the author of several very interesting books of historical criticism, as well.

The Nokia fate will be remembered as hostile takeover. Everything worked out in the favor of Microsoft in the end. Though Windows Phone/Tablet have low market share, a lot lower than expected.

* Stephen Elop the former Microsoft employee (head of the Business Division) and later Nokia CEO with his infamous "Burning Platform" memo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#CEO_of_Nokia

* Some former Nokia employees called it "Elop = hostile takeover of a company for a minimum price through CEO infiltration": http://gizmodo.com/how-nokia-employees-are-reacting-to-the-m...

Lower than expected? Whose expectance? Given Microsofts track record in mobile devices I think no one expected Microsoft to really be able to compete. And given Nokia's track record in smart phones, nobody expected Nokia to be able to push Microsoft up either. But as it is now, it seems they've actually been able to. They've managed to punch a small but significant hole in the Android market, against all odds, by building some truly excellent products.

Who'd have thought Microsoft would some day produce an integrated mobile product that you could prefer over an Apple product without being made out a fool?

From the wikipedia page.

> During Elop's tenure, Nokia annual revenues fell 40% from 41.7 Billion Euros per year to 25.3 Billion Euros per year. Nokia profits fell 92% from 2.4 Billion Euros per year to 188 Million Euros per year. Nokia handset sales fell 40% from 456 million units per year to 274 million units per year. Nokia share price which was at 7.12 Euros on the day Elop was hired, had fallen to 81% to a bottom level of 1.44 Euros two years later, after which it began trading at 4.14 Euros, up 36% on the day. Elop's success in negotiating the sale of Nokia's struggling mobile device business to Microsoft has been described by many securities analysts as a significant victory for NOK shareholders, particularly when viewed in context of failed efforts by Blackberry or HP to secure value for handset business owned by those companies.

I had to reread it 5 times. I am still not convinced. Yes, that last sentence gives me the impression it has the words "significant victory" and "success", but my brain is simply unwilling to accept that as a valid conclusion.

Maybe I should start working in business ...

I'm thinking more "inside job" that ended in a takeover.

Hostile takeovers may be brutal, but at least they are relatively "clean" compared to what Microsoft did. The takeover is not the remarkable part of this story, that was just the endgame.

I'm still surprised this was actually legal. I'm also surprised that the Finnish authorities just let this happen without at least a legal investigation or parliament hearings.

This guy was the chairman of the board at the time. Does it seem like he wouldn't do best for his company and risk national disgrace, all for what must be pennies to him?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorma_Ollila

I believe he genuinely thought it was a good deal for Nokia and MS didn't really do anything but give better terms than Google was willing to give.

I figure how Elop pitched himself was "Let's try something crazy, and hey, we always have a plan B, I have an in at Microsoft." CEOs may have significant power, but they can't just sell the company with no buy in from major shareholders.

True, major Microsoft shareholders were also major Nokia shareholders.

compare http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=MSFT and http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=NOK

Which specific shareholders are you referring to from those lists?

99.52% of votes were cast in favor of the Microsoft acquisition at Nokia's Extraordinary General Meeting on November 19, 2013.

But that's not what makes this a friendly takeover, because shareholders also have to approve hostile takeovers. This acquisition is a friendly takeover because the Board is in favor.

But Nokia was a company that was already starting to falter when Elop came on board. What else could the company have done to survive? Their options seem limited from what we know about the marketplace. They could have release an android phone, but then they just would have been fighting for a piece of the pie that Samsung, Moto, and other phone makers are eating. They could have stayed with their phone OS and probably would have had just about the same fate as picking up Windows Mobile.

Maybe they would have had more sales with an Android phone, but I'm not sure it would have made a bit enough difference to prevent this buyout. Elop set Nokia up to be bought out by being a major windows phone maker. It may have been a better long-term bet than Android.

Fighting for share of the pie in the Android market would have created far more sales than fighting for crumbs of a virtually non-existent pie in the Windows market.

Having said that, I agree with your final point. If you view the whole thing as a setup to extract maximum value via an acquisition, it might make sense. They may have been worth more as a MS acquisition target selling Windows phones than they would have been had they gone down the Android path.

It's entirely possible that neither path would have led to sustainability as a standalone entity.

I think it is safe to say they had at least a slice of Windows Phone leaving the others to fight over the crumbs. With Windows Phone at around 4% of the market Nokia had most of that. The question then is could they have grabbed 5% of the Android market.

Especially due to the name Nokia. If you gave me a choice between Nokia and HTC, I know what I would choose - based purely on reputation

A small correction: They weren't fighting for the crumbs of Windows Phone, they were eating the whole pie (save a small slice for HTC and a tiny sliver for Samsung).

But the "whole pie" in this case was just a few crumbs leftover from Android and iPhone. :)

Release 3310 in smartphone world. With their strong brand they could create another indestructible phone in smartphone era that would sell for $199.

The specs could be weak, as long as it would be easy, durable and fast for regular users.

Nokia 3310 was phone for regular users. Phone that could drop, had few games, allowed you to download some ringtones. Strong battery, good screen, water/shock proof. Put 8GB memory plus one SD slot, some ok-ish processor and 2GB ram (so it wont age after 1 year) + make put really good battery. No ridiculous screen resolutions, fingerprint readers etc - just durable smartphone for regular user.

With specs like that they might break even - but for sure they would steal european and growing APAC regions easy. Once they would get back they would release business versions that would help them to correct their profitability. Its not difficult for such a strong brand like Nokia. I was amazed how Scandinavian way of thinking (simplicity) vanished from the company.

If Nokia could deliver mentioned phone - I would use it for sure.

A lot of companies are trying this, even CAT (known for their excavators, etc) and I would say it's not working very well for them. http://catphones.com/phones/b15-smartphone.aspx

CAT is not Nokia. Nostalgia after Nokia in Europe is HUGE. I know that majority of my friends is vouching for old ways Nokia was doing business and they still believe that if Nokia could create 3310 smartphone way - they would go all in.

I don't think it's possible to roll back the clock like that. Nokia's Windows phones weren't that bad. Very well built, as far as I know. Yet no one bought them, so clearly there's a limit to what the brand alone could carry.

Arguably, one of the companies trying this is Motorola. They are certainly gaining market share (if not immediate profits).

This is a very US-centric view. Other than the US market, Nokia was crushing rivals everywhere. They had amazing repeat buyers, generational buyers, and an almost invincible brand. People didn't give two hoots about Symbian/Meego .. they were buying a Nokia phone !

In my alternate fantasy timeline, I'm currently using an amazingly efficient Meego device which gives me as powerful an environment like Android, in a neat and simple user-interface [1]

[1]: http://swipe.nokia.com/

   >  Nokia was crushing rivals everywhere.

that's just not true,especially in Europe.Mobile is driven by apps and advertisment. And who publish mosts apps and is willing to pay for ads? western countries.I doesnt matter for my business if WP is number one in Brazil(Nothing against Brazil,love it,and i have brazilian origins myself) if it has only 4% shares in the market I want to target ... Doesnt even matter for Microsoft,except for PR reaons. WP is a failure as today,Microsoft knows it.

Would they have done better with Android,hard to say,I think they would.Nokia is a famous ,in Europe for instance, Nokia means robust and quality phones.But we'll never know.

> They could have release an android phone, but then they just would have been fighting for a piece of the pie that Samsung, Moto, and other phone makers are eating

Nokia has never needed a software edge to crush its rivals. They just needed to keep making phones that wouldn't break if you dropped them.

When you already have a massive competitive advantage (Nokia's reputation for making reliable hardware), you don't dive into a niche.

Nokia was really good at competing in big markets. Back when everyone was using their various pre-Android stacks with similar levels of software prowess, Nokia was the biggest phone maker. Because they were competing in the biggest market and doing it well.

Then the market changed to "[Android] phones that are like the iPhone" and Nokia refused to compete in that market, going for the "[Windows] phones that are not like the iPhone"-market instead. And totally dominated it with a 90%+ market share.

But that market was tiny. And Nokia was size-wise geared to compete with Samsung and Apple. Cue massive collapse of business when expenses overtook sales.

Anybody remember these ridiculous predictions from yesteryear: http://www.globalnerdy.com/2012/05/07/the-windows-phone-pred...

The radios in Nokia phones were always superb.

I live in an area of poor mobile coverage [known as "the UK" ;)] and Nokia phones were amazing at operating reliably in marginal signal conditions.

The last Nokia I had was an N95 which was a pretty good phone. The 6310i was probably the best of them all (up till quite recently there were people in the UK, usually travelling salespeople, who were hoarding these and buying them up on eBay for when theirs broke).

Although the phones I've had since are smarter and shinier, none of them have a radio of quality remotely close to the Nokias. They won't operate in places I know the Nokias worked fine. And they often seem to lose mobile signal completely, requiring a restart (or switch to flight mode and back).

Many things get better over time, and I love the features of my Android phones, but I do miss that quality RF design. RF is hard ... just look how long it took Apple to get it right! [1]

[1] Although that did mean that the first iPhones had amazing engineering debug screens for the mobile network side as a side effect of the problems they had.

Nokia as phone manufacturer is gone.

Nokia the company still exists. It owns the Nokia brand and has massive mobile patent portfolio (only licensed to Microsoft). Nokia is made of NSN (Nokia Solutions and Networks), maps and The Nokia Research Center.

Nokia is prohibited from using the brand to sell mobile phones for few years (ending 2018). It's completely possible that they come up with new gadgets or even phones with Nokia name.

Nokia is like one of the Japanese/Korean conglomerate where it touches everything[1]. Looking back at its stories, it got involve in power generation, TV manufacture, even forestry. I am sure that this is only part of its evolution.

[1] - http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/about-us/the-nokia-s...

This is true. For over a century Nokia has bounced from one industry to another. As I like to tell people, "Nokia was pivoting before pivoting was cool" :)

We will do more great things at Nokia.

Not any more. Those parts of Nokia Keiretsu that once was exist today as independent companies.

http://www.nokiantyres.com/ http://www.nokiantires.com/

http://nokianjalkineet.fi/en/ http://www.nokianfootwear.com/

Nokia Cable is now http://www.nkcommunications.com

Conglomerate is not a Keiretsu and a keiretsu is not a conglomerate. Keiretsu is cross-ownership of shares centered around a bank.

If you absolutely must use a Japanese term, go with Zaibatsu.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu

Ownership of big Finnish companies formed Keiretsu type arrangement until the beginning of the 80's. Finland had two big banks, SYP and KOP, and they formed two camps that cross owned large sectors of Finnish business.

Nokia was mostly in the SYP camp. SYP owned directly 20% of Nokia and even more trough it's insurance companies and other investors.

That they're spun off is probably a good thing. Nokian tires are basically the best winter tires around. It's gone so far that consumer tests are superfluous. Nokian winter tires and Continental summer tires are the be-all, end-all of tires. Why the hell do I know this? I don't even own a car...

My TV is a Nokia "fat screen", bought in Stockholm some time in the late 90's. Where I live now, people only know their cellphones and don't believe it's "that" Nokia who made my TV :)

Same here, I went to an older style hotel a couple years back, and it had Nokia TVs on a wall mounted arms. I was confused!

I'd love a comeback in the mobile space in 2018! :-)

Remember the Burning Platform letter from Elop that killed remaining Symbian sales for Nokia? Elop likened Nokia/Symbian to burning oil platform and argued that Nokia must jump from the platform to be saved.

Jolla http://jolla.com/ was founded soon afterwards by people who left Nokia. The name Jolla means dinghy, skiff or lifeboat in Finnish.

Nokia has sold many products in it's life including toilet paper. I don't think Nokia as a company is going away soon.

As a former employee at the end of it's heyday it continues to be the best company I have worked for. They paid fairly and treated us fairly when it was time to part ways.

It sucks that the management could never grasp what the Iphone was. There were no shortage people trying to tell them.

Huge respect! This company once built a mobile phone that everyone could buy. Cheap, works forever, does the job.

It is really surprising, and awesome to see that they built their products to last, not for a year like most companies today.

Indeed, their cellphones were solid as rock, even the cheapest ones had a huge usability, I still miss my first Nokia 1112.

Man, as someone who loves Windows Phone, I am sad to see this merger go through. I wished if Nokia remained separate from Microsoft. Nokia as a company and culture gave Windows Phone a standing chance where most had already declared the market a duopoly. They had great products, amazing ads, exceptional customer service and most of all, a good sense of future. Heck even when MS failed to deliver decent apps, Nokia stepped in to fill the gap: Nokia Music/Radio, Nokia Maps, City Lens, Transit... all with offline support! If it wasn't for them, I would have never switched to a Windows Phone.

I wonder how its going to play out from here. Given the MS culture, are things going to get slow and bureaucratic?

Whatever happens Nokia is always going to hold a special place in my heart especially the 3310 [1], my first phone. :)

[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Nokia_331...

> Given the MS culture, are things going to get slow and bureaucratic?

This is my worry. Nokia moves so quick on everything, and delivers great products. While Microsoft is always slow, and the the products are always missing features.

Hopefully all those Nokia employees will have an effect on Microsoft's culture.

Microsoft makes products I like. Nokia make products I love.

Given that MS managed to do a Trojan takeover of Nokia, I'm gonna say yes, it's probably gonna end as a Pyrrhic victory for MS.

I mean MS has a track record of screwing up mergers, on par with Yahoo's.

Did Nokia really move quickly? As I recall, it took them a year (from announcing they were going WP) before they released their first phone, the N9 running WP.

It was about 8 months. Deal with Microsoft was announced in February 2011 and Lumia 800 (I have one) and 710 were announced in October.

If Nokia had moved quickly we wouldn't be reading this.

Even Nokia's mobile phones business was on the chopping block for a time. Boston Consulting Group did a thorough assessment of Nokia's business in 1991 and came to the conclusion that the company wouldn't be able to compete with Motorola and the Japanese mobile makers.

> From the cross-linked article, on "what could not be done"

Amazing...

Nobody could have competed with the Japanese manufacturers, if they had only started selling their phones outside of Japan. The BCG guys simply lacked the cultural sensitivity required to understand the extent of Japan's navel-gazing.

Americans often act and think as if the rest of the world don't exist, but the Japanese are far, far worse. Navel-gazing = size x ethnocentricity. What Japan lacks in size compared to the US, it more than makes up for in ethnocentricity.

I remember seeing an XKCD comic which featured a fact about "there only being [x amount] of [x type] lighthouses in the nation". "In the nation". So typical.

Melancholia, an ode to Nokia.

  Playing Snake until the death.
  While some create ringtones.
  It was an unbreakable phone.
  I'll remember 'til my last breath.

Wow, One of the amazing product (Nokia 1100) I experienced first. Thank you Nokia. You really transformed communication industry for developing countries where most of the people never saw/used apple devices as they saw/used yours.

My relationship with Nokia started with 3310, long live Nokia as we know it.

Can you believe that the mighty was once reached the highest market value of any European company: 203 Billion Euros ($281 Billion as of today's exchange rate)?

I'm sure many have learned more than one lesson already.

This is how things come to an end but they had started slowing down a lot earlier.

For any practical purpose, Nokia was dead around 2005-2006 at the latest and dwindling at least couple of years before that.

Sure they sold lots of phones of good quality even after those years, but they weren't riding the first wave anymore during those years. They were riding on a dead horse, unwilling to notice it's not the 90's anymore.

Can anyone tell me what's happening with the Nokia Berlin mobile/maps group? I had interviewed for a position there and was on the verge of taking it, when something more opportune and local popped up. I'm curious where I would have ended up had I taken that job.

edit: now I have to hop on the poem bandwagon! here's my ode to Nokia:

  Star pupil of texts in cyberspace, taking his time, with each
  Pound of the keys pushing farther towards hidden powers.
  Seven days a week, fascinations with secret menus
  Seven times more interesting than COCOTs and DATUs.
  Eight friends, huddled around the brightly lit screen,
  Zero in on the hidden treasures of information obscured.
  Pounded into their brains, codes impregnate future hackers.
  
  One, two, three, four, five digits bring them into an obscure and secret world.

HERE Maps is still part of Nokia. It's not part of the new Microsoft Mobile.

Personally I've been saddened by Nokia's downfall. I still remember the time I wrote Python code for both S60 and N900 series phones, taught a class about this too... Nokia had some really cool funky tools to work with..

Perhaps W8 will do some wonders; I guess its nostalgia :-(

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-technology/nokia-...

There's some weird fine print in the deal which could mean the revival of the Nokia brand, from an offshoot of the original company, after January 1, 2016:

http://followingjolla.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-small-print-t...

I wonder if that could work out like the weird 'sold Skype but not the key technology' clause of the Skype-eBay deal...

The Nokia story will always remind us of how quickly even large companies can die in today's world. They didn't even see it coming.

Mer (former Meego) is one good thing which came out of Nokia and doesn't depend on it anymore luckily. The rest will be wasted.

I like that this person talks about connecting people and people having their lives touched by Nokia. Nowadays we are very distrusting and dismissive of such talk. There is a good reason why of course, but still there is something reductive about the attitude of "it's just a fucking app/website/phone/whatever".

You mean Nokia is no longer a wood pulp mill? That's really the end of Nokia as we knew it!

For those downvoting, Nokia did start as a wood pulp mill in 1871.

Thanks for getting it :)

I don't think I've been downvoted on this one, just sunk below the upvoted ones ;)

I do remember the small Nokia phones. They enabled to make me custom ringtones from sounds of the keypad. It was great. But everything passes, so did Nokia. It isn't literally ceasing to exist, but close enough. Long live Nokia.

I'm still waiting for the "iCandybar" form factor fad to fade so we can get the modern-day evolution of the N93, with 41 megapixels and real depth of field, etc. I won't stop holding my breath.

I still think it's a mistake for Microsoft to not buy the Nokia brand. Why not go the Motorola route (Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions)?

I doubt Nokia would sell the brand. Nokia has been a Finnish company for 150 years. They made several mistakes - including bringing Elop in - and they probably wanted to get rid of the part of the company that was no longer sustainable.

But I doubt they ever wanted to give up the brand, based on the details I read these days about the deal with Microsoft (only sold the mobile division, licensed the Nokia brand for several years, banned from producing mobiles only until 2018, etc).

Sad times - although I look forward to what's next. More competition is always a good thing.

glad to see this competitor go, only more competition can result.

I'm optimistic about the buyout. Nokia's dev site is clearly transitioning - the place holder is cool https://www.dvlup.com/.

The people will mostly stay the same, even though ownership has changed. I'd still work there if I wasn't tied geographically to where I am now.

>DVLUP has joined Microsoft! We're serving virtual fruit punch and setting off celebratory pretend fireworks on the DVLUP Blog. Head on over to learn more and enjoy your extra-special Day One Badge. Things are about to get awesome.

I can smell the Pointy-Haired Boss from here.

Nokia is dead, long live Nokia?

I wish all phones were as indestructible as the Nokia "brick".

Yes... Nokia may be dead, my Nokia phone that I got for my 16th birthday is still alive and well. :)

How the mighty fall.

There are so many beautifully worded encapsulations of this idea, in so many languages, from so many ages. As close as one can get to proof that it is a universal fact of the human condition that nothing lasts forever

Except a nokia 3210. I still have mine and it works fine even if it is repurposed as a cheap GSM alarm for a summer cottage out in the nowhere. All you need is a bit of wire, soldering iron and a magnet circuit breaker

It's not about being first. It's about being the last.

Even with Nokia's recent shortcomings I still enjoyed reading the piece. It's worthwhile remembering the good a company has brought every so often.

It gives me hope actually. There are more I'd like to see fall. Not out of spite, but to reduce their (near) monopoly.

As Steve Jobs said (possibly ironically, depending on which companies are on your hit-list):

Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

And, as was often the case, Steve Jobs was right.

yeah wow, so deep, steve jobs was amazing, I wish he was still alive today, I light candles for him everyday at my altar.

It's a moment like "and then"

Long Live Nokia.

Reading things like this always causes me to reflect on myself and my own relationship to work.

I'm envious of people who can work a job. My wife, for example, has been at the same place for almost 10 years. My father has worked the same place for over 30. They have their complaints, but they get up every morning and they go.

The longest I ever lasted anywhere was 2 and a half years. It was my second job out of college. I've had 5 jobs over the course of 7 years. One of those jobs only lasted 3 months. One was only 10 months. Both were a race to see if I would quit or get fired first. I won on the 3-month job, I lost on the 10-month one. They never gave an official reason, but I think they would say it was because I wouldn't show up on time. Really, it's because I had no respect for management.

I've been freelancing for the last 2.5 years. Excuse me, let me correct that, I was unemployed for 6 months after the 10-month deal. I thought I hated programming. After getting fired, I didn't want to do it again.

A friend got me an interview at the place he worked, a small manufacturing firm. We started as a 3 month contract-to-hire, they wanted to hire me after the first month, and I stuck to wanting to contract. It scared the crap out of me. We were doing good work and being hired as an employee just felt like trying to ruin it. We worked out a consulting arrangement that, honestly, by most accounts is consulting in name only. I work so much for them that I don't have time to pick up other projects. After 6 months, told them I was going to primarily work from home. After another 6 months, I moved to a completely different city and just kept working. They didn't even know I wasn't in the area anymore for 3 months until we did a video chat session and they saw my new apartment.

I don't know what any of it means. If my client doesn't add any new tasks and I finish out the list I have, I'll have worked for them longer than I've worked for anyone. Them not adding any new tasks is highly unlikely. At the same time, I would see working for them for another 1 to be encroaching on "failure" and another 2 years to definitely be "bad". Not in the sense that I wouldn't be making good money (I'm making more now than any two previous years combined), but in that I have this emotional snag that sees staying in one place to be stagnating.

I don't think I hate programming anymore, especially now that I've gotten back into running my own side projects. But I certainly hate common corporate organizational structure. I just can't stand going into an office when I'm told, wearing what I'm told, thinking what I'm told (which seems to be the point of most employee handbooks). Every Joe Shmo with an MBA thinks he can start a consulting firm and hire a bunch of cheap programmers and turn it into a printing press for money. And they bring with them this cargo cult of Fortune 500 practices that ultimately feel dehumanizing. It turns my stomach even thinking about going to work as an employee.

But none of my family gets that about me. They just think I'm being difficult. Maybe I am, but I make more than all of them, so what is their problem? Just because I'm not clean shaven or put on pants most days means I can't support a family? That's probably an aspect of why I want to stick to not being an employee, out of spite for all of the people who have told me, "just get a job already, just get out of bed on time and go to work already."

It's very stressful. I'm constantly thinking about work and wanting to do something else. I don't get to just turn work off at the end of the day and play a video game. And that's not because I'm freelancing--as I said, my current client isn't going anywhere. That's my itchy feet, my knowledge of my past, and this haunting specter of some compulsion to find a new job.

For me it's always been the benefits (medical insurance, bonding, etc) that makes freelancing hard, though maybe that's all changed now with Obamacare.

Do what makes you happy. There's only one go around.

People always say that, but it's not as bad as you think. I'm on my wife's health insurance now, but I could be on my own and it wouldn't be that much off the top. Certainly not the haircut most employers are going to give you in their ludicrous "total compensation package" numbers.

I've never worked at a place that just gave me free health insurance. Early on, it wasn't a lot of money, maybe $30/mo or so, but near the end, it had gotten bad, more like $250/mo. Everyone I know with employer-provided health insurance (with the exception of my wife, who works for the government) has gotten their premiums jacked up on them. So from my perspective it's kind of a fallacy that obtaining your own health insurance as a freelancer is "more expensive" than what you receive as an employee, because what you receive as an employee just ain't that great anymore. In my wife's case, they don't charge her an arm and a leg for health insurance, but they do pay her severally under the market rate for her experience and credentials.

And I definitely go on a lot more vacations now than I ever did before. Most of my "vacation" time before I would spend on being sick, as I never had separate sick leave. Now, because I don't have to go anywhere, if I get a cold, I just work through it.

I'll even accompany my wife on her business trips, work from her hotel room while she is working, and then we can have dinner together in whatever port city she's stuck in that night. I'll go visit my parents on occasion, or friends in other states. I just setup shop during the day in a coffee shop, library, hotel or something and then spend the evenings with them. I still visit with some of my friends about as often as when we lived in the same city together, and depending on the city, I can take the train and work while I'm riding.

Plus, I make a decent amount of interest on the money I put into savings for paying my taxes (being self-employed, I don't have tax withholding, I pay quarterly estimates instead). It's enough I can afford an accountant (well, not that the accountant is that expensive) to file my taxes at the end of the year. For me, it's a significant stress reliever.

And I eat and sleep much better when I'm home and not having to drive back and forth to offices.

In short, not only am I making more, my free cash is still more, and my quality of life is significantly better in every aspect. I don't even really have that high of a consulting rate, as I'm really bad/lazy about marketing myself.

The St. Crispin's Day speech? REALLY?

On the one hand, I'd agree with you that it's a gross exaggeration. On the other hand, I've always felt that corporate middle management was the new (and less bloody) realm for what used to be tribal chiefs, lords of manors, and dukes of minor duchies, and their associated battles for control of land.

It is heartfelt, but using it does feel a bit overcooked in this context. Perhaps the author has the blessing of youth, and must suffer its one or two disadvantages as well.

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