Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm | Small Business
This is part four of a series exploring factors in self-employment and traditional employment. For more about this series, read the opening article.
Stress
How stressful the position is
Self |
Boss |
Pros |
Cons |
Pros |
Cons |
- Working for yourself is directly rewarding and satisfying
- You choose your hours and environment
- You can eliminate the office politics, ridiculous demands
- You can pick your customers and policies
|
- Sometimes politics and ridiculous demands
come from your customers
- The success (or failure) of the business is on your shoulders
- You have to deal with problems yourself – you can’t pass the buck
- You wear a lot of hats, so you have to learn quick and do work you may not care for (e.g., bookkeeping)
|
- You wear relatively few hats
- You can seek help with difficult situations
- Not worrying about the overall success of the company means you can focus on your work
|
- Office politics and unreasonable demands can take a major toll
- Sometimes the only recourse for a tough situation is to find a different job – which is highly stressful
- You can’t always take a vacation or break when you need one the most
|
Conclusions
Working for yourself is very satisfying. As stressful and demanding as self-employment may be, your freedom and the reward of a victory are enough to temper the stress. They keep you going, even when business is tough. But a regular job is stressful all the time – and you rarely have the freedom and flexibility to adjust to your own personal work habits. On a Friday afternoon when you’re just not productive, being able to start the weekend early is a huge perk.
Winner: Self-Employment
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March 29th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
[...] Stress [...]