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Going from Personal Company to Corporate Employee
When my post about how I was ending my own company made the Sphinn front page, it made me wonder how many people have been in the same situation. I know tonnes of SEOmoz readers run their own marketing companies / agency's so I'm sure there's a lot of guys here, could make for some good discussion. Did you ever 'work for the man' and how do you like / dislike things compared to working for yourself.Cheers! P.S. I'll be back in the real world on Thursday ;)
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hmm what happened to the formatting on submissions?
Ah well, at least we can leave bold text in comments.
I'd have a hard time going back to working for someone else, but you never know. When I first started as a freelancer, it wasn't by choice (I got laid off), and for the first year of so I applied for a number of in-house SEO jobs because I wasn't sure I'd be able to make a living on my own.
But it all seems to have worked out -- I've been working from home for about 4 and a half years now. As long as you're willing to accept contact via the web as human contact, the only real disadvantage is turning pale and fat because you don't even walk to the train station on a regular basis.
Grrr... the new system won't keep
tags and won't count carriage returns, so everything's going to end up in a single paragraph.
I made the move to In-house myself at the beginning of this year after ten years in the business. I enjoy my job, though, so I wouldn't say I'm working for "the man".
Rather than describe it all here, check out in interview of me from about a month ago - the headline I added too Sphinn tells it all - you can get to it from here: http://sphinn.com/story/3221
@Qwert: Yeah that's annoying so ill make two comments to reply here. You have a prettty interesting story and I admire that you've been able to make it on your own. Congratulations and it's always good to learn a bit more about people on here!
@Tim, thanks for the response. I'm going to check out that interview now. I guess i could have worded things better but that's how it can be viewed by many.
It is viewed that way by many, and its probably true quite often, just not for me. I thankfully get to work at a startup, a search engine itself, rather than some insurance company or big business situation that doesn't interest me.
I started as a consultant, then later bought a piece of a business which I stayed at for about 10 years until i got fed up with the direction my partner was taking the company. I left and took a senior level management position at an Internet Marketing Agency, and recently got laid off when their tremendous growth led to a 'quick shrinkage'. Now I'm back starting a business again.
There are positives and negatives to both working for someone else and having your own business. If you actually build a business rather than being 'self employed' aka consultant, you have flexibility and don't have to be chained to a desk all the time. Most importantly, you can make money when you're not working and have something that is salable.
If you work for someone else, you have the opportunity to learn while someone is giving you a paycheck. There is a lot more to owning/running a business than being skilled at a trade like Internet Marketing. Working for someone else may give you the opportunity to learn a few things, learn from their mistakes, see the difficulties faced as the business grows, etc. A management position in a medium sized agency is a great training ground for starting your own someday.
It was quite an experience working at the agency I was with and I got to help build one of the bigger players in the industry, but ultimately it wasn't my company, and I wasn't in total control.
It's nice to be in control of my own destiny once again and this will be an even more exciting ride... :)
Good luck!
@ Viperchill May your new venture be fruitful and positive. I started, and had been for the last 5 years as an In - House, and the last 7 months, my own consulting company, full time. I like both. Both have their pros and cons, and as far as working for the "man", were all working for the "man" at some level. On both instances the client/employer want results NOW for as little money as possible, and as fast as possible.
@steaprok - good point re: client/employer also equals "the man"
When I interviewed for the position I'm in now, they asked if I'd be comfortable having a boss and working for someone, etc...
I kinda laughed and said it'd be a relief to have just one boss rather than 50 (clients) bosses.
I kinda laughed and said it'd be a relief to have just one boss rather than 50 (clients) bosses.
Great point, I had never thought of it like that.
Generally, if you're an account manager in an agency, you have to 'own' the client relationships anyway. The key is you don't have to acquire them, their handed to you (a lot easier), and you don't have to worry how to pay all the employees every week! :) There's a lot that business owners have to 'deal with' besides acquiring/maintaining client relationships.
I have done both and there are many pros and cons to each. Obviously working for yourself gives you lots of flexibility, but for most it comes at a price in that many people do not have the discipline to put in the time they would if they had to go to an office.
On the financial security side, one of my former business partners put it like this "when you work for yourself you know where the finances are... even if it's bad. When you work for someone else you have a false sense of security because you don't really know where the finances are, often until it is too late".
In general, it's safe to assume a certain amount of security from a corporate job. I sincerely don't believe that business owners set out to hurt people financially, but it happens.