In defense of a corporate career
“Quit Your Job and Do Your Own Thing” Can Be Very Bad Advice
Don’t underestimate the benefits of working for a company
Singing the praises of quitting your job and “doing your own thing” is very popular these days.
If you keep working for a corporation you are assumed to be wasting your life, at best.
The smart ones should quit their cubicles, we are told.
Realizing your full human potential before you die, they say, requires you to go solo, freelancing your way through the jungle.
- “No boss”
- “No 9-to-5”
- “Passive income”
- “The sky is the limit…”
- “Traveling lifestyle…”
are all phrases thrown around without any informed comparison of the corporate vs. freelance career paths.
Quitting your cubicle is where the real freedom is, they claim.
But as someone who has worked for Fortune 100 corporations for over 20 years, I can say that that’s a bunch of unexamined statements.
Those who recommend you to quit your salaried job never tell you that you need to work 60 hours a week (at least) to come anywhere close to the benefits you enjoyed earlier by just working 40 hours a week.
Do We All Hate Our Jobs, Really?
The Quit-Now gurus, for some reason, assume that people who work in cubicles hate their jobs.
I’m sure there are those cubicle dwellers who hate their jobs indeed but I’ve also seen a lot of salaried people who LOVED their jobs and the opportunities offered to them in a corporate setting.
Would You Trust a Freelancing Surgeon?
Besides, there are those jobs that you can’t perform properly unless you work within a corporate or institutional setting.
Try, for example, becoming a judge, an orthopedic surgeon, or a nuclear physicist by “going solo” and creating your own “passive income stream” as a “side hustle.” That won't happen even in a million years and Quit-Now gurus won’t tell you anything about that.
The Attraction of Shiny Objects
I’ve seen too many sane and otherwise perfectly smart people bouncing from one shiny object to another in the name of “doing my own thing” and end up poor and old, amazed at how quickly the years rush by as their 401K accounts sit there starving.
The Six-Figure-Income Cliche
Another thing you hear frequently is how you can make a “six-figure income” if you go solo, as if nobody’s making six-figure incomes in corporations.
On the contrary, I bet there are more people who CONSISTENTLY (not just for a year or two) make six-figure incomes in corporations than in the hit-or-miss freelancer jungle. The writer of these lines is one.
A Lot of Corporate Benefits
Salary jobs offer medical coverage both for you and your family. The coverage changes from one company to another but it’s common for them to also offer
- 401K retirement plan (where the company usually matches your savings and thus doubles it),
- pension plan (even though it’s harder to come by these days)
- stock plan (Google “splitting stocks”),
- vision and dental coverage,
- free car and/or milage/fuel reimbursement (depending on the job and company)
- year-end or team performance bonuses (depending on the job and company)
- paid official holidays and personal vacations,
- reimbursement for training (even at the college level),
- reimbursement of T&E (travel and entertainment) expenses,
- and most importantly, career advancement opportunities.
Men and women who run the American economy are not freelancers. They are all corporate professionals who keep learning, who keep climbing one step at a time on the ladder of personal fulfillment and (to use an Abraham Maslow term) “self-actualization.”
It’s all up to you to make the most of all the opportunities that many corporations provide these days.
The Core Fallacy
It’s a fallacy to assume that if you work for a company you will be doing something you don't like.
Who says so?
You are absolutely free to work on what fires you up even if you work for a corporation. All you have to do is choose the right corporation to work for.
It does not follow logically that if you love to do something you need to do that as a freelancer. Maybe you do; maybe you don’t.
I did not give up my love for writing when I worked for Fortune 100 corporations. I enjoyed every minute of it without any marketing or chasing clients, without worrying for a second about my next paycheck. And I’ve also made very good money to take care of myself and my loved ones, thanks to corporations.
I’m pretty sure if I insisted on working solo and doing only freelancing, I’d be starving now.
Why?
Because…
Are You CEO Material?
The freelance “hustle,” as the Quit-Now gang keeps referring to it, requires you to be your own manager and CEO in addition to doing what you are doing at a top-notch level.
It requires you to be a sharp businessperson (with capital to spend) in this very competitive market.
Everyone cannot be a good business person with cash to invest even when they are good technicians and even when they execute specific tasks and projects well.
To be a good and prosperous writer, for example, it’s not enough to make it as a writer out there as a freelancer. To survive and excel in today’s cut-throat job market requires the kind of skill set and support that is nurtured well in a corporate setting.
There Will Always Be Geniuses Of Course…
Picasso was a genius, and so was Steve Jobs.
Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, Oprah, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are amazing brainiacs whether they work solo or within a corporate setting.
They all started as the masters of their “hustle” at a very early age and then built up their own empires.
So if you have brilliant ideas and an endless reservoir of energy for innovation and self-promotion, go ahead, quit your cubicle today and face the winds in the jungle.
But geniuses are far and few in between.
Most of us are not geniuses.
90% vs. 10%
Thus as a general rule, I’d say a corporate and institutional career is beneficial for 90% of us who are good at one particular skill but not so much at marketing, closing, and building business empires.
To the other 10%, I say “good luck to you, but please don’t lead us astray by singing the praises of the freelance hustle while hiding the enormous risks taken every day by those deciding to go solo and regret only when it’s too late.”