At my current company we state it as "you're all adults, and that's how we treat you." We have hired some people who needed more structure and they had to move on. There is no judgement on people who left, not every position is right for every person.
There is no single right answer to that question so you need to figure it out for yourself.
Some of the answers require you to work 80+ hours a week (at a good job) while living in a tent so you can save every penny - when you finally retire at 68 you will just barely have enough money to enjoy the last 5 years of your life spending all the money you saved over the years.
Some answers you save 50% of your income until you retire at 40 to live the life you choose.
Some answers you save 10% until 65 working a 40 hour a week job.
The first allows you have an expensive hobby (sail the world in a very nice yacht). The second means you have to enjoy not buying anything. The last is a reasonable compromise for most of us.
When you're running your own firm (even one person), you are in charge of catching billable work, doing the billable work, billing the work, filing the taxes, etc, etc. If you add anyone else, the non-billable efforts get even bigger. I ran my own firm for ~7 years and had a team of 8 at one point. Hunting the next project just got exhausting and I never got to build things.
If you work for another firm - consultancy or product - the vast majority is handed off to other people who are probably better at (or at least focused on) many of those things. Yes, you make less money but you're "paying" to have all those things done for you.
However, one significant risk is losing out on promotions and status if you ever want to return to the corporate world. Seniority is often measured in "time in seat" and taking 10 years off to build your own business can make it harder to jump right back in at a level you'd expect.
The other risk is the stress of uncertainty. At a corporate gig you get a paycheck every two weeks like clockwork. The moment that pattern ends, panic ensues and the company is gone. When you work for yourself you have to be responsible for ensuring the paycheck is there. Quite often freelance work can be feast or famine. You may get a bigger payday than you ever expected one month but prepare because the next month might not bring in a dime.
That's provided you'd actually ever want to return to the corporate world. Measures like "time in seat" make me wonder why given other options anyone would ever want to work in such an environment in the first place.
> Quite often freelance work can be feast or famine.
That certainly can be a challenge but there are approaches to alleviate that problem. It's mostly a matter of getting (and staying) organised and regularly keeping in touch with both existing clients and potential new ones.
Which country is that? I've only ever heard of monthly salaries for professionals.
PS: It's often the case where people get a little warning and end up finding a job before they get laid off. From the companies perspective the trade off is a little more chaos up front for significant savings on unemployment insurance.
...except the 10k part.
Every time I've went on unemployment, it was waaaay less than 10k - if I managed to get 1000 bucks a month it was a miracle. Last time I did it (years ago) I let the money sit in the bank at Chase because I had lost track of the debit card they (unemployment) sent me. Until at a certain point they had to close out the account. This was years later, and I had (mostly) forgotten all about it. I had to go down to the bank and prove who I was to withdraw it.
So - why did I let it sit? Didn't I need it? Well - no, not really. I applied because I could; I was laid off my previous job, so I thought "hey, why not, I earned it, right?". So I applied. Kept my notes and log and such. But before I got the confirmation and debit card, I had a new job. Before that, I just used my savings (actually, I don't even think I had to dip into that - I had more than enough to cover things in my checking, after the severance pay).
When I finally did withdraw the money, it was something like $400 or so for a couple of weeks.
10k over 6 months? Right...
The high is 430 * 52 / 2 = 11,180 and the low is 430 * 52 / 2 = 1,300. But, again before taxes.
When I look back at my earlier career it was quite volatile compared to doing my own thing.
Note that Z can be less than 1.
But after preaching it for a decade, I realized that working for yourself implies to develop a certain skill set and embrace another set of constraints many people don't wish for them-self. There is a lot of comfort in being an employee.
Take google catering your lunch every day and night. It might be costing google 25 U$S per meal to provide that to the employees. Would the employee, not having that option, spend 25 U$S a meal? No way. But do employees choose or prefer companies that cater lunch?
Lets say google can offer an employee a double offer: either full benefits and salary of X, or NO benefits and salary of Y. What is your Y?
In general I would always think that most people will take Y, precisely because most of the benefits are very costly. Y could be 30%.
Now, there is a difference in taxes: that extra Y will get taxed at 30%, while googles benefit cost might even have tax deductions. So the gap between X and Y is blurred by rules that applied differently.
If company benefits were not only deductible, but expenditure there were considered part of wages and taxed at that rate, they would quickly diminsh if not dissapear.
It sounds like a great perk but in Canada* in-kind benefits, including meals, are considered part of your salary, and are subject to income tax.
I'm not sure how that plays out with daily catered meals; am I deemed to have received the benefit even if I eat out or bring leftovers? I could be paying taxes on food I haven't eaten. Probably not cheap food either.
I'd prefer being paid in cash, and having the option to buy meal vouchers. That's true of most benefits - cash is always more flexible.
There's also what it says about the culture: we offer free breakfast because we expect you to be at the office before your usual breakfast time. We offer free lunch because we don't expect you to have enough time to go out for lunch, or to pack a lunch the night before.
*For federal income tax. YMMV on provincial tax.
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publi...
There's also something to be said about attention and creativity in most coding/tech jobs. I could sit at my desk all day writing marginally efficient code, or I could take a 1-hour break to do something else, come back and write really exceptional code, but most work cultures frown on doing this regularly.
If you're full (or mostly) remote, you can regulate this yourself
But there's no guarantee on any of the intangibles. And whenever they need to save a buck, or even in ways that aren't fully appreciated, the good-workplace stuff can erode. After spending a while in this industry, I'd say places are more alike than different, and total compensation is a reasonable thing to maximize for.
If I just maximize for cash earned, I need to compensate for other things. I want to maximize free time and minimize commute. I have errands to run and things to do. Having flexible work, with a work from home option is worth more to me than making more money. Otherwise, I need to spend more on an apartment close to the office. A more expensive car can make a commute more bearable. I value peace and quiet, and city living is at odds with this. Reconciling all this while working a 9-5 at a central office in the city costs a lot of money.
I currently work at 15Five, where "Embrace Freedom & Flexibility" is one of our core values. We actually are active in living this and our other core values. You can feel the effect directly. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and arrived at the same conclusion as this article.