Avoiding Zombie Startups

Re:Avoiding Zombie Startups by malloryerik on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @10:28AM (#18122013)

Or work for yourself and have a diverse set of clients, and ideally a diverse set of products and services. Shouldn't diversification apply to work as it does to investments (modern portfolio theory)?

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Re:Avoiding Zombie Startups by scarface74 on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:28AM (#18122578)

I sleep very soundly knowing that the only things I have to worry about are:

1. Going in to work and doing the best job I can.

2. Making sure my skillset is marketable and keeping my resume continuously updated

3. Keeping in touch with my local network of recruiters.

In 20+ years, it’s never taken me more than a month to get a job and once, I left a contract (long story) with nothing lined up, met a recruiter for lunch on Monday and had a job offer with a what was then a Fortune 10 company by Thursday[1].

If I worked for myself, I would be constantly hustling for clients, collecting payments etc. Working for a company means money shows up in my account twice a month for exactly the same amount. If the company goes bust, I can find another job. If I want to take a vacation or get sick, other people take up the slack and I still get paid.

I’m no special snowflake, anyone in my metro area that has kept their skills up can easily find a job.

[1] Yes that was dumb luck, the department that I was hired into was a recently acquired startup and their HR hadn’t been fully integrated into the large slow moving bureaucracy.

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Re:Avoiding Zombie Startups by malloryerik on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @08:18PM (#18126759)

You're absolutely right, those are the tradeoffs and it's a matter of lifestyle preference. Having someone to help with administrative issues makes a tremendous difference, by the way, but all I meant was to share my surprise at discovering that not being an employee could be much more stable than I'd thought, sometimes even more stable than being one, and that the source of much of that stability can come from diversification of clients and products/services offered, just as with an investment portfolio.

Btw I think health insurance is the biggest problem here, in the US.

Anyway I didn't mean in any way that being employed by a company was some kind of bad choice, not at all!

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Re:Avoiding Zombie Startups by scarface74 on Wednesday October 03, 2018 @05:10PM (#18134845)

Btw I think health insurance is the biggest problem here, in the US.

As long as the ACA exists, health insurance is available. It's just a cost of being self employed.

On the other hand, it's even easier if you have a spouse that works a stable job. I know a few people (including me) that have spouses that work a low paying government job just for the insurance so they can be more aggressive about their career or start a business. Since I've been married, I've jumped back and forth between working salaried and contracting with abandon.

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