[eric4smith]

Gonna say something that might trigger you.

You’ll never move ahead working for someone else. And I just don’t mean money. I also mean satisfaction.

You have to consider productizing what you do to curb your dissatisfaction.

Yes, some people are fine working all their lives and enjoy where they are.

But it sounds like you want to go further.

Make a plan with your life that will buy you more freedom.

Freedom and time is worth more than money. But it comes at a high cost with up front work.

P.S. do the hard work now when the kids are little but spend quality time with them not quantity time. As your career grows you will have incredibly fulfilling times with them when they begin to understand the world. Because by then, you would have purchased more freedom.

[bumby]

>You’ll never move ahead working for someone else. And I just don’t mean money.

There's plenty of research that says the opposite: namely, that you'll make more and work less if you work for somebody else. The research I found that corroborates your claim doesn't control for the skill-level as the contradictory research does (i.e., it compares highly-educated, highly skilled entrepreneurs to workers across all skill levels).

The most cited research shows that working for someone else will get you 35% more pay after a 10 year period.

[Woberto]

It would be nice if you could cite the most cited research you're referring to

[bumby]

The largest citation I found in a cursory search on mobile contradicts the claim, generally with orders of magnitude more citations than the articles that support it.[1]

Other research convolutes the issue, but many studies seem to focus on a very specific subset (e.g., highly educated engineers).

An interesting article does support the claim, but only with the distinction of of differentiating between "entrepreneurs" and "self-employed".[2] Under this distinction, a Bill Gates is an "entrepreneur" but the local carpenter or food truck vendor is not. IMO, this skews the context in favor of highly paid businesses.

There's quite a bit of research out there and it's not my field, I just thought it was interesting how often the folksy wisdom gets touted that "you'll never get rich working for somebody else" yet there seems to be a disproportionate amount of research contradicting it.

[1]Hamilton, B.H., 2000. Does entrepreneurship pay? An empirical analysis of the returns to self-employment. Journal of Political economy, 108(3), pp.604-631.

[2]Levine, R. and Rubinstein, Y., 2013. Does entrepreneurship pay. The Michael Bloombergs, the Hot Dog Vendors, and the Returns to Self-Employment.

[pnutjam]

There's always someone willing to throw out the "be your own boss".

Don't.

Manage your career, invest in yourself, save and invest where you can. Enjoy life.

[reidjs]

Agree! I tried being my own boss. Hated it. Maybe if I understand business better in the future I will try it again. But for now, I'm very happy being a worker bee trying to make my boss's vision a reality in exchange for fair pay.

[FinanceAnon]

Nothing triggers me like someone starting a post with "Gonna say something that might trigger you."

[gmadsen]

really depends. I do applied research for AV. I have no desire to fill my time with the BS of funding and executive duties.

I get paid very well to be technical, and thats how I prefer it.

[eric4smith]

Funding and executive duties are what would take away your freedom.

There are literally a thousand other ways without going the VC route.

The society is pretty dysfunctional that a talented person such as yourself think that’s that’s the only way out.

[quickthrower2]

You mentioned productising what you do. I take that to mean consulting of the sort where you go in and charge $10k or whatever for an X. You do some work but there is no talk of either how many hours or who is physically doing the work. They are paying for a problem to be solved. I am attracted to this idea because to “build” your MVP you pretty much need just your expertise and a PowerPoint deck.