[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.