blog.taskwise.com
The article entirely misses the issue of temperament. Some people really crave the "security" of a 9-5, they need somebody to tell them what to do.
There's also the question of where your career was going. I worked for a summer at a job shop -- one of my co-workers who'd been a web freelancer for a few years felt that getting a job at this place, with a good team and good salespeople, was a big step up. For me, it was a dead end job, and I turned down the offer of a permanent job with them and got one with another firm.
In the last few years I became an expert in an obscure but growing specialty, and that led me back into contracting, which got my career out of the doldrums. We've all got our own path.
Now, the article entirely misses the elephant in the room with self employment, which is health insurance. This can be a non-issue if you're 23 or if you're married to somebody who has a real job, but for many people, health insurance cannot be purchased on the individual market at any price.
I hail from the UK, but I've lived and worked across the EU. In fact, even if I weren't paying taxes, my health care, and that of my dependants and anyone else, would be covered.
So, on this side of the pond, this elephant is absent.
That said, USians' resistance to universal health care mystifies me only a little less than their returning Bush Jnr for a second term.
How can any civilized nation justify the rejection of universal health care?
All of this was interesting and exciting. Working 9-5 for a company would have exposed me to exactly one development process and one set of technologies. Not much to learn here, and less fun too.
Going along with the theme of employment vs self employed, I would like to add one I think is highly important.
5. The pivot: In the startup world, this is basically switching focus based on the realities of your startup when you get it out into the world. You start with x idea but you find your customers are using it for something completely different. Based on that you change the service. Or something to that effect. Most people here know what I'm talking about.
Entrepreneurs are able to see changes in their industry and are able to pivot based on those changes. They independently learn new things. Try out new technologies. Take different approaches to the problems they are trying to solve. Explore different models for income. There are many other examples.
A real life example might be a web developer moving from hourly client work to building a product (perhaps on the side while still doing hourly work.) That developer might also move from web development to building Iphone apps. There are limitless ways to change in this industry.
Unfortunately, many of the jobless are in their situation because they haven't been able to do their own pivots. Perhaps it's because they have put their heads in the sand and ignored industry changes. Perhaps their routine of punching the clock has put them in a bubble where they weren't even aware that the industry has been changing.
(Technically, of course, the self-employment tax is the equivalent of the portion of your payroll taxes that your employer pays on your behalf, which don't appear on your paystub. In practice, of course, your employer factors these taxes into your total compensation, and they affect what kind of salary they offer you, so it's silly to argue that you're not the one paying them in the long run. But the reality is that you pay more taxes on $50,000 of freelance income than you pay on $50,000 of salary.)