We’ve become used to the idea that a fancy front desk, nice corporate stationary, and a bunch of stock photos – with smiling receptionists who are as wooden as those photos, is where you find stability. We’ve come to confuse polish with reality, and the evangelists of polish are always telling us the clothes make [...]
If you’re not aware of coworking, makerspaces, hackerspaces, etc. – these are collaborative coops that provide you space to work in an environment where other people are also working in a creative and independent way. The coop part of it gets you a chair, deskspace or table space, wifi internet, lights, electricity, a bathroom, and [...]
One of the pseudo issues that we’re instructed to be talking about now is whether to tax capital gains – and now everyone is quoting Warren Buffet. Partly, this relies on the average person not understanding how corporate taxes work vs. personal taxes – something Buffet understands very well. But when you and I are [...]
Recent court cases have awarded judgments and settlements to contractors treated like employees by client companies, when they were not given employee benefits and protections. The latest tax laws account for the employee-contractor distinction in a more pronounced way than ever. The practice of deeming someone a contractor instead of an employee certainly reduces employer [...]
You know about the robosigners, right? The middle manager types who work at large mortgage loan companies and sign papers all day that say they’ve personally reviewed a lot of other papers which they don’t have time to have reviewed, because they’re busy signing the papers saying they reviewed them. Best to quote the Wall [...]
I’ve been through three generations of work, so far, in my lifetime. The bootstrap era, the authoritarian era, and the era of free agents. The Bootstrap Era: When I was young and jobless, seemingly talentless, and officially skill-less, my grandparents would describe the world of work: You go where they’re hiring, you do what they’re [...]
The assumption of employment is all around us. I’m not knocking employment. Quite the contrary: Image via Wikipedia Rule of Work: Your work is not the venue. Whether your work is best conducted as an employee, contractor, entrepreneur, or volunteer, pursue the venue where you can derive from your work all the meaning you are [...]
CBS was talking this evening about the growth of freelance work – projecting significant growth over the next couple of years. What was striking was how negative the reporting seemed. One of the two people interviewed was saying “the important thing is not to be idle” and the reporter presented freelancing as being just one [...]
One of the realities of client – company relationships is that, not infrequently, clients may not understand the meaning and significance or processes, protocols, technologies, and media that you must use precisely to maintain an efficient and effective set of client relationships. This can be especially true, if they or you work in a single-person [...]
A friend and I were talking the other day about how we’re so used to thinking, as employees, of everything as net. The company takes out taxes and healthcare, and what’s left – that’s what you live on. But when you’re self-employed, you pay self-employment tax on top of your income tax, and you have [...]
You know, we’ve written a while back about how Google stood up to the Chinese totalitarian government by refusing to turn over dissident information on demand, while other companies like Yahoo bent over and dropped their shorts, handing those kids over to decades-long prison terms without even a cough. I’ve sent out gmail invites to [...]
You know, the agonizing thing about knowing you can build a business, knowing you have the courage, the intelligence, the talent, is not having the right idea. Don’t get me wrong, I have a business, and it’s the right idea, and it has been, for where I was, where I am, and for a while [...]
Frankly, I find it hard to think of a recession only in terms of the numbers that matter to the people that got us into one. It’s still a recession, or worse (we don’t like the word depression), if people are hunting for jobs for 16months, qualified people with degrees are still losing their houses [...]
Rule of Entrerpreneurship: Anything can be a business. True, this is a bit of stretch if you’re a stickler, but it’s true in principle. We’ve all heard of the guy who could sell bags of poo for $1 each, by discussing the benefits for plant growth. Image via Wikipedia The rule is more of a [...]
So much of what passes for “professionalism” in a corporate environment is dysfunctional in life as a whole. In fact, when it begins to be believed, as a principle for life, it actually becomes mental illness. Image by stuant63 via Flickr Neurosis: includes the inability to separate perception from reality. “My perception is my reality.” [...]
One of the things that a business can do is sustain the very notion of what work means. It can use its resources to uphold the meaning of work itself, and so its own meaning, and the meaning of the myriad of endeavours on which its participants spend the vital years of their lives. Image [...]
Look, here’s the point: I have more than a couple of jobs, but I limit what I discuss to two, so we don’t have to waste time with the “you’re a freak” discussion. I often hear people talk of: “putting in long hours”. As opposed to what? I was going to work anyway. If it’s [...]
Office environments can spawn an odd kind of possessiveness. “Why did you throw that away in my trashcan, not yours?” (One was closer than another). “Those are my paperclips. Why don’t you get your own?” (They all come from the same place). You could attribute it to the personalization of space, but I personalize and [...]
Daniel writes prolifically about subjects ranging from work to social justice, does literary writing, and is Marketing Director of Free Agent Source. Daniel founded JobHacker (formerly the Rules of Work) blog when the bottom fell out of the mortgage market, and the US economy started its death rattle.
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