The other day, I was watching a report on TV. A former manager said: "I founded my company so I wouldn't have a boss anymore, then I sold it so I wouldn't have employees anymore". This sentence has been resonating with me for several days because it describes the current situation so well. No one really finds what they are looking for in the professional world as it exists today.
I have often complained about the managers here. It is true that many of them show no interest in their employees. They use them, suck them dry, and then throw them away as soon as they have become inconvenient or unusable. It is obvious that the bosses bear a large part of the responsibility for the deterioration of working conditions.
However, it must be admitted that employees can also be very annoying. Unlike the boss who is alone, or accompanied by a few other senior executives, the employees of a company are in mass. The problems, conflicts, and headaches that result from this can be constant and practically limitless. You only have to put up with one or a few bosses, but a great many colleagues. The more people there are, the greater the probability of a catfight.
Supporting your boss is one thing, but having to manage an entire "schoolyard" is another. Even if in the best of cases the atmosphere is great, the boss constantly holds the "lives" of his employees in his hands. He guarantees them a job and a salary. It is a very heavy responsibility to bear. We can now better understand why this former manager sold his company.
All in all, employee or boss, we are all united in this damn Rat Race.
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Being an employee or an employer is not always easy or fulfilling for various and different reasons. But it can also be.
That said, we must be careful not to generalize: there are bad employers and bad employees, and there are obviously also excellent ones.
I would add that I have noticed that being an employee of a listed company often brings additional pressure, with the stock price obsessing everyone, from the board of directors and management to all the executives receiving bonuses dependent on the result, with repercussions on everyone, down to the last one. This phenomenon is often further aggravated in very large companies, which dehumanize, with the managers being in every way very distant from the basic employees.
But professional independence, without a partner, without a boss, without an employee, is not always the panacea either: if there is no longer a boss, there are clients, sometimes annoying and unpleasant and not always good payers; if there is no longer an employee, there are generally agents (starting with a trustee, an accountant, an IT specialist, an access, software or hardware provider, etc.) and sometimes subcontractors, who must also be instructed and managed and whose quality of work is not necessarily beyond reproach.
Financial independence allows you to be free from being an employee, employer or independent professional. Or to continue being an employee, employer or independent professional, but without the pressure of losing your job, income, resources, clients, and with a spirit of freedom.
I 100% agree with you.
Being self-employed doesn't solve anything. It just replaces one problem with another.
And indeed, listed multinationals are certainly the thing to absolutely avoid as a worker. I tested it and the only beneficial thing I could get from it was my even stronger desire to become financially independent.
Thank you both for your analysis. I agree with all your points. Regards