Free from 9 to 5

Neville Medhora has a very insightful post about the down sides of trying to be free from 9 to 5 by owning your own business. Unless you think hard about the type of business and the lifestyle you want, owning your own business may not actually free you from 9 to 5.

2 Responses

Cubicle Coder Says:
May 24th, 2005 at 5:38 pm

I certainly think that running your own business can be a lot more painful than a 9-to-5 job. The “E-Myth Revisted” book talks about this, and makes a clear distinction between working on your business (which is a good thing) and working in/for your business - which is hell.

But more importantly, I don’t think sticking with a 9-to-5 job is going to be something we’ll be allowed to do for much longer (at least in the code writing biz). FWIW, check out my blog on the topic (inspired by this post): http://cubiclecoder.blogspot.com/2005/05/is-9-to-5-job-going-to-be-choice.html

Eric Says:
May 25th, 2005 at 10:27 am

Cubicle Coder,

I wanted to leave a comment on your blog, but I don’t have a blogger account. So I hope you will see my reply here.

I agree with your post completely. In fact, I wrote about a very similar topic a while back:
http://www.freefrom9to5.com/2005/04/05/americans-not-prepared-to-compete

As in manufacturing a few years back, globalization is coming to software development and we have to be prepared for it.