by Kareem Carr

Recently, I was having a discussion with a friend about the work world and where salaried workers fit into it. His point of view was similar to a notion I’d heard before. It went something like ‘if the choices are: working for yourself, or working for somebody else; it’s best to work for yourself.’ My first reaction was that I didn’t really like what I perceived as the underlying framing. I came away with this sense that he saw the relationship between workers and those who pay them as an adversarial relationship. However, I believe one can both work for someone else and also work for oneself i.e. construct mutually beneficial work relationships. Moreover, the greater flaw in this train of thought, in my opinion, is it is red herring. The crux of personal advancement, as I see it, is not in whether one is working for another or working for oneself. It is in whether one is making a profit, that is, whether one is steadily leveraging one’s current knowledge, influence and accessible resources in order to increase one’s future knowledge, influence and accessible resources. Continue reading →