I’ve seen a lot of advice over the years from people who’ve quit a corporate job and gone out on their own, and they almost always talk about even if you think you have job security working for a big employer, you really don’t.
This advice is well-meaning and often correct. But not always. And therefore I think it’s bad advice. I think self-employed people WANT it to be correct. We all know of stories of people who were either let go after decades of service at a company, or worked for a company that went out of business. Yes, we all know those stories… just as we all know tons of people who worked for one employer their whole career. I know way more people who worked for the same company for decades than people who got cut.
One big employer, for example, has tons of lifers. The Government. Mail jobs, teaching jobs, etc. I’ve worked almost 30 years for one employer – the Pasco County (Florida) School System. I retire in 6 years. At one point, they eliminated a department and a lot of school-level positions due to budget issues. They found other jobs (in the system) for pretty much every one of those people. The pay isn’t great, but it’s not that bad. There are medical benefits. When I retire, I’ll receive about half of my current annual salary for the rest of my life. Combined with Social Security, it’ll be close to what I make now. Match that, you crazy full time YouTubers! And I work in a “not rich” district. Some teachers get 70% of their salary in retirement. Some states pay teachers more than others, which means the best teachers can go where the money is, which makes for an uneven playing field when it comes to education, but education funding isn’t the topic here.
I’m not a teacher, by the way. I’m a Web Developer. But I was a teacher for 5 years.
Anyway, sometimes I like to point things out. This doesn’t have anything to do with guitars, except that some guitar channels I watch are run by guys who say things like “There’s no such thing as job security.” They’re wrong.