Chapter 1: A new way of life
Very soon in the United States, more than half the workforce will be working primarily in gigs or freelancing. Gone will be the days of 9 to 5 jobs being the norm. The nature of work is changing as we know it. While we are still debating if freelancing is good or bad for the individual, we know for sure that freelancing is here to stay and the modern workforce likes it more than ever before.
We asked over 100 job seekers for their thoughts on a 9 to 5 job, almost everyone had a negative opinion. The workforce now wants to work jobs that are flexible instead of having a fixed schedule and are result-oriented rather than input-oriented jobs.
While freelancing was seen previously as a last resort for employment, for many a 9 to 5 is now the last resort for making ends meet.
Take the case of two recent graduates Betty and Annie.
Betty spent some time looking for a job by applying online and going in for interviews. She soon got a job as an admin assistant for a decent monthly salary.
Annie, on the other hand, decided to start doing community management as a freelancer, helping small companies manage their social media accounts.
For the next couple of years, their lives played out in very different directions.
Betty's job involves working with office staff and ensuring that all the documents are filed properly in the right place, along with managing their phone system, interacting with guests, and running errands.
Annie's job involves researching content and news related to the client's business and posting content on different social media platforms and responding to comments on each platform.
Betty from Monday to Friday wakes up at 7 am every morning, gets ready, spends 30 minutes commuting and works at an office from 9 am to 5 pm with a lunch break at 12:30 pm.
Annie, as she's a freelancer wakes up naturally every morning and works from home or a nearby cafe. If she's out, she'll usually comes home for lunch and continue working from home or go to a coworking space.
Betty gets a set number of paid vacation days a year, but the exact days of when she can take the vacation need to be approved by her manager. She usually spends months planning her vacation to take with her family and loved ones.
Annie being a freelancer, can take a vacation whenever she wants. She travels frequently to different places and works for 1-2 weeks remotely. In her last vacation to Medellin, Colombia, she liked the city a lot and ended up staying there for 3 months. She got a membership at a co-working space, which served as her office for the 3 months she stayed there.
Betty has a stable monthly income along with benefits. Every 4th of the month her salary is deposited into her bank account.
Annie has huge variations in her income. Some months she makes a lot while other months it's quite low. Since freelancer projects are only for a few months she has to spend time constantly finding new clients. Even though during annual filing Annie makes more or less the same as Betty.
The life of Annie has become the new way of life.
Chapter 2: Insecurity as a freelancer
Many out there may initially believe that Annie does not have the stability or security of Betty. That the variability in Annie's income is risky and is a bad thing that must be eliminated. Turns out, it is actually the reverse, let's see how:
The fate of Betty's stability lies in the hands of one company. One day Betty learns that her company is downsizing and management has decided to let her go. She starts looking for a job but the work landscape has changed and many companies have automated the work she has mastered over the years. She has to start all over again from zero.
Now let's turn to Annie. She learned that she was having difficulties getting new clients because clients are using new social media management tools and outsourcing to companies in Asia that do the same job as Annie but at a much lower price. Annie started worrying as her income steadily decreased. This forced her to explore and adapt. Instead of competing with the agencies in Asia, she partnered and hired those agencies to get work done for her clients. She would now charge her clients less than before, but still more than the Chinese agencies would have directly charged. The reason for this being that she offered customer service and higher quality.
Those variations in Annie's income acted as instant feedback, forcing Annie to adapt instantly, making her career robust and stronger over time.
When compared with Betty, suddenly Annie's situation looks much better. Betty was required to get a fixed job done over and over again with little variation or room to grow. She did not have the liberty or an external trigger to try new things and learn about new tools. Even if she learned new tools and skills outside of her work environment, it was hard for her to practice since she spent 9 to 5 every day at her job. Betty, having worked at the same company for many years, did not have much exposure to the external job market conditions. When she first started, there were not many people with the skills required for an admin assistant. Now there are countless more job seekers that are able to perform the same job, making the field much more competitive.
Even though on the surface, Betty seemed to have greater job security than Annie, Betty's 9 to 5 only gave her a false sense of security. Freelancers are the ones who have more stable careers, not those in 9 to 5 jobs. Freelancers constantly have their finger on the pulse of the market. This direct and instant market feedback ensure that freelancers are constantly working to make themselves more marketable and above the competition.
As a freelancer, Annie is forced to upgrade her skills, learn and adapt to continue being a productive member of society. Betty is forced to add value to a siloed organization, even though the value she is offering might be outdated or oversaturated with talent outside of the siloed organization.
In many ways, signing a contract for a permanent job almost freezes time. You agree to fulfill the job as described in the contract and this job description doesn't really change much over time. There is no requirement to continue learning and growing, you've already got the job. Yes, it may be a good idea to keep learning in case you need to look for another job, but in itself, a permanent job does not require continued growth. The problem is the market keeps marching on, so that if you do ever need to look for a new job, you may have a steep learning curve to catch up. Freelancers on the hand are required by the nature of their work to always know what the most up to date skill set is and be striving to achieve it. This constant growth makes freelancing much more enjoyable on a personal level as well.
Chapter 3: The world has changed.
In the era of boomers, what you learned as a skill in school or university was enough to perform your job for most of your life. Things changed, evolved, and developed at a much slower rate back. It took some time before something became universally used so individuals had a long time to adapt to the changes and learn new skills if needed. Now, something can become a global phenomenon overnight, and if you don't adapt you will be left behind. This requires individuals to constantly keep learning new skills and adapt to the changing environment. Today, what we learned just 2 years ago will most likely be outdated in the next two years.
It took the telephone 75 years to reach 50 million users. People had all of that time to adapt to using telephones and how they changed the way of doing business. Facebook, on the other hand, launched in 2004 and reached 50 million users in just 3.5 years. Seemingly overnight it became a huge hit and suddely marketing managers had to develop a Facebook strategy right then and there, not over the course of 75 years as was the case with the phone. The speed of change is ever accelerating. One fact that really helps put this into perspective is that the top 10 jobs in 2020 didn't even exist 10 years ago.
And that is one of the main reasons why it is becoming harder for people to switch and find new jobs after a long tenure at a company. One does the same 9 to 5 job for years without keeping abreast of the changes in the world. A lot about the world changes in just a few short years. While freelancing you do not have the luxury of ignoring the changes and flux in the market. You are forced to encounter them head-on, there is no shield to protect you.
Freelancers are independent agents, making it easier to change and adapt. As the saying goes, Elephants can't dance: It's really hard to make change within big companies and systems. A freelancer, since they are only one individual, can adapt to a change within days or weeks. Large corporations and systems are nowhere near as nimble and would take years to make the same change. They often are caught up in the bureaucracy of simply evaluating if the change is the best option. Before even developing a plan to implement a change they will conduct needs assessments, hire consultants who will do their own research and analysis, have board meetings for few quarters to debate if this is needed and only then can then begin the implementation process which itself will take years to make the change company-wide. That being said, this is not the wrong way to do things, in many cases, it's necessary to do as a company. Companies are complex entities and have processes for a reason. This does not negate the fact that employees of a company might take years before they are affected by new developments in the market.
SUMMARY:
The nature of work is changing and it extends far beyond the work environment. In this new way of life, we as individuals have the liberty to choose the time and the place of work, the time we shop groceries and the time we eat lunch and the type of people we work with. Gone are the days of a static 9 - 5 job. This is the freelancer generation.
And once one truly understands the nature of this work, it becomes apparent that this new way of work is much more stable than the traditional 9-5. While yes, freelancer's income may vary from month to month, they end up earning about the same amount as in a traditional job. But a traditional is all or nothing. There is no in-between and no low earning or high earning months. Traditional workers are either earning 100% of their necessary income or 0% (and when it hits 0%, i.e. they were let go, there is no possibility for it to jump back up with the same company.
Traditional worker's entire livelihood depends on the whims of one company and is often based on how well they can follow their boss's order. But this generation does not want to be treated as herds and cattle, being directed by bureaucratic grey suit-wearing managers. This generation wants a new way of life, the autonomy to learn new things and be creative. To chose the nature of their work. They want the freedom to be freelancers. And based on how the market is currently going, it looks like they're going to get what they want.