Tag: self-employed

2474: Pay Your Damn Workers

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One of the things I’ve noticed as someone who has spent more than his fair share of time looking for suitably gainful employment is the number of employers out there who undervalue their workers, expecting them to work long hours at demanding jobs for pitiful pay — and in some extreme cases, expecting them to work on a voluntary basis.

The growth in the number of jobs where the people who do all the heavy lifting (literal or metaphorical) have to act as self-employed is disheartening. It’s clearly a transparent, cost-cutting measure that means employers don’t have to provide workers with any kind of benefits — whether it’s basic things like holiday and cover for days you can’t work, or more structured benefits such as pension plans, healthcare and the like — under the pretense of being more convenient and flexible for the worker.

The above would be more acceptable if the payouts for workers were commensurate with the amount of effort (and/or physical exertion) they have to put in, but sadly more often than not they simply aren’t. What you end up with are a bunch of companies who are effectively paying their workers less than minimum wage while offering them no benefits, no National Insurance contributions, no Pay As You Earn tax deductions and little to no job satisfaction.

At the time of writing, I’m working two assignments on a self-employed basis. One of them pays a fair wage for some honest, specialised work, so I don’t mind working for them in this way at all — though I do, at times, wish they’d pay me a bit sooner and provide me with enough assignments to make it a legitimate full-time job, as that would go a long way to assuaging my presently perpetual state of anxiety. The other, I’m feeling, does not feel like it has enough benefits to outweigh the drawbacks, even though it presents the prospect of more regular income. (That said, taking into account the expenses I incur while working this latter position makes said income look even more woeful than it already is.)

I don’t know. I’m just currently feeling physically exhausted and incredibly disheartened at how things have been going for me, and I don’t know the best thing to do about it. The vaguely rational part of my brain tells me that sucking it up and paying my dues is the sensible thing to do, regardless of how exhausting it is and how awful a work-life balance it affords me. But the part of me that wants to not collapse and actually have time to enjoy life — even if it’s with tight purse strings — suggests that the healthy thing to do, mentally and physically, might be to nip things in the bud before I get too stressed out by the whole thing.

Goddammit, GamePro. Why’d you have to close down? I was happy working for you. Genuinely. More happy than I’ve ever been working any job since. All I want is to be happy and satisfied with what I do, and to be paid a fair wage for it. With every passing day, I worry more and more that I’m never going to achieve that.

1686: Sunday Night

Back to work tomorrow, and after a rather gentle start last week I’m actually hoping I’ll be able to get stuck in and make myself useful a bit more this week. I have a full-day company induction on Tuesday, I believe, but all being well the remainder of the week will see me actually doing my job, which will be nice.

Yes, that’s right, I said “nice”. I know in modern life it’s fashionable to be cynical about your job and to merely tolerate it rather than enjoy it, but for the moment I’m actually relishing the prospect of having something to do each day — and that something being part of something bigger.

I’ve had this to a lesser extent when working on websites, of course, but when working remotely from a different timezone to the rest of your colleagues, it’s easy to feel somewhat justifiably isolated at times. The advantage of what is effectively working “solo” alongside a bunch of other people who are also working “solo” on the same thing is that you can turn things around pretty quickly — more often than not, I’d have an idea for a feature on a website and be able to research, write and publish it within a space of a day. (Obviously things that require longer to research — by playing a whole game through for a review or walkthrough, for example — take a bit longer, but these can be worked on alongside other things.)

The downside of this I’ve already mentioned: you feel like you’re kind of going it alone, even when the people you work with make an effort to get together online in some form or another and swap ideas.

Conversely, having switched work environments from working solo at home to part of a team in a big office, I’ve noticed two things related to the shift: firstly, things take a whole lot longer than if I was doing everything myself as in the past, and secondly, you’re a lot more reliant on other people.

These things are a mixed blessing at best; it can be frustrating to be waiting on an important piece of information from a specific person and they simply don’t get back to you for weeks at a time. On the other hand, it means that things are — theoretically, anyway — a whole lot less stressful, since the workload of getting something done is spread between several people, each of whom can concentrate on their own specialisms rather than having to dip their toes into unfamiliar waters on occasion. It also kind of means you can work on a lot more things at the same time — do your bit, pass it on to the relevant person or people, then get started on something else, only returning to the original thing if you have to go back and fix something.

None of this is news to any of you who have been happily chugging along in office jobs for years now, I’m sure, but this is still quite a new experience to me. Those who have known me a while will remember that my past lives have included being a teacher, a salesman, a software trainer and a video games journalist — all jobs that tend to involve you dealing with things by yourself, whether or not you’re part of an overall “team”. It’s actually kind of nice to know that now, for the first time, I can share out some of the responsibilities a bit more as well as helping other people out when I can. I foresee it being a much more pleasant way to work — let’s just hope I keep feeling that way after the initial “honeymoon period” is over!

Anyway. In line with my new responsibilities as a cog in the corporate machine, it is time for me to disappear in a bedwards direction. I hope you have a pleasant week.