hire me? re: VA

[yuugen]

I've been thinking of a way to create a muse without much investment capital to fund other more lucrative and successful ideas. However, as a recent college grad with lots of loans to pay and start-up costs of living on my own :), it's tricky to come up with such funds. Since the 4HWW goal is not to work more, and I don't really have time, I can't get an extra job.

However, I do have plenty of downtime during my current job to perform most online and computer tasks. I should be easier to communicate with than a cheap hire overseas, and I can charge the low rates since I wouldn't be doing anything else anyway.

Does this sound like a good idea?

[wildsoul]

Um. It doesn't sound very ethical to your employer.

[yuugen]

That was my concern as well. But since my employer isn't giving me enough work (well they are, but I do it all more effectively than the other employees combined), I figured I should spend my time productively.

[wildsoul]

I understand your motivations. But doing VA work is primarily an email-intensive job, and I just don't think it's fair to do that on your employers dime or computer system. Additionally, you risk get of getting caught having your work done on their servers. If they pull the plug, both you and your clients could suffer from the work you've done getting deleted.

Is it possible for you to simply go to part-time? Then build up your new business during non-working hours?

[yuugen]

Well, as a temp, I don't even have company email to use. The biggest risk is if I had a long term project file, but even that I can store online.

The problem with going part time is that I need all the income. I calculated that I can afford taking a day off about once a month. Since I'm hourly, I can't do frequent days off or remote working.

[Zntow]

Yuugen,

It sounds like a good idea to me just to get something started. Why don't you just work your business on your personal time?

I think you will find plenty of work even just from this forum. Get yourself a computer and internet connection to work at it from your home. If you don't have enough capital to get started, you will need to explore ways to get some short term capital such as working another part-time temp job or something.

Don't take time away from your employer or use any of their assets for your own personal use. There are 24 hours in each day. There are plenty of client projects around the world that will fit your time schedule. Get in the game.

[nextnewrich]

Let me know your skill sets when you have a moment. Thanks,

Christian

[yuugen]

1) my contract states that i can't use company material for outside work
2) focusing my efforts on finding a different job so i can move to a better place :)

[final_id]

If Yuugen is living anything like what I have experienced in my of MY office jobs, there IS NO SUCH THING AS PERSONAL TIME.

I just don't know how people do it. If I were a single mother my children would die. :p I regularly get 6 hours sleep a night, skip going home, don't eat for three days, merely in order to barely fulfill the minimum requirements at my workplaces. About three times a year I am required to attend, at my own expense of roughly $3000 apiece, long-distance travel with expensive hotels for conferences or presentations that are part of the work duties; and yet if you simply add up the cost of these junkets, over the course of a year they total more than my take-home pay. It's no wonder I want to outsource and unplug and automate -- I want DINNER! There's neither time nor money for that. Have to show "dedication" and "commitment." Grr.

That was what all my office jobs have been like. It's mostly a function of being good at things that are no longer marketable -- elite liberal arts degree, studies in the humanities, etc. If I had known, I wouldn't have done it (though I value education, I CAN'T AFFORD to live like an educated person) and instead would have learned about business. I frankly hate buy-sell-buy-sell obsession -- it's a simple-minded way to use your time, when you could be reading Shakespeare -- but the Shakespeare doesn't pay the bills. At all. Angers me ... I'm working toward the time that the Muse will pick up the pieces some time soon ...

[yuugen]

...maybe you are trying too hard for something that isn't worth it (especially if required seminars cause negative cash flow!!!!). I aim low and am not stressed out by my temp job. A position with more work and stress must be in a field that I absolutely love. My major complaint with my 9-5 is that it takes up unnecessary time.

[final_id]

Oh indeed, Yuugen. I agree with your point of view entirely. There's this funny thing that happens among what I call the "impoverished gentry" of intellectuality -- generally the humanities, in for example publishing, some parts of journalism and freelance writing, and so on. The market is SO low for it, that there's really only about 10% of the participants making a living wage at middle-class levels. The rest are NOT "scrounging" in order to gain entree into those few positions on the basis of their brilliance and competition, but they THINK they are. In fact, they're not getting anywhere -- the few paying positions available are generally given on the basis of something other than work record. So then you get a ridiculous situation for the middle- and lower-tier employees, that plenty of people who don't NEED money enter into the field in order to "do it for the love, not the money." For example, publishing is packed with young women recently out of small liberal arts colleges with humanities majors who are not making a living wage while working as "editorial assistants" (intelligent secretaries with clerical tasks) but living in Manhattan. The average salary is somewhere around $14,000.oo a year! For Manhattan? No, their mommies and daddies are bankrolling them. So then I get into it, do a good job at it, and find that if I hunt and peck I might make $15K! Wowee, thanks. And there's a constant "Oh, don't try to do it for the money, that's not appropriate" type of holier-than-thou message going on, especially from the higher-ups (who cut their teeth on low BUT DO-ABLE wages, the equivalent of today's $25K or $30K, and who THINK you're in the same boat). So it's viewed as not appropriate to wish to further one's career. Meanwhile the seniors, with plenty of years to their credit, both misunderstand their own industry, and steal the money out of it. I worked at one place where the Director got $150,000.oo a year, all fifteen employees got less than $20K, we were all "supposed" to "love" our work, and were giving 80 hours a week to "break in" and "prove our commitment," and the company regularly lost money year after year. Did the Director get the sack? Nooo, the underlings "had to try harder."

Upshot? The humanities-oriented positions in America are simply not paid. So we end up with a ridiculous situation in which academic positions for teaching (the dreaded "sessional" or "adjunct" job), positions in publishing (as mentioned), writing positions on many publications (most weekly and daily newspapers, for example) simply don't get "grown up" employees. Thus, content disappears. Teaching English is now a computer-performed process ("did the spell-checker catch it? No? then it must be right"). Publishing traditional books (and I don't mean E-Books, or how-to's, political diatribes from either side, and similar trade non-fiction that are more topical than designed for depth) no longer can rely on intelligent judgment from the staff. Newspapers are merely hard copies of web page content providers. Even web pages (where "content" should be an issue) have the standards of a high-school yearbook -- if you CAN publish it, then it DOES get published. The CONTENT of our culture has been bought out from the bottom. Children who are looking for spouses are doing the major work, and fuddy-duddies who dandle sherry glasses in their expensive directorship offices don't understand why their underlings don't spend more to get them, for example, some gold-plated Christmas presents.

Grr. It's a disaster in our culture. Not necessarily a strictly market-mediated phenomenon, either. More, it's an idiot-generation that's mediating it, and the change in "new media" is also allowing it to come to pass. It's a major cultural phenomenon going on here -- that since the 1930s we've been able to rely on "edited media" because we knew what an "editor" was, in teaching, or in reading. So we have nothing left to fill the void, EXCEPT this "market mediated" culture which is, by definition, not a culture but a market. Dangerous for the overall quality of decision-making in our society, because we're so busy NOT valuing high-quality decisions, or providing the information and the oversight and distanced perspective necessary for making them intelligently.