I don't feel any particular need to defend SPs points or writing style, as neither are my own and aren't really the topic of this thread. Also I'm sorry if my posting offended you in some way.
So instead I'll try to answer this from the context of the original question: whether jprogram should get a game job or start a game company.
1. He claims that you'll only be paid for the hours you work, not for the value you bring to the table. As I mentioned previously, that's ludicrous. Your salary is based on your skill level, i.e. exactly the value you can bring to the table.
I think his point was simply this: in a job you can never, ever be paid in full for the value you produce, because that would mean the company loses money on you. If you're good the difference can be quite substantial - the majority of what you produce will usually be going to shareholders, not to you. Thus if you're really worth your paycheck, you may be able to do better on your own.
3. Having a steady job is like being in a cage and companies want you to be a good pet. Plenty of companies challenge their employees because they don't want mindless worker drones -- they want employees that are able to push the company forward and think for themselves
That's true in some companies, and I guess especially young and cool companies (like game companies) try to be more open. But at the end of the day you're still
answerable to someone. You're still expected to show up 9-5 every weekday. And you're still expected to work on what you're told to work on, you can't just switch to a side project on a whim because you think it's a cool idea.
For most people this is fine. Others are willing to go up in risk to get the extra freedom. Personally I've never been as productive in a job as I am on my own, mostly because I can work on whatever I'm most passionate about at the moment.
4. [...]Furthermore, he's disregarding stuff I mentioned earlier such as health insurance and payments to your retirement fund that are often included with a steady job (people that have been self-employed often end up being unable to retire simply because they weren't "forced" to pay towards their retirement fund). A lot of companies also offer other free stuff such as free daycare and free lunch.
And all that is coming out of your paycheck. From the company's perspective, everything you cost them (health insurance, employment taxes, free food etc) has to be subtracted from the value you produce, and you have to produce a net profit on top of that. If you can produce that same value on your own (and that IS a big if...) and you can budget it correctly (another if), you can get all those things and more.
5. Having a steady job is riskier than being self-employed because you can be fired. I guess you can't be fired if you're self-employed, but you can definitely lose clients. And without clients, you may still technically be employed, but you're not making any money.
I guess you're talking about a personal service business here. From the point of view of a game company, this doesn't make much sense. Your "clients" (customers) can number in the tens or hundreds of thousands, even millions. Losing a few of them is irrelevant. Ditto for point 6.
It's like he's taking the worst job he can think of, almost turning it into a caricature
This I can agree with.
then comparing it to some idealized version of self-employment, where you apparently have ultimate freedom and no obligations (sometimes I can't tell if he's talking about self-employment or winning the lottery!)
No, he's comparing it to his own real life. The guy built a business system that produces
passive income, and intentionally so. Before he did it with his blog, he had already done it with his game company. He's written more about this elsewhere.
Developer
