Freelance Jobs Vs Office Jobs: Advantages and Disadvantages

Almost everyone I know wants to freelance, well at least they do, but their parents still swear from a proper 9-5 Job  that gets home a set amount at the end of the month, or whenever your employer deems it feasible to pay you.  Frankly speaking, both Office Jobs and Freelance Jobs have their advantages and disadvantages, and these too depend from person to person and situation to situation.

Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages and disadvantages of working in an office. 

Advantage of Office Job # 1 - Stability: This may be one of the greatest advantages that one might find in a office job. After all, once you are employed by a company, you become part of a process, there is a probation period, and then you are taken in as an employee, and then you rise from being a part of the process to a important part of the process, from there you move on to become an indispensable part of the process. 

Actually speaking, a company must have already spend at least three months of the salary that it is paying you to just get you into the system, if you count the  day salaries of the people who have interviewed you,  the CTC of the interview room where you were interviewed, etc. Therefore, if you are employed by a company, ti would be safe to think that you are in for at least six months, and if you are proficient in your profile and perform consistently, you are in for the long haul with the company.

Working with a good company that respects its employees has a lot of advantages. There are perks, there is medical insurance, and of course, there is the salary, and a set road of progress where you just have to be good at your job.  In other words, a day job translates into stability, unless you have made a mistake while choosing which company to work for. 

Advantage of Office Job # 2 - Networking: If you are working for a company with a substantial number of people, you automatically become a part of their network. As time passes  your network increases and you become known for your work as well as nature. This opens up a new vista for you, which you can use for your professional growth. Most jobs today are given to people via a network of either the hirer or people who are close to the hirer.

Advantage of Office Jobs # 3 - Telling it as is: Working from home since the past six years has given me one trait - I can finally describe to people what I am doing for a living,without having them roll their eyes or look to a side painting trying to change the topic. When you work with a company, you get the right to name drop, and your social positioning actually increases. 

This advantage might seem trivial, but in some social circles this is quite important, where the value of a person is actually understood from what they do for a living.

Disadvantages of Office Job # 1 - Restrictive Progress: Yes, a job has its own scope of progress, but you should understand that the path of that progress is already written down, unless and until you take a drastic step. For example, if you join a company as a graphics designer, you will grow to become a senior graphics designer, then you will handle a team of graphic designers, and then finally you may come up to the level of a visualiser, etc. 

However, there is little chance that you will have a opportunity to get into web programming, because that is a totally different profile. This may seem to be a advantage to many, but to some individuals, this may hamper their style of working. 

Disadvantage of Office Job #2 - Handling People: Seriously, if you are no comfortable socializing with people you should not think of getting into a office job. In an office, you will meet several people with different attitudes and lifestyles. Of course, you will be meeting these kind of people even in a freelancing profile, but then you do not have to spend the whole day with them, whereas in a office, you will have to spend the entire day with them. 

With office jobs having such advantages and disadvantages, people are looking towards freelance jobs as a formidable option to office jobs. 

Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of  freelance jobs:

Advantage of Freelance Job # 1 - You make your own hours: This may be one of the most cliched advantages of freelancing, but it is the truth that with freelancing, you make your own hours, and more importantly you decide when to place those hours in your day. 

Advantage of Freelance Job # 2 - You make a lot of Money: This of course depends on how experienced you are in your profile and what kind of work you do, but spend a considerable time as a freelancer and you will find out that with the right connections and clients, you will be making more money than any office job.

While the advantages of a freelancing post are well known (and thats why there are only two sentences for it) here are the disadvantage of Freelance Jobs:

Disadvantage of Freelance Job # 1 - You are your Own Boss: This might seem all good and nice for the first few months, but in a few months, you will realise what your bosses were actually doing. As a business owner, or a freelance lancer, it is up to you to monitor and oversee all the aspects that are related to getting the work done for the client in the given timeframe. If you slip up on even one of the aspects, you may not face as much success as you would have thought, as a freelancer. 

Disadvantage of Freelance Job # 2 - No Stability: While this is more experienced with people who have freshly come into the world of freelancing, even veterans in the world of freelancing have experienced a lull in their work. And as a freelancer, no work means no money, and that acts as the beginner of many problems. But this cannot be helped, though solved by keeping two or three clients together.

These are just some of the advantages and disadvantages of freelance working.