# Consultant vs. Employee at Startup I am going to try and grok [The Most Important Thing](The%20Most%20Important%20Thing.md) as it relates to a problem I am going to face in the future: > Should I venture off on my own to be a consultant, or should I remain an employee (Data Scientist, Engineer, Manager, etc) at a startup? I am going to apply the exercise outlined in order to [identify the most important thing](The%20Most%20Important%20Thing.md#Action%20to%20take). #### Main Objectives To start, I will write down the objectives that are important to me related to this decision: 1. I only want to work 20 hours per week. The rest of the time (20-30 hours) should be dedicated to reading, learning, writing, and investing. This leads to a 40-50 hour work week 2. I want a high degree of autonomy 3. I don't want to work weekends 4. I want to feel comfortable and secure 5. I want my relationship with Dom to be better than ever 6. I want to be fulfilled and useful (solve problems that help people, that they value) 7. I don't want to do busy work (write out email, manage people, etc) #### Make Objectives Battle Now it is time for the objectives to battle. Right from the start, I know the objectives that are most important are: 5, 1, 2, 4. I want provide a bit more detail on 2, 4, and 5: 2. I want a high degree of autonomy. This means I can schedule my days as I wish, be flexible, (end my day at 3 pm and work hard through the day, or end at 5 and take many breaks and be available). I don't want to be told when I can or can't take vacation. I want to be able to work from anywhere in the world. 4. I want to feel comfortable and secure. Clearly this is something that has given me immense trouble in the past. Living pay check to pay check is not any option. To be comfortable and secure, I will define that as: not needing to thinking about buying groceries, coffee, grabbing food out-essentially, the life you lead now. For instance, I do not need to be able to buy a boat or fancy clothes. My estimate for what this lifestyle requires is that Dom and I make $120k combined, and I have no loans. This changes if a nugget comes into the picture. 5. I want my relationship with Dom to be better than ever. One of the biggest things that clearly has been very challenging for Dom and I is that in order to be good at my job (and ensure 2, 3, 4, 6, 7) it requires a lot of my _time_. It also requires a lot of my brain when it is fresh and ready to go. This is challenging for Dom because it leaves *less of me* for her. The clear cut way to fix this is to continually work to change the distribution of how my time is spent during the working day. For instance, if my working day required 30 hours per week of mathematics and computer science, I wouldn't need to seek out so much extra on my own. That would mean that I could read and write during my extra 15 hour block. And that would mean outside of that block I could be more present for Dom. So the key here is to forever work on changing that distribution. The alternative would be going back to school so that I could *really* advance this skill set. Now, I'd like to list out a few interconnections that are clearly present here: * If I am able to do 1, then even if I have to do 7 for 10 hours per week, that would be fine. I would still have 30 hours of fulfillment, learning and growth. I am willing to do up to 20 hours of busy work, *if and only if* the rest of my time is mine. So, if I could be a consultant but I viewed the entire job as busy work (managing people, organizing teams, sending emails, etc), and *none of it* was solving the problems I am interested in, that would be *fine*, so long as the entirety of my remaining time was *mine*, *and* I was secure and comfortable. In other words, I would not do this if I made less than $80K/year * 5 is clearly very dependent on 2, 3, 4, and even 1. 5 only works if we have 4 at a minimum (our relationship will struggle if we have to think about money nonstop). To be clear, 5 is a non-negotiable-it is the ultimate objective here. This means that if I have *all* of the other objectives taken care of, but I am missing 5, I have failed. What is clearly challenging with this is, as I have highlighted above, the *interdependencies* at play. While 5 is the most important objective by a long shot, it cannot be completed on it's own. If I am not able to hit many of the other objectives on the list 5 will surely suffer. Over the course of a 60 year relationship, those other bullets are crucial. * So, with that said, 2 and 4 are at the top of my list. If achieve 1 but ended up not being secure (which I interpret as: money is an issue), then I am in trouble. #### Rankings 1. **I want my relationship with Dom to be better than ever** 2. **I want to feel comfortable and secure** * Be able to go 1 year bringing in no income. This can be achieved via building up a savings of $100K as well as always having a skill set that could land me a new job quickly. 3. **I want a high degree of autonomy (not be micromanaged or have my time impinged upon)** * Likely the objective that is most effectively satisfied via consulting. 4. **I only want to *work* 20 hours per week** * Again, work is defined as: "doing things I wouldn't want to do in my free time". So, if a job (consulting or employee) has me doing cool technical things or writing, well that won't really be grouped in as work. I am willing to do 20 hours of busy work (email, manage people, etc), provided the rest of my time is mine. 5. **I want to be fulfilled and useful (solve problems that help people, that they value)** * This is ranked relatively low because in reality the ultimate fulfillment will come from 1. If I do the things needed to make 1 a reality, I will be fulfilled and useful. If I can do this in a professional context that is *fantastic*, but the most important area to achieve it is in a *personal context*. 6. ** I don't want to work more than 2 weekend days per month. ** * Working 2 weekend days per month is fine, provided all the other objectives are in order. --- tags: #decision-making #personal-examples links: [Decision by Design MOC](Decision%20by%20Design%20MOC.md) [The Most Important Thing](The%20Most%20Important%20Thing.md) created: 2020-12-08 modified: 2020-12-10