What do you think is better for career advancement?
Relaly good topic Cedar
Okay, first thing we need to know are your long term and medium term goals, career wise.
This is important, because IMO there are three reasons a person is an employee
1)To learn/gain experience in chosen field
2)Because they love working there
3)For financial remuneration.
Okay, if people are at their work for option 3 then it is a really bad choice. Short term okay, but you will not become wealthy by being an employee for any length of time. Self employment/business ownership is way to go for that.
Which then brings us back to option 1 and 2.
Which ties back in with the goals question I asked you. Is your current job providing you with valuable experience and knowledge for what you want to do later in life? Is your current job something that you have a passion for and enjoying spending time there?
If the answers to both of these questions are no, then you are only passing time in your current employment and need to re evaluate your life goals, and strategy on how to get there.
Anyway, that is just my opinion on it. I must profess to being biased against employees against self employment from a financial perspective. Please take that into account haha.
Here is the thing Fort. I agree with you about self-employment but this not currently an option considering the situation in Lebanon.
About employment, of course no one can know everything about their jobs, but I feel that the pressure is bigger than the reward in my case, both financial or experience wise. For example, let’s say we are launching a new product. We have to study market demand (done a zillion times), meetings with the lawyer (another zillion times), the IT system (same), the brochures, the contracts, the proofreading, the printing…. Consider the proofreading. I have done it a million times, but each time there is the risk of mistake that would cause us to throw thousands of dollars worth of printed materiall. So even though there is no major new thing to learn, the pressure is always the same. This is one example of course, sometimes the projects involve much bigger risks.
2)Because they love working there
I have to admit that I love my company. I have been there for a long time, and most of the people there are my friends. Even though they get on my nerves sometimes, and I feel I am going to just quit and start over, this feeling never lasts long
So yes this is one of the major reasons that keep me there.
3)For financial remuneration
As for remuneration, as you said, there is only so much money you can make from being employed, so, again, the best option for those who want to make good money is to start their own business. I can do better if I look elsewhere, but then again, once I told my GM that I wasn't happy with my pay and got an instant raise (a pretty significant one). So I can get a raise now without having to leave.
I am not sure what I want honestly. What really makes me wonder is whether I want to stay in the same company until retirement. If I am able to start my own business I would definitely go for it. In fact I can do it now if it hadn’t been for the situation in Lebanon. But otherwise, do I want to spend my whole life in the same company? I know I can’t go much further than what I have now, and actually I am not sure there is a better career path in other company as well. I mean top management is not accessible because most companies in Lebanon are family businesses, even the big ones, and family always comes first. So...
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