Self employed

Flatfacedcat

DullGreyGuy said:

sheramber said:

If you are self employed you set your charge for your services.

If your employed or self employed its ultimately a negotiation

It's not only this. It changes also the way the two parties are treating each-other. Project managers often treat with subtle disrespect their employees and from a position of authority, while employees tend to accept to be walked over by their bosses being afraid to say no or to assume a position - this type of behavior a contractor should never accept it and it doesn't exist in the business relationship between self-employed people and companies they work with.

FlorayG said:

I begin to suspect that you are not legally 'self employed' and your 'client' is just shirking the law

To my "nose" appears that Greenwellies_2 in the documents is self-employed, but in the everyday life has no idea how to behave like a self-employed person and its attitude and behavior are those of an employee. According to my "nose" what Greenwellies_2 needs is to join a forum discussion community of self-employed and freelancers in order to learn and absorb the right attitude to adopt concerning the business relationship with companies.

DullGreyGuy

Flatfacedcat said:

DullGreyGuy said:

sheramber said:

If you are self employed you set your charge for your services.

If your employed or self employed its ultimately a negotiation

It's not only this. It changes also the way the two parties are treating each-other. Project managers often treat with subtle disrespect their employees and from a position of authority, while employees tend to accept to be walked over by their bosses being afraid to say no or to assume a position - this type of behavior a contractor should never accept it and it doesn't exist in the business relationship between self-employed people and companies they work with.

Sorry, not getting if you say PMs have disrespect for the employees in the project team or if the project team disrespects the PM?
Similarly unclear if you mean the contractor is the PM or one of the project team? 

PMs are arguably an odd breed as they have no direct authority to tell anyone to do anything, unless your one of those places where the PMs are line managers of BAs, but more generally its using influence and the pretence of having the authority of the sponsor to get things done. 

Like anyone PMs can be respected or disrespected, though of as valuable or a waste of money, this is irrespective of if they are a contractor or employee. 

Flatfacedcat

@DullGreyGuy:
I am saying that many companies exploit people. And to me it seems that this is also this case. Greenwellies_2 in legal terms is self-employed, but in concrete facts it is treated as an employee. To the company, the fact that Greenwellies_2 accepts such a treatment is the best they could aspire to because this way the company, as someone else pointed out, pays a lot less money than what they should if Greenwellies_2 was an employee also in legal terms. Furthermore, it seems that Greenwellies_2 is doing his/her best to accomodate the company instead of working on his/her own terms (which is a characteristic of self-employment).
There are pros and cons in being self-employed, while in this situation - as it seems to me - Greenwellies_2 unfortunately is not benefiting of any of the advantages that self-employment is offering but it's only suffering.

Based on my personal experience derived from those times when I attempted to change my rate charging a higher price clients I was already working with, there is little to nothing that is possible to do here related to money because if Greenwellies_2 attempts to charge more this company then is almost guaranteed will lose the client - the company will end the contract. One of the lessons I learned during my years as contractor is that the price agreed from the very beginning with a new client is the price that will remain for the entire business relationship with that client. So what Greenwellies_2 can do is to find new clients to work with and charge them more from the very beginning, and then end this contract with this current client.

DullGreyGuy

Flatfacedcat said:

I am saying that many companies exploit people. And to me it seems that this is also this case. Greenwellies_2 in legal terms is self-employed, but in concrete facts it is treated as an employee. To the company, the fact that Greenwellies_2 accepts such a treatment is the best they could aspire to because this way the company, as someone else pointed out, pays a lot less money than what they should if Greenwellies_2 was an employee also in legal terms. Furthermore, it seems that Greenwellies_2 is doing his/her best to accomodate the company instead of working on his/her own terms (which is a characteristic of self-employment).

Certainly some do, some also get a reputation and struggle to find workers. Others are exceptionally generous. 

"Own terms" really depends on the nature of the relationship, sure sole trader -v- private client is likely to be sole traders terms but sole trader -v- multinational corporation it will be the corporations terms if work is going to be done. It's not limited to sole traders either, small-medium companies equally will be subservient to their clients terms. For one client I was acquiring software/services from a firm and unusually my client didnt have standard terms but the software company didnt have any either as every other client has demanded they use theirs they never bothered developing their own... this a company with 20 or so employees and c£10m turnover so certainly not anything but a legitimate company. 

Have also had multi-national FS company -v- multi-national software company and it was a very big debate on who's terms we'd start from (they finally agreed to start from ours)

Flatfacedcat said:
Based on my personal experience derived from those times when I attempted to change my rate charging a higher price clients I was already working with, there is little to nothing that is possible to do here related to money because if Greenwellies_2 attempts to charge more this company then is almost guaranteed will lose the client - the company will end the contract. One of the lessons I learned during my years as contractor is that the price agreed from the very beginning with a new client is the price that will remain for the entire business relationship with that client. So what Greenwellies_2 can do is to find new clients to work with and charge them more from the very beginning, and then end this contract with this current client.

My experience as a contractor is very different, in many of my contracts I have negotiated rate changes either with the client and/or the agency (ie margin sacrifice). Inevitably it depends on how indispensable they think you are or how painful it will be to replace you. 

In 14 years only had one case where the client didnt agree to the rate change, or more accurately I said I needed an extra £X/day to stay, they offered 75%, I said no, its £X or nothing and so they offered 95%, I said goodbye, they offered 100%, I stayed silent, they offered 105% and I left.