Choose Your Job

by Peter Szabo, SIG Manager, Consulting and Independent Contracting

Just over a year ago, I chose to be my own boss…for the second time in my life.

After six years of choosing to give much of the control over my daily work and income to a corporation, I chose again to regain some control over my career”only to recognize that I’d relinquished a portion of that control to my clients.

A Bit About Me

14 years ago, I decided to stop performing odd and meaningless jobs, and started a career doing what I loved most, writing. I started out writing brochures and newsletters for free, or very little money, so I could build up a portfolio of samples. Then I graduated to long-term contracts, writing promotional and sales materials, and policies and procedures for entrepreneurs. Within a year, I thought I’d hit the big time when I landed a full-time contract with Bank of Montreal developing book-based training materials for customer service representatives in branches across Canada. For four years, I worked mainly for this one client (which many contractors and representatives of Revenue Canada will tell you is no longer self-employment). But I was comfortable.

Then a change in upper management required that all contractors be dropped and all work moved in-house. They offered me employment but I stubbornly turned it down, thinking employment was for those with no little or no aspirations for challenge and variety.

A year later, after one new mortgage and a newborn son, my aspirations quickly shifted toward the ‘stability’ of employment and a predictable paycheque. So I focused on learning and growing within an organization and, for six years, I had fun—until a massive lay-off put control of my career squarely in my lap, again.

Rather than search for the ideal employer who could guarantee me the creative growth, the income, the stock options, the benefits, the camaraderie, the gourmet-coffee maker, and the pool table, I chose to join with an extremely compatible technical communicator friend and return to the field of Consulting and Independent Contracting (CIC) in a partnership.

A Bit About Independent Contracting

So what am I getting at here (other than introducing you to your newest STC chapter CIC SIG [Special Interest Group] Manager)? I’d like to demystify and deglamorize the independent contractor job and offer it as a legitimate option for any of you who consider it too daunting to consider. Life on the CIC side of the fence really is just a job. But one in which you call most of the shots rather than a manager in a corporation.

I’m suggesting that there’s not much difference between being an employed and a self-employed technical communicator. Both are just two sides of the same job. One is not necessarily better than the other. And unless your source of income involves profits from investments, either in real estate, stocks, or a business, a job is still a job. There are different perks and different challenges based on different lifestyle preferences, but each is still a job in which you perform a service for which you are paid. Though there are many distinctions between the tasks you perform on a day-to-day basis, you are still tied to the model of exchanging your time for someone else’s money.

It all comes down to a choice…your choice. For me, the great thing about the choice between employment and self-employment is that I can choose one option now and change tracks later to choose the other option. The option of being a contract technical communicator opens up a whole realm of personal and career opportunities that ultimately make me a more rounded human being, while filling up my toolkit and enabling me to take on almost any job that suits my needs.

So keep your options open. Employed or self-employed, choose the job that works for you. And when you want a change, choose the other.

About Peter Szabo

Peter Szabo has been a technical writer in one form or another for 13 years. Peter co-owns Heterodox Communication + Design with fellow technical communicator, Lori Jankowski. The partnership successfully manages independent technical communication contracts throughout Guelph, K-W, and Toronto. Born and raised in Toronto, Peter currently lives in Guelph with his wife, Irene, and son, Taylor. He serves the STC Southwestern Ontario Chapter as Consulting and Independent Contracting (CIC) SIG Coordinator and is also an independent filmmaker.