Sunday, November 9, 2014

Why I Won’t Hire Employees for My Company

When I was still a regularly-employed employee at my first job, I encountered co-workers who were not ideal employees. And that’s putting it mildly. Some of them would deliberately try to hack into and change the settings of the Local Area Network (LAN) just for fun. Others would destroy the company office equipment like the office chairs, also for fun. Some were also kind of weird because they would apply for employment at the company then resent it when they were asked to work already.

Needless to say, my experience working with such people simply convinced me that working alone is sometimes really preferable to working with a host of strangers. True, some people might enjoy the company of their co-workers (and yes, even at that job I mentioned I did have some friends among my co-workers) but the odds that you will have to work beside a weirdo in the same office are quite high nowadays. That’s one reason I decided to become a freelance writer and that is also the motivation behind my setting up my own company named Quill Writing and Translation Services.

So obviously, I won’t be hiring any people to work at Quill. I have gotten used to the pace and the peace of working alone as a freelancer. At Quill, I am only answerable to myself and to my client. I can work as fast or as slow as necessary. I can adjust and make changes when necessary. And of course, I can turn down work also when necessary. The decisions are all up to me and the consequences are fully absorbed only by me. True, it can be terrifying sometimes being alone in your own company especially when you encounter a new writing topic that is outside your comfort zone. It can also be uncomfortable especially when you are approaching a deadline and you think that you aren’t working fast enough to meet that due date. And of course, when you make mistakes, you only have yourself to blame and no one else.

But hiring people brings with it its own set of difficulties – and I don’t want that in my life. My job is complicated enough without hiring strangers to do certain tasks for me. And the good news is that there aren’t really that many tasks that I would need to hire for. So life for me has become much easier ever since I decided never to hire any employees for my company, regardless of who those people might be.

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