Updated with more comments! The most important rules for today's workforce bar none

By Tom Foremski - November 20, 2005

By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher

My three rules of today's workforce:

--Carry and use your own cell phone/number for business

The workforce now is mobile and temporary even if you have a salaried job. You need to be in control of the center of communications: you.


--Carry and use your own email address even at work

Otherwise your contacts and the relationships you build can be severed when you leave a job, and that is an investment that you have a right to maintain--as does your employer.


--Carry and use your own health insurance

Because otherwise, you will be stuck in a job that makes you sick just to keep the health insurance.

[I've followed these three rules for years...]

From Mitch Ratcliffe: Ratcliffe Blog

http://www.ratcliffeblog.com/archives/2005/11/new_rules_for_2.html

To Tom's rules, I'd add:

Incorporate and work on contract rather than as an employee.

This allows you to negotiate the same kind of stock compensation while allowing you to keep your business costs, even the ones you can't get compensated for at work, on your own taxes while increasing the flexibility you have as a working person.

Carry and use your own hardware, building tech expenses into your compensation.

This prevents lock-in to a job through access to technology. Sure, you may have to work with a less impressive laptop, but you're also forced to think more like the people who really buy computers, software, services and so forth.

Update #2 thanks to Neville Hobson at NevOn, via David Newberger-The Geek Guy Rants

Create a blog and establish your personal presence in the new marketplace

In this new age of global inter-connectivity, linking and influence, a blog is a prerequisite if you want to build your own credibility, be found easily and connect with others. Forget the static website. Forget the fancy brochure. Do a blog. It works - I speak from personal experience.

Join a business network like LinkedIn or OpenBC
However you actively use these or not, they can help establish your individual credibility and provide avenues of contact with others for mutual benefit.

Anybody have any more?


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By Tom Foremski - November 20, 2005 | Permalink | Category: New Rules
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Comments (3)

Sean Ness:

Always do things/favors for people in your network without the expectation of reciprocity. You will get back much more than you think.

Posted: November 21, 2005 4:10 PM

Dru Nelson:


so, what is the secret to getting good health insurance as an individual?

250 million Americans would like to know :-)

Posted: November 22, 2005 2:38 PM

Tom Foremski - Silicon Valley Watcher [TypeKey Profile Page]:

If you carry your own mediacl insurance from an early age, it is nothing as expensive as the Cobra health insurance rates you see for individuals leaving company plans. For example, a buddy of mine pays $700 per month I pay less than that to cover a family of four at Kaiser.

Posted: November 23, 2005 11:53 AM

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