Why you shouldn’t look for work outside of Israel

I found this article entitled Why I Decided Not to Look for a Job From Outside Israel while skimming the JobMob blog today. I was very excited to read why the author decided not to freelance to ouside of Israel. Unfortunately, the article is about looking for a full-time job in Israel before making Aliya. This isn’t what I expected, but it’s still a good read (I’d say line up clients before you make Aliya, like my friend Dan at RankAbove.)

I found this article explaining one women’s dillema – to freelance or get a full-time job. I’ve written what I think are the biggest problems

• The Problems
  1. The Office
     When I was doing part-time work from home, I took a small pay cut, reduced my hours significantly, and was able to set my own hours. My life had a lot of flexibility and I took advantage of it for a while, but I missed having human interaction. I got myself a full-time job and enjoyed having people around, although I did most of my work alone.
  2. The Stability
     At that full-time job, I spoke with a co-worker who spent 10-15 hours in the office every day, who said that he used to freelance, but his wife needed the regular paycheck.
  3. The Benefits
     The car, the retirement plans, the health insurance (not in Israel).
  4. The Bravery
     Once again, people’s fears insist that one has to be brave to make the move away from full-time jobs. Usually this stems from the stability argument, but it’s often articulated on its own that I insisted on listing it separately.
• The Solutions
  1. The Office
     For me, my desire to work with others could have been satisfied with an office sharing situation, but my employer didn’t want to pay for it, which meant I would have had to get more work to afford it, or get a full-time job with an office included. The full-time job was more than I bargained for! Simply the limitations it put on my lifestyle was incongruous with my Gen-whatever attitude. Maybe full-time employers should learn from freelancers and Best Buy and try their ROWE system for balancing corporate life with flexibility.
  2. The Stability
     I’ve spoken amongst my friends (and with my wife) about womens’ need for stability. I won’t go into it in-depth here, but I’ll say that it makes sense from a physiological point of view (imagine you couldn’t work for a few months when you got pregnant) as well as many other reasons. Men tend to have less-foresight and more adaptability skills, so it’s less of a concern for them. As long as you spend some time developing the skills and resources to land enough good-paying work, there should be enough consistency/stability and enough money to convince anyone of the rewards of freelance work.
  3. The Benefits
     I don’t know much about this. I won my own car and was never given one by a company. I have national health care, I have a retirement plan which was started at my last job and I hope to continue funding it privately. With the money that I’m saving and earning now, I can afford to pay for this on my own.
  4. The Bravery
     Yes, there is a voice inside all of us that fears failure, especially when we insist that it’s our fault. When the company we work for fails, it’s not our fault, but we’re stuck in the same situation – jobless and penniless. The real difference is that you had no control over the company’s failure, but you’re responsible for your own failures. Let’s all decide to grow up, act like adults with responsiblity for our lives and livelihood, and take actions for success.

If you think I’ve missed something, over-simplified matters, or I’m just full of crap, leave me a comment below.