Hi everyone,

I recently submitted my thesis (in the humanities) for examination, and now I'm lost. I don't want to stay in academia, but I have enjoyed working on my own for the past few years. The thought of finding a regular office job is driving me crazy. The only compromise that I can think of is to start a home business. Has anyone else had similar thoughts? Any advice?

======= Date Modified 14 Jan 2012 17:44:44 =======

Hi TVready,

I'm just a few months into my PhD, but I'm already strongly averse to a regular office job (or just any type of employment in general), and really don't want to go down that route.

I do find academia interesting and enthralling, but I don't think I fancy it at the career level, where you spend your time jumping through hoops to acquire funding, doing 'fundable' research instead of interesting research, and all in all it seems to be a poorly paid career that has a fairly shallow salary progression until the end 10 years when you make it to professor (which not everybody does, of course!), and even then it probably plateaus at around £80k. Sure, when you're doing your PhD and you're funded, your research is unchecked by the funder, the research is (hopefully) something you've chosen to do, and you are your own boss and the primary decider of the direction of the work, then it's great. And probably if you're a highly prominent professor, then the same rules apply. But the stages inbetween don't really interest me.

Personally I want to be my own boss and have the opportunity to make a lot of money which is not determined simply by how much money I can make for company, but about how much money I can make for myself. I don't want to be a wage slave.

How I will go about this is not yet decided... whether it's by starting up a business, by investing in stocks and shares, or investing in property and other companies, etc, at this stage I'm just not sure. Although one thing is for sure, I probably won't have enough capital to start any of that after my PhD, so perhaps some initial years of 'normal' work is inevitable for me.

I suppose things may be different for the two of us. I'm doing an Engineering PhD and the research group I work within has a lot of industrial contacts with small businesses which were started by entrepreneurs, and there's a large scope (and a large expectation) that the industry will expand by about 400% over the next 20 years, so there may well be an opportunity for me to start a business which operates in the field of my PhD, whereas I don't think it will be as likely that you could do that with a humanities PhD.

But either way, the general sentiment is shared... wage slaving is not for me. The whole idea of employment is that you must produce more value for the company than the company returns to you in the form of a salary. Just doesn't make sense... if I am capable of providing that level of value, why not do it on my own terms and pocket the entire profit for myself, rather than do it on somebody else's terms with them taking a significant chunk of the product and returning a relative pittance for me?

Thanks GSM,

You have described my exact sentiments about being a wage-slave (although I am sure that you could do quite well with an Engineering degree).


I still haven't figured out how to create my own job, but I am sure I will find a way...

======= Date Modified 18 Sep 2012 03:25:53 =======
Hi TVready. You need to think about your own interests and hobbies and see if there are any opportunities that arise out of those for a business, or otherwise a business opportunity you identified from previous work experience. You need to talk to people doing similar kinds of home based businesses to the one you want to set up - as they can act as role models to you. When starting a business, no one is there to tell you what to do. You have to write your own job description! Plenty of people can offer advice if you ask, but ultimately you're in charge. Also, you don't need to invent something completely original. Most home based businesses are copies of other home based businesses. You could look at the Startup Britain website although this isn't that great. Shell Livewire is a reasonable discussion forum for start-ups. There are a number of good books out there. 'Start your business week by week' by Steve Parks is one of the better ones for starting a small business. And if you want big scale inspiration, read the autobiographies of the household name entrepreneurs. The Stanford Ecorner website has a lot of inspirational talks on from leading American entrepreneurs. There are also all sorts of short courses out there to help you set up a business through universities, colleges etc, of highly varying degrees of quality. Seedcamp is the most aspirational programme for young entrepreneurs who want to grow a sizeable business, but I'm not sure that is necessarily what you're aiming for.