Thread by @itweetstuffhere

The future is freelancing.

Embrace it now and find your niche, or fall behind.

https://twitter.com/FastCoIdeas/status/1077770979886141447

"being self-employed is for losers and poor people, enslaving oneself to an employer is where real prosperity is, u silly rubes

https://twitter.com/SheaSerrano/status/1077949614811156485

Incoming tweet storm transcribing remarks from this eminently germane @naval interview six years ago.

@naval "I really firmly believe the actual efficient size of a company is shrinking very rapidly. The future will be almost all startups."

- @naval

@naval "I think most of the world and most business will adopt the startup mentality, in the sense that there will be small companies loosely connected and coupled to each other, almost through APIs or other processes for their needs."

@naval "The Industrial Revolution created this massive clustering effect, where there's economies of scale from having factories.

So everybody has to gang together in these 5,000-10,000 person companies.

I think that trend has now reversed thanks to information technology."

@naval "You could have a future where your son or daughter will wake up in the morning, and there'll be a message on their phone (or in their brain implant, or Google Glasses or whatever).

They'll have a couple of job offers. They’ll pick the one they want to do for the next 2-3 days."

@naval "They’ll do that job through a series of APIs or interfaces with the rest of the world.

Then they’ll get rated and they’ll get feedback.

So in the future we’re all Uber drivers. *laughs*"

@naval "I think the contract work trend is going to increase, and I think the size of your average company is gonna decrease.

I think we’re gonna see more and more billion-dollar businesses built by 4-5 people, and it’ll stay at that number."

@naval "I think you'll be able to outsource pieces that today you don’t think are outsourceable.

You’ll be able to outsource your sales, revenue collection, bookkeeping/reconciliation.

You may not outsource the final stage of your hiring, but you’ll outsource the early stage of it."

@naval "There’s gonna be lots and lots and lots of small companies loosely coupled.

This is really bad news for all the people who were laid off in the last recession.

Because they don’t think that way."

@naval "They’re gonna try to find jobs with big companies, and a lot of the jobs that are created now will be in small companies, which will require them to be more dynamic, more adaptable, more information savvy."

@naval "A corollary to that is, anybody who is comfortable in information technology today has a 10x (or greater) advantage in productivity over someone who is not comfortable with info tech."

@naval "The smart are getting richer, and society doesn’t know how to deal with this.

If you’re someone who is good with computers, you can produce 10x, or 100x, or 1000x the output of someone who is working with their hands all day."

@naval "Given that, society doesn’t know what to do.

We’re not meant to handle those kinds of differences in productivity between individuals.

And it’s very hard to retrain the last generation."

@naval "So we’re gonna try to punish the rich, and we’re gonna catch the smart in that dragnet. And that’s gonna be an interesting dislocation."

@naval "I think any entrepreneur worth their salt could—if they were building Facebook today and had the same feature set—they could do it with a few hundred people."

@naval "Facebook and Google are in this situation where large companies end up, where the founders know that 80% of the people in there are not really needed.

They just don’t know which 80%.

They’re all lost now in the politicking of the company."

@naval "To me, the definition of work is "the set of things you have to do that you don’t want to do."

By definition, if you want to do it, it’s not work.

That’s literally the difference between work and leisure."

@naval <end transcribed remarks>

You may not like what @naval is saying, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.

@naval If you're young and you aren't comfortable with info tech, get comfortable with info tech.

Your life may literally depend on it someday!

ADDENDUM:

Just had a major light-bulb moment.

Contractors/freelance workers have SKIN IN THE GAME.

Corporate drones and clock-punchers do not.

A largely freelance-based workforce isn’t just inevitable.

It’s superior to the existing heavily corporatized workforce.