‘Don’t work for yourself, you will have no job security.’

Question

I have clients whose parents and grandparents would say things like, ‘Don’t show yourself up’ because they wanted to be a performer, ‘Don’t ask for a discount, it’s embarrassing’, ‘Don’t work for yourself, you will have no job security.’ If you were meant to be like your parents and grandparents there would be no point in you being here, and if we didn’t challenge other people’s beliefs, opinions and convictions life would never advance.

Peer, Marisa. Ultimate Confidence: The Secrets to Feeling Great About Yourself Every Day (Kindle Locations 2909-2912). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.

What does the sentence mean? 'Work for yourself' seems to mean something I can't guess.

Answer 1

Working for yourself means that you are self-employed:

[Merriam-Webster]

: earning income directly from one's own business, trade, or profession rather than as a specified salary or wages from an employer

In other words, you need to worry about generating your own clients, and your pay will almost always vary from month to month—sometimes even with the possibility of not having any work to do at all on a given month, resulting in no income.

This is opposed to working for somebody else or a company, especially if it's full-time work, where you are normally paid a set amount regardless of what's going on with clients.

Having no job security if you're working for yourself is a little bit misleading—because job security normally implies the fact that you're not going to lose your job. But if you're self-employed, you can't be fired. (Quitting would be entirely your decision.)

In that sense, it might be better to say that working for yourself means you don't have any "monetary security." But that's a subtle distinction and most people will understand what is meant in context.