That’s also the reason politicians talk so much about helping them. From a cynical point of view, people talk about helping small business, not monolithic corporations, senior citizens not college students, and the middle class not the destitute. From a practical point of view, helping small business really is good for the economy.
Small businesses can also offer warrants or stock options to employees that become worth huge amounts of money when they’re eventually acquired by big companies. Big corporations can’t afford to do that in meaningful terms except for senior executives but a small company can for a key engineer or salesperson.
We bemoan the loss of small business and talk about keeping the mom & pop stores, then we gleefully embrace the “big box” stores (Walmart) , chain stores (Starbucks, etc) that run them out of business.
I remember when produce was available when in season.
We’re so very spoiled, aren’t we.
Big business works better for some things. Not so well for others. Grocery stores, etc, are of course going to be driven out of business by the wal marts and k marts, but there isn’t going to be a National Plumbers anytime soon.
Did you click on “handy man” in post #1? Ever heard of Roto Rooter? Stanley Steemer for cleaning carpets etc? Even Merry Maids yet.
Nothing seems safe from the evil arms of the corporate octopus.
Grow or die, huh.
Try getting them to come patch and paint your drywall, repair and clean your roof gutters, paint your shutters and trim, change the lightbulbs in the fixture in the cathedral ceiling, or the myriad of other things that people want done to their homes and properties. That’s what a handyman does, plus a hundred other things. It’s a living, not always a glamorous one, but certainly a successful one.
Who? I don’t know who you’re tring to get to do all that stuff. The people at that site (in post #1) certainly will. They, as far as I’ve heard, have an excellent reputation.
That’s exactly what it is. It’s also owned by a company called eCorp which is almost certainly has less than 20 employees. So while mangeorge admitted in his very first post he knew nothing about their business, it’s actually a great example of how small businesses are still doing really well.
It all depends on what you want as an employee, what kind of job you’re looking for and where you are.
I can’t speak for the US situation, since I don’t live there, but the kind of work I do (software development - mostly developing projects for clients) you can probably compare to architecture and similar jobs: a 50 man architecture company is a comparatively large one: most of your employees earn the company a very respecitable sum per hour, and you should be able to pay them a good salary too - and you can forget about not paying health insurance for them - that’s mandatory over here.
I don’t think there is really a big difference between larger companies in my line of work and smaller ones in terms of salaries - at least for the actual “doing the work” kind of jobs; consulting and programming, but as a higher-level manager you may be able to get more at larger companies, also because they have a need for more higher-level managers who are skilled at dealing with large teams.
That probably combines with the other percieved advantage a large company has: it’s in theory easier to start “at the bottom” and rise through the hierarchy without having to change empoyers. Most large (say 200+ employee) companies are structured like that. At a smaller company there’s less room at the top, but also less competition at the bottom, and the lack to organized “career paths” can help and hinder you; you probably have to push more to go up in a smaller company, but you may go further in a shorter amount of time.
But if you’re not interested in rising in “the hierarchy” and instead prefer to do better at your current job - and I know many people who do; programmers do not make for good managers quite a lot of the time, and they tend to know that - good luck getting a raise at a large “consultancy” bureau - they’ll only need a few hot shots and prefer to keep the rest of the programmers interchangeable - you may very well be probably better off at a small company or even just go freelance if you’re at all good at “networking”.
Companies (large or small) that develop primarily their own software (for “sale”) are different**; they tend to value programmers a lot more than the “project-bureaus”, but a) they’re usually smaller, b) the big ones that are really attractive to the employee (MS and google are examples of those) are extremely hard to get into, c) you’ll have to think about whether you want to spend the next couple of years working on a single product.
** Large game companies are exceptions; I’ve only heard horror stories about game companies, except for the small “indie” ones.
Small businesses are less likely to offshore their work. There is more stability in the jobs. The huge corporations have been laying off workers for decades. They are getting smaller all the time.
Small business is being hurt by the general economy . Almost everyone is cutting back. But when the economy recovers it will be in small businesses first, assuming the banks will loan them money.
That’s not really unusual nowdays.
I thought I’d seen their vans around here, but those were actually from mrhandyman, a similar but different company. They’re a franchiser, and I’m still not convinced that franchises should count as a small business. They have nowhere near the freedom, responsibility, and risk of a true small business IMO. Well, there is risk. I knew a Weinerschnitzel franchisee, and they (a couple) really were treated pretty much like employees. Much like managers. I hear Taco Bell is the same.
Small businesses are absolutely at least as likely to offshore or outsource their work because they don’t have the resources to do it themselves. Also, small companies are often the ones companies outsource to.
Small businesses are not any more stable than large ones and often less so. They typically have fewer clients and are less diversified.
Huge corporations are not “getting smaller all the time”. You only hear about the layoffs. You don’t hear about the new hires and probably don’t pay attention to the mergers and acquisitions. And even during a “hiring freeze”, companies still hire people.
Small business is indeed a major engine of growth in the economy (you got that part right). But whether banks lend to them will largely be a matter of whether the banks feel it is profitable to do so. Lending money to people who can’t pay it back partially got us into the current economic mess.
Someone above mentioned that small business routinely uses credit to meet payroll and to buy supplies. This tool in some cases became unavailable lately, and put these small employers in a real pinch.
This isn’t really a problem for many large companies, though they might use it as a convenient excuse for downsizing, etc.
Calling it outsourcing instead of offshoring would also be more accurate, since most outsourcing remains domestic. I would say that small businesses are much much more prone to outsource than a big company because they’re not already leveraged with big fixed costs. Companies don’t want to add overhead and staf to perform functions ancillary to their core competencies. The goal is to grow financially and maybe that means you need to increase staffing with new engineers or sales people or developers but you don’t want to hire a whole fulfillment staff and a team of customer service reps if you can source them outside the company. The difference is the small company doesn’t have those yet so they’re not starting from the same position larger companies are.
In actual fact small business get very few breaks from government. Big business gets the big breaks.
How many small businesses are bailed out by government a la GM and Chrysler? None, that’s how many. If your little factory of 40 people falls on hard times, the government will give you absolutely nothing. despite the fact that dollar for dollar, it’d be far more cost effective to help you employ your 39 employees than it is to help Chrysler. Small businesses don’t have any pull with politicians are so are ignored; the talk of helping them during election campaigns is all hot air.
Politicians will only help people who’re (1) rich enough to give them money or (2) politically organized are likely to vote. So, in practice, they only help rich people, big corproations, old farts, and religious zealots. Everyone else can fuck themselves.
That said, I can assure you, as someone in a job to see this sort of thing, that small business remains a major creator of jobs and industrial innovation. Thy’re also critical to the existence of big businesses, who rely on them as suppliers. I would say I personally provide registration services a dozen companies who supply General Dynamics and not a single one of them has more than fifty employees, and most are well below that. I serve 12-15 cmpanies who provide products to Ontario Power Generation; none are above 75 employees, most less than 40. They’re a critical part of industry.
The entire commercial paper market exists so that large companies can use credit to meet payroll and buy supplies because it’s cheaper than getting a line of credit from a bank, like a small business has to. Last year’s credit crunch hurt them in the same way. Of course it’s easier to get credit when you’re huge than tiny but it wasn’t some one sided street like you suggest, not in the least.
I’m not surprised, but I was under the impression that my Huge Corporation made payroll out of their own resources to avoid the cost of credit. Their payroll is so huge that any credit would be very expensive. I guess I could find out, but then they’d have to shoot me.
My boyfriend’s business is in constant trouble (seven employees) and he’s in deep hock to me, not to mention the bank. The economy is really hurting them. It’s a good business, but now it’s an awkward size - he hired more people because he had the work for them, but it’s just… problems, all around.
