June 5, 2019

“Hourly workers are always going to fall behind”

Sent by Jonathan Stark on June 7th, 2019

Isaac T shared a link with me on Twitter (thanks Isaac!) to an article in which famed billionaire Mark Cuban was quoted as saying:

“The biggest issue for entrepreneurs, for capitalists, for those of us who are successful is, if someone is only going to be paid by the hour...they’re always going to fall behind,” Cuban told Recode Decode with Kara Swisher at the 2019 SALT Conference in Las Vegas. “And income distribution is ... the disparity is going to get wider and wider.”

Cuban’s perspective on hourly is significantly different from mine in most ways (e.g., his focus in on full-time employees and equity vs mine which is on independent professionals and fixed pricing) BUT one thing that we have in common is this:

Selling your time gives you no leverage.

You can’t scale it, and you can’t optimize it. If someone buys an hour from you, it takes you an hour to deliver it. Period.

It’s a trap.

Yours,

—J

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