Start Them Young – Entrepreneurial Skills All Kids Should Learn
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In addition to those, which are all great, I think that more and more people would benefit from having an understanding of business. Even having a small business and failing and moving on to be a normal employee elsewhere can be far better for someone, especially IT people, as understanding how businesses work and what their concerns are is extremely important.
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There needs to be a 9th on getting through government red tape.
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@scottalanmiller said:
In addition to those, which are all great, I think that more and more people would benefit from having an understanding of business. Even having a small business and failing and moving on to be a normal employee elsewhere can be far better for someone, especially IT people, as understanding how businesses work and what their concerns are is extremely important.
I really think that people should have to work at least as a 1099 at some point in their life, but better would be starting a small business. It costs next to nothing to start one and the lessons are invaluable. But even with just a 1099 they can see what actually goes in and comes out of their checks. Businesses handle so much behind the scenes that people don't realize how much they actually cost.
I also firmly believe that along with Home Ec there should be a class where you start a business and do mock sales, or even real sales. We had Economics in high school, but it was kind of a joke.
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That's a good idea. People who have not done enough 1099 work and/or had employees of their own often have no concept of what it costs to pay someone. I see this on IT sites all of the time. When IT staff talk about the cost of things they use the most ridiculously low staff cost figures.
Look at any discussion about Exchange, as an example. IT Pros will be like "$120K a year in Office 365 licensing, HA! I can hire two full time Exchange admins for that!"
Oh really? That's only $60K per person. And there is all of the tax and insurance overhead to pay with that. Headhunter fees or whatever it costs to hire those people. Training costs. And high turnover costs (how long do you plan to be able to keep a person at that salary level?) And what about vacations, benefits, etc.? At best those people could be paid $45K, likely a bit less.
How much Exchange admin-ability will you get from two ~$40K Exchange admins? Not much. And that's just two. Do you need to run 24x7, you need at least four. What about all of the other costs?
IT people way too rarely consider even the cursory business aspects of costs and make some crazy recommendations because of it.
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@johnhooks said:
I really think that people should have to work at least as a 1099....(snip)
What do you mean by 1099 work? Contractor or what?
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@dafyre said:
@johnhooks said:
I really think that people should have to work at least as a 1099....(snip)
What do you mean by 1099 work? Contractor or what?
Anything. It's the 1099 that he's saying is important. Not the work.
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@dafyre said:
@johnhooks said:
I really think that people should have to work at least as a 1099....(snip)
What do you mean by 1099 work? Contractor or what?
Any non employee status. You get paid in full with no taxes taken out. So you need to file quarterly payments to the IRS.
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@johnhooks said:
Any non employee status. You get paid in full with no taxes taken out. So you need to file quarterly payments to the IRS.
And have to cover all of the insurance, fees, both sides of the taxes, etc. It gives you a real feeling for how much overhead a business is required to pay that you never see, just to be allowed to pay you.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Any non employee status. You get paid in full with no taxes taken out. So you need to file quarterly payments to the IRS.
And have to cover all of the insurance, fees, both sides of the taxes, etc. It gives you a real feeling for how much overhead a business is required to pay that you never see, just to be allowed to pay you.
Ya it's nuts. Self employment and Medicare taxes alone are 15.3% up to $118,500.
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People have no idea how much money companies spend on them. When I worked for a huge Wall St. bank, I learned that my cubicle space and all of the things that go with it (HVAC, workstation, desk, power, light, security, my share of the restrooms, etc.) came out to cost more than my salary, and my salary was good. What I took home in my paycheck was only like 35% of what the company would spend for me to work there.
We figured it was $500K a year per person that worked in IT as a rough number. The salary of the person was not a significant factor until you got into executive management and even there their offices got larger and their "other costs" would go up with their salary keeping it from ever becoming a dominant percentage of total costs.
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Ah, ok. I gotcha. I ran a computer store for while, but there were no real employees to speak of, and this was before health insurance, etc. was required for small shops. My Pops did a lot of the accounting and the IRS paperwork, so I never had to deal much with it.
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@dafyre said:
Ah, ok. I gotcha. I ran a computer store for while, but there were no real employees to speak of, and this was before health insurance, etc. was required for small shops. My Pops did a lot of the accounting and the IRS paperwork, so I never had to deal much with it.
Yeah, it's not running a shop that does it so much, it's getting paid on a 1099 and/or having employees to pay that really exposes it. If you run your own business with only you as an employee you can do so many things to funnel yourself tax-free money that it covers up the pain that the business-side taxes inflicts.
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You have to have workman's comp, unemployment insurance (or risk paying that out of pocket - employees often quit and try to claim this), legal fees (to deal with things like fake workman's comp claims), CPA fees, health insurance, HR requirements, both sides of the payroll takes, corporate bank fees, payroll fees, etc. It adds up fast.
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"Here are 8 entrepreneurial skills that will help your kids become the next Steve Jobs - leading successful, fulfilling lives"
Euugh, why would anyone want their kids to be like Steve Jobs? He was a complete bastard who treated his family like dirt. I'd hate my kids to grow up like him. His life doesn't even sound very fulfilling either.
And since when has empathy been an "entrepreneurial skill"? A significant number of successful entrepreneurs are psychopaths with no empathy whatsoever.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
A significant number of successful entrepreneurs are psychopaths with no empathy whatsoever.
Significant number or a significant percentage?
And who said that being successful was the goal? This is about skills that kids should, nothing said that kids should be entrepreneurs.
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I just don't see what is entrepreneurial about any of it. They're good life skills all kids should learn (and I'm sure any kindergarten teacher would agree). What does it have to do with entrepreneurship?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I just don't see what is entrepreneurial about any of it. They're good life skills all kids should learn (and I'm sure any kindergarten teacher would agree). What does it have to do with entrepreneurship?
That these are skills that entrepreneurs tends to have and that are good life skills that all kids should learn but generally do not.
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Nearly every one of these is a skill that are specifically crushed by the US education system systematically.
