I'm envious of people who can work a job. My wife, for example, has been at the same place for almost 10 years. My father has worked the same place for over 30. They have their complaints, but they get up every morning and they go.
The longest I ever lasted anywhere was 2 and a half years. It was my second job out of college. I've had 5 jobs over the course of 7 years. One of those jobs only lasted 3 months. One was only 10 months. Both were a race to see if I would quit or get fired first. I won on the 3-month job, I lost on the 10-month one. They never gave an official reason, but I think they would say it was because I wouldn't show up on time. Really, it's because I had no respect for management.
I've been freelancing for the last 2.5 years. Excuse me, let me correct that, I was unemployed for 6 months after the 10-month deal. I thought I hated programming. After getting fired, I didn't want to do it again.
A friend got me an interview at the place he worked, a small manufacturing firm. We started as a 3 month contract-to-hire, they wanted to hire me after the first month, and I stuck to wanting to contract. It scared the crap out of me. We were doing good work and being hired as an employee just felt like trying to ruin it. We worked out a consulting arrangement that, honestly, by most accounts is consulting in name only. I work so much for them that I don't have time to pick up other projects. After 6 months, told them I was going to primarily work from home. After another 6 months, I moved to a completely different city and just kept working. They didn't even know I wasn't in the area anymore for 3 months until we did a video chat session and they saw my new apartment.
I don't know what any of it means. If my client doesn't add any new tasks and I finish out the list I have, I'll have worked for them longer than I've worked for anyone. Them not adding any new tasks is highly unlikely. At the same time, I would see working for them for another 1 to be encroaching on "failure" and another 2 years to definitely be "bad". Not in the sense that I wouldn't be making good money (I'm making more now than any two previous years combined), but in that I have this emotional snag that sees staying in one place to be stagnating.
I don't think I hate programming anymore, especially now that I've gotten back into running my own side projects. But I certainly hate common corporate organizational structure. I just can't stand going into an office when I'm told, wearing what I'm told, thinking what I'm told (which seems to be the point of most employee handbooks). Every Joe Shmo with an MBA thinks he can start a consulting firm and hire a bunch of cheap programmers and turn it into a printing press for money. And they bring with them this cargo cult of Fortune 500 practices that ultimately feel dehumanizing. It turns my stomach even thinking about going to work as an employee.
But none of my family gets that about me. They just think I'm being difficult. Maybe I am, but I make more than all of them, so what is their problem? Just because I'm not clean shaven or put on pants most days means I can't support a family? That's probably an aspect of why I want to stick to not being an employee, out of spite for all of the people who have told me, "just get a job already, just get out of bed on time and go to work already."
It's very stressful. I'm constantly thinking about work and wanting to do something else. I don't get to just turn work off at the end of the day and play a video game. And that's not because I'm freelancing--as I said, my current client isn't going anywhere. That's my itchy feet, my knowledge of my past, and this haunting specter of some compulsion to find a new job.
Do what makes you happy. There's only one go around.
I've never worked at a place that just gave me free health insurance. Early on, it wasn't a lot of money, maybe $30/mo or so, but near the end, it had gotten bad, more like $250/mo. Everyone I know with employer-provided health insurance (with the exception of my wife, who works for the government) has gotten their premiums jacked up on them. So from my perspective it's kind of a fallacy that obtaining your own health insurance as a freelancer is "more expensive" than what you receive as an employee, because what you receive as an employee just ain't that great anymore. In my wife's case, they don't charge her an arm and a leg for health insurance, but they do pay her severally under the market rate for her experience and credentials.
And I definitely go on a lot more vacations now than I ever did before. Most of my "vacation" time before I would spend on being sick, as I never had separate sick leave. Now, because I don't have to go anywhere, if I get a cold, I just work through it.
I'll even accompany my wife on her business trips, work from her hotel room while she is working, and then we can have dinner together in whatever port city she's stuck in that night. I'll go visit my parents on occasion, or friends in other states. I just setup shop during the day in a coffee shop, library, hotel or something and then spend the evenings with them. I still visit with some of my friends about as often as when we lived in the same city together, and depending on the city, I can take the train and work while I'm riding.
Plus, I make a decent amount of interest on the money I put into savings for paying my taxes (being self-employed, I don't have tax withholding, I pay quarterly estimates instead). It's enough I can afford an accountant (well, not that the accountant is that expensive) to file my taxes at the end of the year. For me, it's a significant stress reliever.
And I eat and sleep much better when I'm home and not having to drive back and forth to offices.
In short, not only am I making more, my free cash is still more, and my quality of life is significantly better in every aspect. I don't even really have that high of a consulting rate, as I'm really bad/lazy about marketing myself.