A Salaried Corporate Job, or Being Your Own Boss?

In the early 1700s, at St John's Gate in London, a Latin teacher started an unusual business: a coffee house where only Latin was spoken. Richard Hogarth's venture did not catch on. Unable to pay his debts, he was locked up in the Fleet debtors' prison and was not released until 1712.

His son William was a child in those years. When he was a little older, he was apprenticed to Ellis Gamble, a silver engraver. In the shop he learnt to engrave decoration on tradesmen's cards and metalware. He did not finish his apprenticeship; he set up on his own instead.

In 1732 William Hogarth published A Harlot's Progress, a series of six scenes showing the step-by-step ruin of a young woman newly arrived in London. He did not leave the prints to a publisher or a wealthy patron. He sold them directly to the public, through subscriptions collected in advance. According to Tate's research, the first pirated copy was on the market a little over a week after Hogarth delivered the prints to his subscribers.

Hogarth did not stop at complaining; he lobbied Parliament for legal protection. His new series, A Rake's Progress, was ready, but he held back its publication. The Engravers' Copyright Act, known today as "Hogarth's Act", came into force in June 1735. It is considered the first copyright law to cover visual works. Only then did Hogarth publish his new series.

The twist comes at the end. In 1757 the same Hogarth, who had spent his life working independently, accepted a salaried post at court: the king's official painter and decorator, "Serjeant Painter". The official annual salary was just £10. But the post gave him a monopoly on painting and gilding the royal buildings, carriages and banners. According to the William Hogarth Trust, he earned £400 from this work in the first year, and by 1761 his income had risen to £982.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question

In the last year of university, in the third year of your first job or right after a promotion, the same question comes up: carry on working for a salary at a corporate company, or start your own business? Hogarth's life shows that this is not a two-option exam question. He saw his father's ruin, started his own business and, at the end of his life, took a salaried post. In every period he learnt something different.

What a salaried job gives you

A corporate job offers a regular income, social security and, most importantly, the chance to learn using someone else's resources. Hogarth learnt engraving in Gamble's shop. Seeing from the inside how sales, budgets and team management work at a company could be your most valuable capital if you start your own business later. The price is that most decisions are not in your hands, and your earnings have a ceiling.

What your own business gives you

In your own business, you set the rules: you decide what to do, whom to sell to and what to charge. But the risk is entirely yours, too. Richard Hogarth's coffee house is a reminder that an interesting idea alone is not enough. Reading the stories of failed startups in the Startup Graveyard is a good exercise in not romanticising that risk.

Ask yourself before you decide

• If no income came in at all, how many months could I get by?
• Is there a single customer ready to pay for my idea today?
• What skill am I missing to do this, and where can I learn it fastest?
• If I fail, is there a door I can go back through?

A third way: cross the bridge without burning it

A study published in 2014 by Joseph Raffiee and Jie Feng of the University of Wisconsin-Madison produced a striking result. People who started their venture without quitting their job, and went full-time once the business began to prove itself, were 33 per cent less likely to fail than those who jumped straight in.

A salaried job is sometimes the safest seedbed for a startup. The one condition is to read the non-compete and intellectual property clauses in your employment contract first. Just as Hogarth waited for the law: secure your rights first, then publish.

Maaş is a living, patron is a father

The Turkish word for salary, "maaş", comes from the Arabic "maʿāş": life, livelihood, money paid to someone so they can make a living. At its root is a verb meaning to live. So a salary is, quite literally, money for keeping life going.

"Patron", the Turkish word for boss, comes from the Latin "patronus", which in turn comes from "pater", father: one who protects and looks after. In English, from the late 14th century, "patron" came to mean someone who supports artists and institutions with their money and influence. Around 1600 the word gained another meaning: a regular customer.

Samuel Johnson, Hogarth's contemporary, added a bitter note when defining the word in his dictionary, published in 1755: a patron was commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery. Hogarth, though, replaced a single patron with many small ones: his subscribers. Being your own boss may be something like that. Not depending on no one, but being able to choose whom you depend on.

Final word

In 1843 the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard wrote in his journal:

"It is quite true what philosophy says: that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards."

Every turn in Hogarth's life looks meaningful in hindsight today. None of them was that clear while he was in the middle of it. The choice ahead of you is the same. Perhaps the real question is not which is safer: when you look back in ten years, which path would you want to have taught you more?