Self-Employment in the Data Processing Field

There are two reasons we leave jobs - because we choose to or because we're fired.

In most cases (assuming you weren't fired), you will leave one job to go to another, presumably one that offers greater challenge, financial rewards, growth opportunity, and whatever else you respond to. But an increasing number of people are leaving jobs these days to go into their own businesses, especially in the data processing field.

The topsy-turvy growth of the computer age has caused immense confusion in corporations across America and, indeed, around the world. Old-fashioned methods of running a business have gone by the board, and old-fashioned managers are feeling the effects of this. Computers play a vital role in many businesses, dominate others, and, according to all the best available research, will be at the heart of every business by 1995. This has created a fertile field in which the bright and energetic with a firm knowledge of data processing can leave the corporate structure and forge lucrative, exciting business ventures of their own-with their former corporations often becoming needy and generous customers.



While the chaotic nature of data processing has played a significant role in the proliferation of people from its ranks going out on their own, the personality of many DPers has also contributed to the movement. Those studies I cited in the beginning of the book about the general personality profile of a data processor include such words as "maverick," "loner," "individual," "dogmatic," "free spirit." Those of you who truly can be described by one or several of these words may have been having trouble functioning smoothly within a large, bureaucratic, corporate society, and are ripe for a move to a business of your own in which those stilling factors aren't present.

Add to those first two ingredients the fact that entrepreneurship has been at the heart of America's business and industrial growth since the earliest days of its existence. I'm confident that there isn't a man or woman working in this society who has not, at least once, given some serious thought to starting a business.

Should the combination of the above factors act as a signal for all data processors to strike out on their own?

Absolutely not.

What these factors do indicate is that if you are the sort of person who not only has the computer knowledge necessary for a successful business of your own in the field, but also possesses the myriad other factors necessary for anyone-in any business-to make a go of it, it might be for you.

Here are some things you should consider before making a decision to leave a secure corporate job to test the entrepreneurial waters.

First, let's see whether you fall into a general background that seems to characterize most successful entrepreneurs. A recent Gallup study uncovered the following:

• Fifty-nine percent of successful entrepreneurs in the survey were in the upper sixth of their class, and 38 percent were average or below average.
  
  
• One in six was suspended from school, and a third of them were fired at least once in their careers before striking out on their own. (We believe most people were fired at one time or another, but are too embarrassed to admit it - even to a survey interviewer.)
  
  
• Most belonged to few organizations, substantiating the basic personality profile of the "loner."
  
  
• Thirty-eight percent of them named their father as the most influential person in their lives.
  
  
• Almost half of them did not fall into the typical white Anglo-Saxon ethnic background. They emerged from a broad spectrum of nationalities.
  
  
• Most came from middle-class families. Twenty-seven percent of them said their father had never finished high school.
  
  
• They did not, for the most part, come out of rich, privileged backgrounds. They were not necessarily deprived in childhood, but their families had to struggle to make ends meet.
  

An interesting pattern emerges from the Gallup study: successful entrepreneurs generally don't battle their way out of the ghetto, any more than they use family money to start their own business. There is, however, a strong influence of a family that perhaps has enough money to nurture a child but certainly not to indulge it. In other words, there has been a flame built beneath these people to do better, and the study goes on to identify such personal attributes as tenacity, stubbornness, no fear of failure, and a determination to beat the odds. Eight out of ten new businesses fail in America, but that pessimistic statistic doesn't deter entrepreneurs. They don't think about the eight failures, only envision themselves in that 20 percent success category.

If you don't meet the profile of the Gallup study, does it mean you should abandon dreams of starting your own business? Of course not. What has represented the successful entrepreneur in the past has no bearing on what future entrepreneurs will be made of. What is more significant, however, are the rules for success, which really haven't changed very much, and probably won't, at least in the near future.