A Family IT/Tech Business?? 398
adzoox writes "As I have just hired on my girlfriend to help out with some secretarial work in my Apple consulting, sales, and technical service business, and considering having my brother work with me soon; I'd like to know what the /. readers think about family in the 'Tech Workplace.' Obviously things aren't hectic like a restaurant, but my father and friends have all warned me against mixing business and pleasure and family. Do any of you have successful family owned IT businesses, eBay businesses, or programming/software consulting engineering businesses and what's been or secret to success? If not successful what unique problems did you encounter? How can I make it successful? And most importantly how do you handle authority (tardiness, work ethic, and workplace codes) with a girlfriend?"
A few pitfalls come to mind (Score:5, Informative)
2. Make sure you have a well written agreement between any family members. If there's a falling out, it hurts much more when there's no clear solution to the business interests.
3. What happens if your girlfriend, God forbid, breaks up with you? Can you handle seeing her at work, knowing she's not your girlfriend anymore? The reverse is also true, she could resent you. Have a reasonable employment agreement for this. Be generous up front and you'll save legal fees down the road.
I've found that when the money's flowing and times are good that even big problems aren't much of a challenge. It's when things get tight that even the best friendship can be tested. A family member isn't usually someone you can say goodbye to and never see again.
Good luck,
M
Re:A few pitfalls come to mind (Score:5, Informative)
I think this is the biggest risk. Not only will you have to remain on good terms with your girlfriend, but other employees will resent your relationship with her.
Just make owner/employer status VERY clear (Score:5, Informative)
Additionally, you may want to file for LLC status, so if you and your girlfriend part ways on less than friendly terms, she can't take the business away from you.
If you just barely manage to stay afloat, this doesn't really matter. But if you start making good money (and to support three people, you presumeably can't do all that bad), CYA.
Of course, this only covers the business aspects of the arrangement. If things do go sour, you may end up estranged from family and your GF leaving for completely financial reasons. But you can't really do much to avoid that, short of listening to your father (Gack! Did I just say that? Damn, getting old, I guess...)
PS, IANAL, which for any discussion like this, we could all save time by just sticking that in our sigs.
What fun! (Score:3, Informative)
My wife and I worked at a tax software company at the same time. I was a member of the development team...she was a member of the quality assurance team. The relationship between a developer and a tester can get chippy at times since the relationship is somewhat adversarial. However, having your wife write up defects in your code can be VERY stressful!!
We had quite a few lovely exchanges, let me tell you! We are still together. And though we no longer work at the same firm, we have started a software company together. I'm the developer...she's the tester. I must be a glutton for punishment. Maybe this is some strange sort of S&M relationship, eh?
We've managed it (Score:3, Informative)
I think an arrangement in which one of us reported to the other would not work nearly as well.
As an OT asside, we met as students when she was working on her second masters degree in an Engineering field and I was in my seventh year as a sociology undergrad. Little did we suspect that we would some day be running a business together! The
Re:A few pitfalls come to mind (Score:2, Informative)
This is absolutely true. I knew a couple that was living together, and at work one of them was the owner and the other an employee. All the other employees were convinced that the boss favored his partner over them at work, even though he tried hard to be even-handed.
Working together may change your relationship (Score:2, Informative)
After a few years of fighting, my dad gave up on having his say, and just started doing whatever my mom told him to. The business functions smoothly now, they've expanded to a few new locations, and are becoming moderately successful. My mom runs the show, my dad fixes broken stations in his hidden-away office.
I guess the lesson of the story is that if both of you are strong-willed (as my parents started off), be prepared for some changes in the relationship. Either one of you will "break", or you'll live out your relationship in a constant state of bickering.
Not quite true (Score:5, Informative)
My own divorce showed up this and one other oddity. She provided the down payment on the house, I provided the monthly payments, yet her down payment counted as a gift to community property because it was BEFORE the marriage, and would have counted as her own money if we had bought the house AFTER marriage. Two lawyers told me the same thing.
Community property is not at all intuitive.
Re:Careful planning (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Keep everything on paper and signed (Score:4, Informative)
Actual Responsibilities (Score:5, Informative)
We had one problem with my sister working for us.
We later determined the reason.
It was not caused by her work duties, moreso due to the lack of specifying her duties.
When my father and I started the company we knew exactly (to the letter) what each of our responsibilities were. He handled receivables, billing, banking, and purchasing in regards to available monies, overhead etc.
I handled all administrative duties, patching, programming, upgrades, analysis, determining expansion requirements for growth and current loads, etc.
We evenly divide client support. and jointly decided on possible advertising ventures to increase client base - though the final word in this was his. My final word came in the form of implementation, how to, the means to achieve it on a broad ratio.
Advanced or trouble tech support issues fell toward me to finish them up and bring them to a close.
When my sister came aboard with a wide range of experience, we simple dropped her in the middle of it, had a single current chore that she needed to accomplish, though after that we constantly felt she wasn't doing her part. We later determined that the flaw was that her duties and responsibilities were not defined, nor were deadlines sets.
As long as you specifically indicate what each person has on their 'virtual' plate, what their deadlines are - and what vocal power they have in choices made (whether none or only in certain areas of the business), then I do not see an issue.
Tardiness is something that you should be able to determine ahead of time. Do the family members current work? Have they been previous let go because of missing work? If they been at their job for year, then most likely you won't have a problem. Though in order to curb this, set a mandatory morning meeting every work day. Specify that the meetings are mandatory and missing or being late for more then two a month will mean immediate termination.
Another possiblity, if you perform a lot of on-site work, schedule these service times at the beginning of the day. The customer will let you know if the person is late or didn't show up. Then if you need to terminate you can say because the client requested that they have someone different service their needs. This takes some of the wieght off of you and puts it directly on the shoulders of the offender.
Require you girlfriend to do banking first thing in the morning. Banking statements will have time stamps on them and you'll know if she there on time. Let her know that it is mandatory that the banking be done first thing to ensure all cash and deposits are avaiable as soon as possible.
Working with family provides an immesnse amount of closeness and fun time. I've share numerous times with my father that lead to hours of laughter. Good Luck!
Authority is the key (Score:3, Informative)
Listen to your father & friends (Score:4, Informative)
This is made worse if you're considering partnering with any of them. I generally try to avoid partnerships, but I'm not particularly good at the business side, so for me, if I do partner up, it's with someone who has better business sense than I do. Otherwise I wouldn't partner under any circumstances.
Here's an example of the kinds of things that can go wrong. In this case, it was a 3-way partnership. My step-mother was partnered with a couple in a chain of stores. They each owned 1/3. Everything was going great for about 15 years. Then one of the partners went full-blown alcoholic and paranoid and decided my step mother was out to get him or something. So, because it was my step-mother vs. a couple and she was the minority shareholder, the couple basically pushed her out of the business. She went to court and won, but in the end, after legal expenses, she didn't walk away with nearly what her share of the business was worth.
Now, to back-fill a bit, this couple was like family to me. I had grown up with them around for 15 years. And in a matter of months, my step mother was completely screwed out of a business she had worked hard to build.
The lesson: Business can be, and usually is, brutal. Bringing family and friends into it can get them in the middle, and that's bad for everyone.
Incorporate the business (Score:4, Informative)
Incorporating isn't something only big businesses can do. If you're a small business, look at an S-Corp or an LLC. I'm planning on incorporating my small business when I start.
Re:Incorporate the business (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on the people.... (Score:4, Informative)
My wife and I have worked together on two seperate occiasions at two seperate companies. We both moved on, however we worked well together, but then again we are the best of friends before lovers. I think in the seven years we've been together we've only gotten into three or four fights, and two of those were in our first year of marriage.
I'm working for a couple as their CTO. There is two other "full" time people right now, the CEO and CFO, and my wife who helps out way less than part time. I make a decent living for my area. Anyhoo, we get aloung because we all have similar interests. It works out great. I'm almost up to my first year with this company, and not a bad day has happened, and I've never once hated my boss(s). One of the conditions of my employment was that me and the boss got aloung. Its almost an uncle/nephew relationship really. I immagine if we didn't get aloung my job could be at jeopardy, but I don't see any reason why we wouldn't.
However the last company I worked for were married. They bickered constantly since they had NOTHING in common. Most of the time they took their frustrations out on the rest of the employees. Everyone hates it there because the CTO is cranky all the time and the CEO is not very knowledgeable in the companies primary asset. When I worked for them I've had several customer compaints about both their attitudes. To this day I'm not sure how they stay in business, except they have the market pretty much cornered.
I know of an ebay business right now that works out great with three people. The owners are husband and wife. The Wife works during the day and the Husband works at night. They have a less-than-part time employee (their son) who checks stuff into inventory. They work GREAT together, and are one of the more successful businesses on EBay right now.
One of my best friends owns my usual hang-out. Its "the" major comics and tabletop gaming outlets in the Flint Michigan area. Half the people who work there are family, while the other half are employees. They work for obvious reasons: the product is fun. Its hard to bicker and fight over something as enjoyable as comics and gaming, unless of course your arguing over who would win in a fight, Batman or Captain America.
Anyhow, it should work, as long as your all mature and have a good time and a healthy relationship. If you don't, well it won't.
Seems like common sense really, but if your all family, you can't exactly fire your wife, or could you? Just kidding, thats a bad idea. I gotta fly, Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law is on.
Its probably too late to reply...but anyway (Score:2, Informative)
Like everybody said it works while it all goes well. Especially when it all ends up in a long lawsuit!!
Re:Don't Wait! Sign Now. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I think recordings are considered as good as the writing stuff, with the added problem of identifying the parties. In fact, that's why some documents aren't strong in court without being notarized. The Notary isn't anybody special, just someone who checks IDs and makes sure both people are willingly signing the document, and witnesses the signing, that's all.
Re:Get ready.. (Score:4, Informative)
But most couples have some downtime when they're not around each other. Husbands and wives typically work at different companies. Forget about whether work sucks; it's time away from your beloved which can sometimes provide a much-needed break. Doesn't say anything about your relationship that a break for a few hours during the day is helpful; it's just part of being human. Plus you get to go home and bitch about Matt at work to someone who has no insight, no knowledge except for what she gets from you, so she's (almost) always taking your side by default. (Except if she can tell from how you're describing it that you were being unreasonable, in which case she can tell you and you know it's from an unbiased point of view.)
On the other side of the coin, if you've worked at a typical company before, you know how people's habits get on your wick. Over time, that builds up. But the reason most of us don't go ballistic on our work mates is because (i) we have self-control, and (ii) we don't have to live with them. See, it works the other way around, too! You spend a heck of a lot of time with people at work, and they also rub you up the wrong way. So going home at night gives you a break from them.
You, on the other hand, are immediately going to lose that enforced break time. Both ways. I seriously hope for the sake of all concerned that everyone is mature enough to deal with this. The potential is there to negatively impact your relationship with your girlfriend, your relationship with your family, and your business. (Quick question: what happens if your brother has to chastise your girlfriend at work and she comes crying to you?)
So, having just written a very depressing post (sorry), let me offer my best wishes for your success and encourage you to read every post in this article and think long and hard about all the comments offered.
Make her understand... (Score:2, Informative)
I told her from the beginning, while there, I make the rules, and she follows them, otherwise there's the door. After hours (away from the office), things are normal.
This worked for me, and still does.
Re:A few pitfalls come to mind (Score:2, Informative)
I know whereof I speak; I own a sole partnership, with my partner being my wife. Since we're married, and share our personal debt load already, it doesn't make a difference in terms of the business. However, I once rejected an offer to bring a friend on board to "help run the company" because he had massive personal debt and I didn't want to go through the trouble of converting my sole partnership into an LLC or S-Corp.
Lastly, don't forget to have your girlfriend fill out the applicable paperwork for being a 1099 employee, don't forget to pay your business taxes quarterly, and don't forget to have your tax accountant issue your girlfriend a W-9 at the end of the tax year. There's a lot to remember when it comes to taxes, and you really should hire a good tax accountant. You really do not want to get on the IRS' wrong side.