Unique challenge... should I continue?

[rexehuk]

So, as of June this year I'm a director of a company and in the first 3 months we've done just over 100k profit (before tax).

Sounds excellent right?

On a day to day basis, I find myself struggling with a number of challenges. I'm mid 20s and the business partner is in his late 30s, he is the senior developer.

We're a software company by nature, delivering an enterprise product... but the aim from my side is pushing to a proper high growth SAAS model with a lightened version of the product.

There have been a number of arguments between us both, so much so that sometimes we don't speak to each other. I'm of the strong opinion that process is to blame, and people not sticking to their jobs.

My responsibilities:

MD
HR
Finance
Product Owner
Project Manager

His responsibilities:

Project scoping
Development Team
Testing Team

We have an offshore team handling our work, with 1 dev in the UK. The product really based on shared model, so big clients pay for dev that goes into the core, shared for everyone to use for free.

Currently, projects come in and the approach is that all the development will start after scope is signed, with no input from me at all. This is leading to what I see as a very confused product for my end business objective which is a scaleable software solution. Whenever I provide designs for development, it's always "we won't do that now" - This means the entire product look/feel is driven by a developer (alarm bells should be ringing).

I think this would be fine, if the developer was the same age as me... up to date with what's in and current and sellable... however this guy designs stuff extremely complicated to use, from what I see as the 1990 era, not something a high growth needs.

We've tried to have boards, define the roles... and agreement was made I would not interfere with his development, and he would not have say in designs... his words "I don't care about how it looks". I now find myself a few weeks later in a position I find unworkable, where I can't influence his development, but where he is blocking all my designs for simple things such as line I want. In my view, I should take feedback from the business / clients in regards to the design, but ultimately I have final say as the man driving the vision for the product from customer / marketing / business perspective.

So... tell me GD, am I simply mad and not talking sense... or should I pack this in and move elsewhere?

 

[rexehuk]

What is the split in the shares of the company?

Equal split a shares.

No shareholders agreement in place yet... to be honest if i do pack it in I would just give shares back and go.

 

[rexehuk]

Are they all the same type of share? In other words is there a chance you will get some of the profits.

You are right as minority shareholding in a small company is rarely worth anything.

What does the 60% shareholder think it are they a silent partner?

Well, we all have equal A shares so yes we all receive dividends currently (but we take hardly nothing). Salary wise I'm 50% where I want to be for age, and a factor in me considering things.

60% shareholder is sound, and knows the other is difficult as he's worked with him for 4 years. He's learnt to deal with it, but I will not as it's holding back growth.

 

[rexehuk]

That's your problem. Age has nothing to do with anything and the fact you are focussing on it means you're focussing on the right things. You need to sit down and talk it out with him.

Unfortunately, I've talked many times but it just keeps reverting.

I've had developers come to me before, saying he wont listen to their ideas.. and subsequently we lost one of our best who I think gave up.

I'm definitely not someone who looks at age normally, but I believe he may be too old to change now... I've tried being calm / being assertive / being aggressive no approach seems to work. On a low level, I can see he's a nice guy... but from a business perspective he for example refuses to use apps on phones out of security fears... won't do internet banking... etc

I find this a barrier, in a technology company driving a technology solution to a problem with a market demanding the things he fears.

 

[rexehuk]

Well maybe you need to replace him. If he's not amenable to your reason, and you're the boss, then you're going to have to make a judgement call.

We're both directors, hard to replace him!



And to be honest, he has been with the company longer than I - And because I'm fair I'd rather let him continue with the other person and I get on with my life.

 

[rexehuk]

Well he's not doing his job tbh... you're the product owner not him, you should dictate the scope, what the product does etc... which you should be agreeing with the relevant client funding the particular enhancement to your product. His job is how to implement that change - he shouldn't be dictating what projects you take on, what direction the product goes in etc.. he should be telling you what is feasible and what isn't and making it happen.

If there is a 60% shareholder then you need to probably get him involved... get the roles, processes agreed....

Cheers Dowie, exactly how I see it too.

Obviously the scope of the role I have, is massive in itself. This has taken a toll on my health this year and something has to change.

Personally I think it's a case of... how its developed, what it looks like and complexity has always been down to him. Now that I'm the guy saying nope / yes to the look/complexity/end product is probably where this all stems from.

I'm someone who loves working with enthusiastic people, with drive to create something great... I never get this from him. When you speak to fellow developers / project managers they also feel the product is losing structure and becoming confusing, conveying this though creates arguments.

On one side I massively love the guy, he's uprooted himself here... and with the team offshore, a big commitment. On another I see someone who avoids what is a fairly well established set of development steps in terms of how to deliver a good end product.

If anyone knows people you can bring in for this... it would be good. I personally feel i just need to drag an MD in from a local successful software house, to essentially affirm my beliefs... as I feel my age puts me at disadvantage vs him most of time. He is fantastic at arguing and one area I massively fail in unfortunately... I just hate conflict.

 

[rexehuk]

If you go down this route and are using (or intend to) Scrum, I can highly recommend Geoff Watts: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/profile/gwatts

Without question he delivered the best training course I've ever been on. He had a way of being able to take agile principles and common soundbites and actually make you buy into them despite initial scepticism. And no, he's not a friend and no I'm not on commission or anything for recommending him

Many thanks... from all the research I've done so far Agile is the way to go due to number of projects we have. Employing a scrum master would be a bigger step that I don't think we'd be ready for now, salaries for one are exceptionally high.

I've given that chap a ring, and provisionally discussed figures etc. Also found a few more based around me on scrum alliance so will see how they go. Ultimately I think the biggest challenge is the shift to it, which affects the entire delivery process and obviously involves customers much more in day to day.

 

[rexehuk]

Thought I'd give this an update, as it developed much more after this. The problems continued well into 2015, and the person begun preventing new processes being implemented, quality control and making my staff cry from dealing with him.

As a result of this, I left last year around August. It was extremely hard to have to give up a dream, when you believe a small company could make it big time. I walked out the door and handed back all my shares, purely because that is the man I am, one of word, even though that money would have been useful for me.

I learnt a great deal during my time there, and only really could contemplate that whilst I took 6 months off from work to get myself back in the right state of mind. To anyone who is also in the same position, would I recommend just upping your job with nothing to replace it? No, it has been a hard battle and I only did so because I had the funds to make it happen and an amazing partner.

Overall though, remember that if you think something is not worth doing anymore, there is always something better out there so don't give up hope. I would never expect to come across an environment like the one I was in again, and for that I'm thankful that perhaps no one will go through the same experience.

I've thankfully walked into a new role this week, having only really started applying in January, and can continue building my life and career for which I've very grateful.

There was a quote I saw during my time off, which summed up the environment for me and how I knew it wasn't going to change - "A company culture can only be as good as the worst behaviour you're willing to tolerate".

Hopefully someone finds this useful, I'm looking to do a few more succinct articles on LinkedIn at some point to share with others what I've learned.

 

[rexehuk]

So what was the company you worked for before out of curiosity?

Because it's small I'd rather not name it, sorry!

For me it's not about bad mouthing them, more the experience I've been through and decisions made that I value.

We did actually transition to Agile, and I took up the product owner role officially. That was extremely exciting, but also because of the issues downstream you simply couldn't fulfil the criteria of product owner. Give user stories to team, walk them through the overall goals, then at the end senior dev says "no **** off we're not building that", "I refuse to build it".

I also did the keynote for the business that year, to all our customers, again huge experience for me to do public speaking. But have a love for it now.

 

[rexehuk]

If you removed him from the equation, how quickly and easily could you replace what he does?

Was actually on the table. I had discussed with the other holder that he wanted to get him out ASAP.

Unfortunately by this time, the damage had been done for me. When you're trying to get control of a product 12 months before the point you're at now, and think of all the mess you're going to be left with, I decided to go. He had gotten to the point where he threatened to bring a firearm into the office, and also held internal meetings with the team to tell them I was ill, just generally trying to sabotage everything. For me, it's not a point i'd want to be at in my career, in my 20s or in my 60s, that sort of behaviour should simply not exist.

We had just taken on a very clever guy, who could have easily taken up the role, had huge respect for him and was senior dev level too.

For me, you're later in life, want the mortgage, kids and unfortunately can't do that in a start up on director salary without specialist mortgages. I think it's the best decision I've made, as I now have a stable job, no worries about cash flow daily, a route to BCS chartership, higher pay and no one to manage. I can now pursue some of my own products outside of work too, I had lost any motivation to do that while working there. I feel like my mind is back in my early career, full of ideas, enthusiasm and motivation.

 

[rexehuk]

Partnerships are incredibly hard to maintain in business, they more often fail than succeed. Forgive me if you have answered this, but how many people are in the business?

Indeed, I've learned that now. The key thing is the rule you learn in University, never partner with friends, or people you can't work with. More importantly, don't partner with someone who is directly the opposite in values to the ones you hold, that is the more important lesson you're not taught. I now have a strong appreciation for culture and it's importance in the individuals within a business to hold those same values. For anyone in University now, I would actually pay attention to cultural values and so forth when you apply places, they are extremely important to know what types of people you'll be working with, and the style the company adopts.

I heavily recruited since writing, back in 2014 it was down to 5 of us. By the time I left we were up to a team of 10.

 

[rexehuk]

You're MD and come out with lines like that.....

What's up?

Founder was handling the shareholder agreement along with lawyer. And for me, the motivation is not money. I want to be building a great product, with excellent customer satisfaction and attention to detail. Money is secondary to that.

If that makes me a terrible person, I apologise on behalf of people with sound moral compasses everywhere.

 

[rexehuk]

you had a 20% stake in a company that you'd taken a risk in helping to start and had to leave because another director was being unreasonable... I think I'd want them to buy me out or keep at least some of the equity.

It was very nice of you to hand it all back with no fuss, you were likely in a position where you could have caused some trouble for them.

I could have, but you have to keep in mind I recruited lots of the staff here. I would feel so bad, if the company died cause I decided to be greedy and force a cash sum out of them and staff lost their jobs. Some people would do that I feel, but not the way I have been raised.

You misunderstand, whilst you definitely did the right thing for you, as MD it was a very defeatist position to hold especially on walking away from your shareholding although you got the outcome you seemed to have accepted in the end.

It's a tough job as MD especially when it isn't your company.

Indeed. It was a 3 way partnership, and the problems had been going on for a long time. There is only so much a human can take in way of abuse, and for me the line had been reached where it was affecting my personal life.

At the end of the day, your health is always above and beyond that of a company you either work for or own, it would be stupid not to be.

It is very sad to walk away from something you love, but sometimes we must do so.

 

[rexehuk]

I thought I would update this... To show people that things can turn out ok even when your world seems like it's upside down.

I left the company after suffering another breakdown, and truly think I wouldn't be here today without taking that step.

After a 6 month break, I landed a role in a financial firm and did extremely well, the experience of essentially hell has made me resilient and strangely relaxed.

It has definitely not been easy and I clearly have had some damage done mentally through the whole ordeal, something I still am recovering from to this day.

After leaving the firm, it gained significant outside investment but I left with my head held high and honoured a verbal agreement that I would hand back my shares free of charge if I left.

As for the director, he was discharged a year ago after complaints from the growing team and forcibly removed by the board. This was for me the greatest justification, and set my mind at ease from feeling like all the time it was me.

There was however a twist. While working at my new company after a year 1/2, the director turned up for a developer interview. It's safe to say this caused a ptsd reaction in me, going to show that events like this can cause long term damage, I'm still toying with the idea of counselling.

Move on to present day, I've started a new job as an IT consultant with a top company, and achieved my targets that I never thought I would have hit after what felt like derailing my career to pursue the start up dream.

I guess my advice for anyone going through the same motions is to never give up, have the right support (my gf has been amazing) and don't see all hardships as a negative, it will grow you as a person.