Unique challenge... should I continue?

kindai said:
So what was the company you worked for before out of curiosity?
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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.
 
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Housey said:
If you removed him from the equation, how quickly and easily could you replace what he does?
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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.
 
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I've seen this many times. Two smart people owning the company 50/50 and then fall out either overtly or resentfully behind the scenes.

I've only seen two ways out of it and both require external investment. Either get an investor in to take 16.7% off each of you to keep you both "honest" in a 3 way split or an investor bought into you to buy your partner out completely and be a silent partner to you.
 
rexehuk said:
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.
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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?
 
Housey said:
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?
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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.
 
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rexehuk said:
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.
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People change, so all of that's well and good but the reality is you can't always call it, even if you are aligned in all of the ways above it can still fall apart. Sorry I didn't appreciate the date line, just read the OP.
 
Scrutinize said:
You're MD and come out with lines like that.....
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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. :rolleyes:
 
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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.
 
rexehuk said:
If that makes me a terrible person, I apologise on behalf of people with sound moral compasses everywhere. :rolleyes:
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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.
 
dowie said:
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.
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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.

Scrutinize said:
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.
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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.
 
I'm Far from Mr Career but reading your Thread I'd say you need to be on your own & in charge of everything if you really want to stand out & produce something special like you say, Nobody & I mean Nobody can match your own standards when set so high.
Good Luck with it though.
 
4T5 said:
I'm Far from Mr Career but reading your Thread I'd say you need to be on your own & in charge of everything if you really want to stand out & produce something special like you say, Nobody & I mean Nobody can match your own standards when set so high.
Good Luck with it though.
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A very good point.
 
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.
 
As you age and gain more experience of work and life, you will often look back on the things you felt stressful years ago and appreciate the learnings you have and how you would deal with them differently today. Whilst at the time they were stressful you'd deal with them differently now more often than not and they would not impact you in the same way. This is life, you learn as you go and you appreciation of what is important and what deserves worry changes. Glad you seem to be in a better place. Life is too short for idiots and regrets. Make the changes needed and move forwards....so many people simply never do that.
 
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