I have run my own business and know several people who have run successful businesses involving family and friends. It is very difficult if you have to layoff a friend and sometimes it does end the friendship. It is very difficult if you have to layoff a significant other or a family member. It can have long lasting effects.
Or it might be the best thing that ever happened. I've lived through and seen both. My personal experience, as others have said, is that the friends and family bring sufficient complementary skills, share a common work ethic, and are committed to the business, you should run it as a partnership. In all the cases where this happened with my friends, the team at top was a boy/girl friend relationship, they partnered for control of the business, and it turned into a happy long term relationship or marriage.
But I've heard tale of much of the opposite. You have to be prepared for the risk that it will all go south and you will lose the relationships and the business. If this prospect doesn't cause you or your friends to flinch, go for it! Otherwise, don't do it, you are asking for trouble. If anyone expresses serious reservations, odds are they shouldn't be involved.
I'm personally confused by a lot of the outsourcing discussion in high-tech fields and software specifically. I see a lot of articles about unemployed people, but I always suspect the people just aren't qualified for the IT field, got hired in the boom without qualifications, or haven't taken the initiative to retrain. Right now, my company is looking to hire, but we can't find the people. A lot of unqualified applicants who don't read the job description though... In many cases, the best source of talent is India.
The skill set required for IT has changed: * Skill in architecture (not coding) * Skill with XML, J2EE,.NET (not C/C++) * Skill with Mainframe & Enterprise Technology (not scripting languages) * Skill with selling & customer interaction (not writing cryptic/snide/cynical emails) * Skill in demonstrating value. How will you help a business (not how much code can you write). * Skill in project management / estimating (not all-night code fests) * Being proactive (not playing DOOM or reading slashdot if no active task assigned)
The skills in ()s are useful to some extent, but they are tool skills and won't help you stand out. Most employers place 0 value on them unless it applies to some specialized work.
Anyone smart enough to read and understand Slashdot can learn these skills and either start a one-man consulting company in the US or get hired easily. A good test to apply is to go out and create a new web site with a database that does something valuable (anything, as long as you could explain it to a non-tech person and keep their interest for 5 minutes). If you can't do this, you probably don't deserve an IT job and should go into another field, probably related to manual labor! I have a non-technical friend, no CS courses, who takes photos for a living, and he did all of that for his own business. If you can create the website, it won't be hard to get a job. Just network, keep trying, and put your best foot forward. If you create the website, trot that out on your portfolio as the independent business you've been running.
Sadly, of the few people I know that are unemployed, most of them seem to be sysadmins who lack initiative to retrain or gain a differentiated skill. I don't know what to say to them, but their job wasn't just offshored to India; the Indians I have interacted with tend to more qualified than them and have degrees in CS or Math.
The real people who have been hurt by the offshoring are the blue-collar, non college-educated folks who have less ability to retrain. I have little sympathy for college-educated software guys who haven't learned how to take initiative to show value and find or create a job for themselves. Eventually they'll learn and in the meantime, offshoring reduces the cost of goods and services for the rest of us.
I don't have a close connection to the military, but I find your analogy very accurate. Business is competetive and many of the skills honed in the art of war are applicable to business. Some of the best managers I've met were ex-military and could translate their skills to business.
It takes many things to have a successful business. There must be a clear strategy set by the top leadership. The strategy must be executed well by line management and middle management all the way down to individual functions and employees. A culture that allows for well-motivated and well-trained workers is essential for good execution. The organization as a whole must be disciplined to maintain this execution and focus. A company that is focused and disciplined applies that culture to its meetings and will meet for good reasons and run the meetings effeciciently.
If you think about Vietnam, one of the reasons that became such a disaster was that the military was dysfunctional in several ways: there wasn't a clear objective and strategy. Moreover, the military culture was stressed as many relatively unskilled draftees flooded into the system. With destabilizing pressure from the top and bottom combined with an entrenched defensive force, the US military was in a losing position. The objective wasn't clear, it wasn't even obvious they were losing for some time because it was too hard to measure.
If you find that meetings in your organization are a waste of time, there is something wrong: Either you are attending meetings you shouldn't be attending and you need to fix that, or your organization isn't focused enough to allow people to decide what meetings are relevant. It can be difficult to solve the latter problem as an individual change agent, unless you want to take a leadership position as others have said. The best path is to raise the issue with management, starting with your manager, but volunteer a solution instead of griping. Setting some meeting ground rules such as: clear objective, itemized agenda with time estimates, and defining a facilitator and note-keeper are key best practices. If you don't do these things, your meeting is at best a hallway conversation without clear action items. A meeting that has no action items is a waste of time.
Experienced managers will understand the issue and work to fix it. It does drive straight to the bottom line- more effective and efficient meetings means better use of time and that will equal better execution of the business model. If no one seems to understand the problem, you are in an immature organization and at some point you will have to deal with it.
The same analogy holds for a sports team. As a team you still need a good game plan, everyone needs to execute well, you need a culture, you have to communicate, and you absolutely must not waste time. This is all necessary if you want to be at your best and be able to win. If you don't want to be at your best and win, then why bother? Being unfocused and losing isn't any fun. So if your company doesn't understand this, you should look for a new company.
Slashdot Mirror
I have run my own business and know several people who have run successful businesses involving family and friends. It is very difficult if you have to layoff a friend and sometimes it does end the friendship. It is very difficult if you have to layoff a significant other or a family member. It can have long lasting effects.
Or it might be the best thing that ever happened. I've lived through and seen both. My personal experience, as others have said, is that the friends and family bring sufficient complementary skills, share a common work ethic, and are committed to the business, you should run it as a partnership. In all the cases where this happened with my friends, the team at top was a boy/girl friend relationship, they partnered for control of the business, and it turned into a happy long term relationship or marriage.
But I've heard tale of much of the opposite. You have to be prepared for the risk that it will all go south and you will lose the relationships and the business. If this prospect doesn't cause you or your friends to flinch, go for it! Otherwise, don't do it, you are asking for trouble. If anyone expresses serious reservations, odds are they shouldn't be involved.
I'm personally confused by a lot of the outsourcing discussion in high-tech fields and software specifically. I see a lot of articles about unemployed people, but I always suspect the people just aren't qualified for the IT field, got hired in the boom without qualifications, or haven't taken the initiative to retrain. Right now, my company is looking to hire, but we can't find the people. A lot of unqualified applicants who don't read the job description though...
.NET (not C/C++)
In many cases, the best source of talent is India.
The skill set required for IT has changed:
* Skill in architecture (not coding)
* Skill with XML, J2EE,
* Skill with Mainframe & Enterprise Technology (not scripting languages)
* Skill with selling & customer interaction (not writing cryptic/snide/cynical emails)
* Skill in demonstrating value. How will you help a business (not how much code can you write).
* Skill in project management / estimating (not all-night code fests)
* Being proactive (not playing DOOM or reading slashdot if no active task assigned)
The skills in ()s are useful to some extent, but they are tool skills and won't help you stand out. Most employers place 0 value on them unless it applies to some specialized work.
Anyone smart enough to read and understand Slashdot can learn these skills and either start a one-man consulting company in the US or get hired easily. A good test to apply is to go out and create a new web site with a database that does something valuable (anything, as long as you could explain it to a non-tech person and keep their interest for 5 minutes). If you can't do this, you probably don't deserve an IT job and should go into another field, probably related to manual labor! I have a non-technical friend, no CS courses, who takes photos for a living, and he did all of that for his own business. If you can create the website, it won't be hard to get a job. Just network, keep trying, and put your best foot forward. If you create the website, trot that out on your portfolio as the independent business you've been running.
Sadly, of the few people I know that are unemployed, most of them seem to be sysadmins who lack initiative to retrain or gain a differentiated skill. I don't know what to say to them, but their job wasn't just offshored to India; the Indians I have interacted with tend to more qualified than them and have degrees in CS or Math.
The real people who have been hurt by the offshoring are the blue-collar, non college-educated folks who have less ability to retrain. I have little sympathy for college-educated software guys who haven't learned how to take initiative to show value and find or create a job for themselves. Eventually they'll learn and in the meantime, offshoring reduces the cost of goods and services for the rest of us.
I don't have a close connection to the military, but I find your analogy very accurate. Business is competetive and many of the skills honed in the art of war are applicable to business. Some of the best managers I've met were ex-military and could translate their skills to business.
It takes many things to have a successful business. There must be a clear strategy set by the top leadership. The strategy must be executed well by line management and middle management all the way down to individual functions and employees. A culture that allows for well-motivated and well-trained workers is essential for good execution. The organization as a whole must be disciplined to maintain this execution and focus. A company that is focused and disciplined applies that culture to its meetings and will meet for good reasons and run the meetings effeciciently.
If you think about Vietnam, one of the reasons that became such a disaster was that the military was dysfunctional in several ways: there wasn't a clear objective and strategy. Moreover, the military culture was stressed as many relatively unskilled draftees flooded into the system. With destabilizing pressure from the top and bottom combined with an entrenched defensive force, the US military was in a losing position. The objective wasn't clear, it wasn't even obvious they were losing for some time because it was too hard to measure.
If you find that meetings in your organization are a waste of time, there is something wrong: Either you are attending meetings you shouldn't be attending and you need to fix that, or your organization isn't focused enough to allow people to decide what meetings are relevant. It can be difficult to solve the latter problem as an individual change agent, unless you want to take a leadership position as others have said. The best path is to raise the issue with management, starting with your manager, but volunteer a solution instead of griping. Setting some meeting ground rules such as: clear objective, itemized agenda with time estimates, and defining a facilitator and note-keeper are key best practices. If you don't do these things, your meeting is at best a hallway conversation without clear action items. A meeting that has no action items is a waste of time.
Experienced managers will understand the issue and work to fix it. It does drive straight to the bottom line- more effective and efficient meetings means better use of time and that will equal better execution of the business model. If no one seems to understand the problem, you are in an immature organization and at some point you will have to deal with it.
The same analogy holds for a sports team. As a team you still need a good game plan, everyone needs to execute well, you need a culture, you have to communicate, and you absolutely must not waste time. This is all necessary if you want to be at your best and be able to win. If you don't want to be at your best and win, then why bother? Being unfocused and losing isn't any fun. So if your company doesn't understand this, you should look for a new company.