3 ms·

This was the only piece of advice in the article that I really liked. It doesn't matter whether you work well with your spouse. It could be a truly great work

by hapless 17y ago

This was the only piece of advice in the article that I really liked. It doesn't matter whether you work well with your spouse. It could be a truly great working relationship and still present a problem for your firm. The problem is that other people will hate working with you and your family. You will fail to recruit the best, you will have to pay the workers you do recruit more money, and morale will always be lower than it would have been if you had not hired your family. Other employees will simply assume your family gets special treatment. (And they're always right.)

philwelch 17y ago
Lots of married couples run businesses together; it's somewhat of a change that this is now viewed as a bad thing. Of course, there is also a difference between hiring family and cofounding with family. If you cofound with a spouse, this problem might be unique to a startup environment where your early employees expect to be treated as equals. In a more traditional business, it's definitely not an issue.
tptacek 17y ago
People will hate working with you if your company is failing to execute. If you haven't hired your husband, they will find some other reason to hate you. In any group of smart, opinionated adults, there are 100,000 reasons to hate your coworkers --- compensation, effort, strategy decisions, nepotism, cliques. Kawasaki's comment ignores the upsides of working with your spouse. You can both keep longer hours. It's easier to balance childcare needs. You can get another unquestionably committed team member. Singling out family involvement is a fallacy. There are thousands of successful family businesses. There are hundreds of thousands of companies that fail that never even considered hiring a spouse. There's simply no data to back this point up, just supposition.

3 ms·

This was the only piece of advice in the article that I really liked. It doesn't matter whether you work well with your spouse. It could be a truly great work

by hapless 17y ago

philwelch 17y ago
Lots of married couples run businesses together; it's somewhat of a change that this is now viewed as a bad thing. Of course, there is also a difference between hiring family and cofounding with family. If you cofound with a spouse, this problem might be unique to a startup environment where your early employees expect to be treated as equals. In a more traditional business, it's definitely not an issue.
tptacek 17y ago
People will hate working with you if your company is failing to execute. If you haven't hired your husband, they will find some other reason to hate you. In any group of smart, opinionated adults, there are 100,000 reasons to hate your coworkers --- compensation, effort, strategy decisions, nepotism, cliques. Kawasaki's comment ignores the upsides of working with your spouse. You can both keep longer hours. It's easier to balance childcare needs. You can get another unquestionably committed team member. Singling out family involvement is a fallacy. There are thousands of successful family businesses. There are hundreds of thousands of companies that fail that never even considered hiring a spouse. There's simply no data to back this point up, just supposition.