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Rant r = new Rant(Rant.TEAM_PROBLEM);

Three months ago, a senior, one year older than me, decided to join me in doing startups. He said he's good at finance stuff (his parents are fund managers), and he is interested in startups just like I am. He treated me very nicely, so I gladly accepted him.

I'm currently working on many projects, and some of them won me quite a few awards, most notably on the national competition. I also got invited into startup incubator programs, met some awesome people and offered free scholarships at universities in my country.

He frankly said he joined because he wanted to learn about startups and have those "privileges" too, and I'm cool with that.

Anyway, the problem is that I'm the one doing all the work. He's really nice, doesn't claim anything whatsoever, but the thing is he doesn't have any skills whatsoever except soft skills like communicating. So, I'm horribly tired from working alone.

My tasks mostly involves full-stack development, such as planning the specs, designing and developing frontend for mobile apps and progressive webapps, developing microservices for the backend, up to deploying and maintaining the servers. It's a lot of work for a single person to handle in such a short timeframe.

Not only that, but I'm also the one handling the business/marketing part, albeit I'm still learning. From doing paperworks, pitches, business models, up to creating advertising materials for the product.

I'm obviously not the smart ones like the people out there, but I keep focusing on improving my skills.

So, he said he could help me, and I let him try. What did you think he did?

He made pitch decks using default fucking PowerPoint themes, shooted a demo video with his phone cam in 320p potato resolution and expect me to "add some effects", gives me loads of requirements when all we needed was a simple feature, copying and pasting prior documents in my paperworks which doesn't make any fucking sense at all, and quite a lot more.

Also, he said I should stay in the developer zone only while he maintains the business, whilist he obviously can't do much in the business part either. Seriously...?

I'm okay with his lack of experience, considering he's nice and all, unlike the other business guys I've met in the previous rants. However, I keep questioning myself why he is here in the first place when I'm the one doing everything anyway.

What should I do? Maybe just keep him and recruit more experienced people to join us, as he's not that much of a burden? What do you devRanters think?

Thanks for reading, fellow devRanters! 😀

Comments
  • 4
    If he bugs you get him out, if he doesn't then it's solely a personal question. Do you like him that much to keep him around that way or maybe you can just be friends/acquaintances.
  • 5
    + 1 for rant initialization
  • 5
    Talk with him about your business training/expertise and offer to teach him. He might get Financials, but maybe you need to teach him marketing. Level with him, but respect him. Training is tough, but it can be worth it. Let him know how spread thin you feel-- be a little vulnerable and I bet he'll step to to learning
  • 3
    Pro: He's "nice"
    Con: Everything else

    Good luck to your business if this seems like a dilemma to you.
  • 2
    Unless you're friends or something, you should find someone else.
  • 6
    @definitelynot you can't teach nice, you can teach everything else.
  • 2
    Fuuuck, I get your point. I'm in a rather similar place, because this guy wanted me to help him develop a web application, but God he doesn't know how to code!

    Fast forward some months, now I'm writing "Tutorials" for him so he can try to help in the project...

    Btw, nice rant init, mine was more verbose, hahaha
  • 4
    I think you should be communicating about this with him besides posting the situation here. Talk about it. He might be just as frustrated as you are!

    Good communication and transparency is a must in order to sustain a good business relationship. Otherwise, you're just going to keep putting that burden on your shoulder.

    Also, remember that business is business. Do what you need to do and get that startup running as it should.
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