Policy: We Don’t Work for Friends
Its interesting how the dynamics of a business can be affected by our relationship with our peers and our employer. That’s why we have a new in-house maxim here that says we don’t work for friends. Or at least I don’t. We work with friends, but we’re not willing to work for them as our direct employer. Friendships are hard built and easily eroded and require maintenance that employer / employee relationships definately fail to deliver.
Maxims like this are combined into a general policy statement that I’m keeping. We always pay bills within 7 days. We don’t work for free unless its for a just cause, and we can only have one just cause that we contribute community support towards - currently that is Hunter Island Press Inc. This work for a just cause can never take up more than a half a day per week maximum. Also, we don’t compete for budget work and we would rather starve than beg for the tiny pickle in the bottom of that budget labour pool (I suggest renting a coder from Bulgaria, perhaps). The list of maxims includes who we use for services, and why.
So why not work for friends? I think that’s obvious when we consider the amount we have to lose by working for them versus the potential loss of friendship and support if it doesn’t work out. So, in future, that will be a tight and never tested again rule of thumb to maintain what we have here.
The real usefulness of this list is that if we ever do have to work with people, or even go so far as hiring in-house, then we can produce a single document that tells them a stack about our culture, including how we work and why we do things a certain way. Maybe it won’t be used for that in several years but it’ll come in handy eventually. And it saves me from having to decide again - one decision, one maxim and no second thoughts.
