tech-company, legal, intellectual-property, employee-compensationI am working for a small startup for years and although I get a moderate market salary as senior developer, I can see that the incomes of the company increasing a lot because of my effort, but others with less responsibility, less work get higher salary. Sometimes I feel if I would go on my own way and I would choose my own sales people, the whole development and sales process could be more efficient. I would not conclude meaningless compromises, debates with sales people. The way of development would not be determined by sales people who want to protect their own position, communication channel to clients, but I would set up a product which is already made regard to maintenance purpose, where client can customise / maintain services on GUI, without the need to call us, keep contact, arrange meetings, buy flight ticket, book hotels, etc.
So my personal impression is we are wasting a lot of money, we are not efficient, and I guess these not bothers only me, but at other companies it exist too. Is it any business literature that covers this topic? I would read more about it or read your opinion.
So when is it worth to quit a job and start your own business in the same industry, even dow I know - and this is my case too - one year after termination you are not allowed earn any money at that industry.
There are probably a few things to consider when you are thinking about leaving to start something on your own.
The first thing that comes to mind with your situation is that even if you wanted to branch off and ‘start over’ that would likely take a substantial amount of time to develop a new product, client base, sales team, marketing efforts and the multitude of business decisions that would come from making your own company. Depending on your location and the licensing of your product(s) unless you have copyright over these products you also have to be careful not to step on legal toes.
It could be that your current company does have some administrative clutter and is inefficient, many larger or growing companies trend that way without clear efforts to stay ‘lean’. Alternatively, it could be that the company recognizes the potential profits from a model of ongoing application support and maintenance. It is often more profitable to continue to develop client relationships and dependency on you then to make clients self-sufficient. One book that covers this idea of keeping businesses from developing more unneeded bureaucracy is “The Lean Startup”.
Lastly, as far as a non-competition agreement goes you should consider talking with a lawyer. At least in some states in the US those agreements are often hard to enforce so you might be able to get around that year you are barred from making profits. Alternatively, you could spend that year actually developing a new product for customers.
Good luck! I hope this helps.
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