Iam 26 M. I did my civil engineering in 2018 and then worked as a civil engineer for a year then covid happened and i taught myself coding and got a job in a small startup and worked there as a software engineer for 1 year and now my father wants me to take over his business (manufacturing and packaging of mineral water) Which he is running for the past 8 years. My parents only chose enroll me in civil engineering which i regret now because that field is very bad and so not suitable for me and now with the business also they are forcing me to do so because they dont want to sell it.
The thing is what i really like is making youtube videos which iam doing side by side because when i was working 9-5 as a software engineer i had all the time outside of my job for my youtube channel. But now that iam again helping my dad in his business eventually i have to take over everything. In this business we have to work 12 hours a day and 7 days a week (mostly be present at the factory and just monitor people). People who will be suggesting to hire someone, here you cant trust most of the people because the transaction is mostly done with cash.
Regarding my youtube its not a big channel but its doing good recently…i atleast want some free time to make youtube videos and edit them (which takes a lot of time) and i cant tell my parents about youtube because they have a mindset of the old generation so they can’t understand it.
The money from the business is decent but i just cant seem to sit here the whole day do some 2-3 hours of work 24/7 without any weekends. I just dont see myself doing this for the next 20 years. Iam really passionate about my youtube and i know i will pop off one day.
My plan was to work 9-5 and do youtube in the remaining time. Youtube is my long term goal.
What are your thoughts about this? Should i take over the business and give very less time to youtube or do my 9-5 and do youtube side by side?
Seems like many of the comments don’t take into account that you are in a developing country where things work more informally than in the US. That said, I think there are opportunities to make the job more efficient. Your father probably needs to spend a lot of time at the company since (1) if he wasn’t around, the workers would get lazy and (2) possibility of theft. But at the same time, the actual amount of work that needs to be done is only a few hours with the rest just sitting around to show his face.
Can you implement management and technology changes to address these issues? Implement stricter financial controls (and move away from cash transactions if possible although I understand there may be tax consequences). Can you move payments to employees, suppliers, and customers to electronic? Isn’t everyone on Aadhar now and using banking/payment apps? You can also use tech (basically employee surveillance) to monitor. But more importantly, find and develop some trusted managers (financial manager/controller, operational manager) and get rid of troublemaker employees who need constant monitoring (there probably are at least a few, whom your father tolerates since they been around for a long time). My point is that you don’t need to necessarily do things the same way as they’ve always been done.