Ask for permission from your employer

Ask for permission from your employer
Photo by Mailchimp / Unsplash

Context

My goal is to start my own business. But I am not risky enough to just quit my job and go full time without even knowing if it will be a success. The other options left are:

  1. working full time at a corporate job +
    working on the side on my own business
  2. working part time at a corporate job +
    spending more time on my side-project.

I decided on the first option. This means I cannot spend a lot of time on my side-project. Actually, I should say side-projects since this blog is also a side-project.

Why did I decide to work full time?

There are multiple reasons. Here are a few of my reasons for working full time:

  • To get work experience.
  • To understand how it is to work full time.
  • To learn about lots of work processes.
  • To improve my programming skills.
  • (Most important) to earn money.

I think I could survive by just working part-time, but I only want to make this step after achieving a specific level. I can't properly define the level yet though. But I think, if I see huge opportunities in the company, I would spend more time on it.

While working full time, I realised, you also get to meet many talented people and you get to understand their views on life. This is to be honest, a nice life-experience.

My next step

After working on my app part-time for over a year, I am ready for the next step. Publishing it on the PlayStore. iOS-users have to wait a little. I am prioritizing Android since I'm an Android / Windows user as well. Sorry! 😶

Actually, before publishing, another important step needs to come. I need to create a company. I could publish the app without having my company, but this would have quite a few disadvantages. When interested, I could write about it on another day.

The paperwork

Since I live in Germany, I will also create the company in Germany. Here are quite a lot of different company-types. Each with its own advantages. I wanted to have the safest option, so that if I get sued, I don't have to sell all of my valuable items to pay off the debt.

I researched a lot and became paralyzed by reading too much information and not getting enough clarity. So, I stopped my research after finding out that I can create a UG company, which allows me to start a company without risking my whole private equity. Maybe I will talk more about it in the future. But since I'm not an expert, we will have to see.

Look at the details

I was ready to start my company. But then I remembered that I once read something on my work-contract. It said that I have to ask for consent before creating a company.

You might ask why would they put this kind of line into the contract. It's beneficial for the company and for myself. This way, we can prevent me from creating a competitive product or service which could have let to me getting a lawsuit.

But regarding my app-idea, there is actually no reason for my employer to decline the consent, since the app could be categorized as a communication-company. The company of my current employer is a delivery-company. So, I don't have to worry. In fact, they are not allowed to deny me starting the business without a valid reason according to the law. Right now, I can't tell you where I exactly read it. But if for some reason they don't allow me to start my entrepreneurial journey, I would just quit, because the job would not align anymore with my life-path. TLDR: Wow, I am making this public. 👀

Two weeks ago, I wanted to finally ask my boss for an official consent. He already knows about my app and I already got an unofficial consent from him months ago. But we need to make this official. When I decided to ask him on that week, I made a small mistake and the company was not working anymore for 40min.

Shit.

I had to delay my conversation with my boss.

On the next week, our team presented our results to our stakeholders. Shortly before the presentation, one person from another team told me about a currently occurring problem. At the end of the presentation, I thought, this could be interesting for everyone else. So, I told them about this. The stakeholders were getting tensioned. As a result, we had a quick emergency meeting afterwards. I realised, I shouldn't have said it in the meeting, so that our team can first have a look before we report it to the stakeholders. I made a political mistake.

2nd shit.

I had to delay my conversation with my boss again.

Now, I am waiting for better days to finally getting consent, so that I can start my company and continue my entrepreneurial journey.


PS: Would love to read your thoughts on it. Either write a comment or just reply to this newsletter mail 🐳.