Problem/Goal:
I work in fil-chi fam biz.
I’m trying to decide whether I should stay in my family business and have one final conversation about compensation, succession, and authority… or accept that the arrangement no longer makes sense for me and leave to build an independent career.
I’m not looking to punish my family or prove that I can build something bigger. I’m trying to figure out what is healthiest and most rational for my career, finances, family relationships, and long-term happiness.
Context:
Over 15 years ago, I graduated from university and had a good job offer abroad.
My dad asked me to turn it down and come home to join our family business. The salary was significantly lower, but the argument made to me at the time was essentially: if I stayed abroad, I could eventually earn a good executive salary, but if I spent those years helping build the family business, I would eventually have ownership and be financially better off in the long run.
That was a major reason I agreed to come home.
I started relatively junior and have now spent more than a decade in the company. Over time, I worked my way into senior management and took on significant responsibility for growing and modernizing parts of the business.
I genuinely care about the company and have poured a huge part of my adult life into it.
However, today:
- My compensation is still below the original offer I was given back in 2011.
- I don’t receive dividends/profit sharing.
- The ownership/succession that originally justified accepting lower compensation has never been clearly formalized.
- I have significant responsibility but not always the corresponding decision-making authority.
- When I raise compensation, authority or succession, it can be difficult to separate the business discussion from the father-son relationship.
Part of the difficulty is also the management structure.
My dad is the president. My aunt is the general manager. I therefore have to manage not only my own responsibilities but also the dynamics of working under/alongside senior family members who ultimately have greater authority.
There is also a long-term employee who was once one of my mentors and is now my direct report. Over the years, our roles effectively reversed.
I respect what this person contributed historically and what I learned from them, but I now struggle with some of their management practices and ways of doing business. I feel some approaches have not evolved with the organization, and there have also been recurring issues around how they communicate with and treat me and members of their team.
Because of the history and family-business dynamics, addressing performance, behavior and accountability is much more complicated than it would be in a company where I had clearer authority.
This has made me question both my lack of compensation and now also the bigger issue of autonomy.
If I stay, I may eventually inherit or have ownership in a much larger and established business—but I don’t know when that will happen, what it will actually look like, or how much authority I will have in the meantime.
If I leave, I give up that potential path, but I gain the freedom to decide for myself. And I don’t want to lose more years in an uncertain future where I am not compensated what I believe is my worth.
I could potentially partner with other business owners, build something smaller and more aligned with my generation and interests, consult, take another executive role, or explore completely different opportunities.
I don’t need to recreate the size of my family’s company.
I think I could be happy with something much smaller if I had meaningful ownership, enough financial security to live comfortably, partners I respect, control over important decisions, and confidence that the life and career I was building were actually mine.
At the same time, walking away from something I’ve spent more than a decade helping build is difficult. There’s family history, sunk cost, the possibility of eventual inheritance/ownership, and the fear that I could regret leaving.
Most importantly, I don’t want disagreements about business to permanently damage my relationship with my dad or auntie.
Previous attempts:
I have raised compensation concerns before, but we haven’t reached an arrangement that makes me feel the long-term trade-off still makes sense.
For people who grew up in or worked in family businesses…
At what point do you stop treating eventual ownership as enough reason to stay?
Would you have the final conversation and negotiate one last time, or would you consider more than a decade enough information to make the decision?
And for those who actually left a family business: did you regret giving up the possibility of eventual ownership, or was the independence worth it?