Yup. We realized the necessity of this a couple of months back, and started writing up contracts. Unfortunately, those got lost in the shuffle of one of our bigger growth spurts, and definitely need to be looked into once more.

Alright, thank you so much for the advice, all!

Ah yes. And I'm glad you mentioned press. Personally, being the ego-ridden sinner that I am, I can't wait for a little bit of exposure with the press. I mean, for a team that is so young and diverse, we've overcome a lot of serious challenges. To be able to say that a project where over 70% of the team members were underaged is competing up against AAA games like iRO is a big deal- as long as we can reach that goal.

Mkay... thank you for the legal tips on what to do when we get to our goal. Now it's time to get there. ^^

By the sounds of things I think you need to get yourself a non-executive Chairman, and fast. You need a mentor on-hand for frequent and detailed advice. Using a forum like this is way below sufficient if you're as far advanced as you sound.

I can't offer that, but if you email me on ceo @ grexengine.com I can give you some (not inconsiderable) help. I used to run a £50,000 business-plan competition, and have founded 3 companies. I've seen a lot of businesses start from the 3-page exec summary and go all the way to multi-million-dollar success (only a couple of cases) or bankrupt / wound-up / dormant (approx 20 last time I counted). Most of these I had close access to, not as a salaried employee but as an objective external adviser.

The truth is I'm too busy to properly mentor anyone right now, and I'm probably on completely the wrong continent. But I'm happy to provide a stream of email advice and suggestions (I often do this for people put in contact with me).

Same offer is open to anyone else around here. Although bear in mind I have a highly refined BullSh*t-Detector, and not much free time. Anyone cold contacting me with *nothing* to show (e.g. "I've had an idea which I thoguth about for 5 minutes. Can you help?") will simply get added to the spam filter as "delete automatically" (anyone in that situation should find PLENTY of advice in old posts on the GD.net forums - it's probably the most commonly asked question?). Don't feel put off by that, but you DO need to have done a considerable amount of hard work before I can even come close to helping you; until that point you're wasting your time and mine.

If you've already put in a lot of effort to what you're doing, I don't mind being emailed, even if I can't help at all. If I'm too busy I'll just ignore you :).

One final note: You would be surprised how few people take up the offer of free advice. I'm on several alumni lists and mentoring lists and yet I get almost no approaches that way (most come from a friend or ex-colleague directing someone at me).

redmilamber

Quote:Original post by Obscure
Sort out your contracts now - you don't know how high that aircraft was when you jumped - the ground could be a lot closer than you expect.

Mkay, I took your advice, as well as the guidance given in the articles written by Tom Buscaglia, and we're writing up all of our "parachutes"- NDAs, IP assignments, royalty agreements, and the likes. While I really don't anticipate hitting the ground, I do want to be prepared.

As for the underage issue- only a handful of us will still be under 18 as of next year. But waiting for those people who aren't yet 18 yet is very dangerous indeed, and for those who still won't be 18 yet, I should find a solution as soon as possible.

What has been done in the past with similar situations? Surely there have been successful projects created by young teams, right?

Alright... so I'll hope somebody has some advice on the topic of making legal contracts with underage employees. Surely there has to be at least some sort of workaround. I mean, I got my first part-time job when I was 13, and I had to sign a contract for that.

However, I'll play the worst-case scenario card, and here's my hypothetical response:

I would have to press on with these underage members under absolutely no legally binding contract, simply hoping that nothing goes wrong, and doing everything I possibly can to ensure that they understand my intent to repay them, and make sure they trust me. If I ever hit the ground with one of them, I'm gonna hit hard, and it's gonna hurt. A lot.

The fact that I would be signing contracts with everyone else who was able to would at least be a bit reassuring to them, I should hope, but this would still require an immense deal of trust between me and each of my underaged cohorts. I should really start looking into putting [even more] effort into building some sort of personal relationship with each member, making sure they understood my motivations and had some sort of basis for believing me. In a big sense, it'll be a practice in people skills.

Or, perhaps, we could try something a bit more manipulative. Have the contract actually be between myself and these underage "employees'" parents, of sorts. Any thoughts on how this could be carried out?



If there's anything that I'm learning from this, it's that trust isn't highly valued in fields of law. This is perfectly understandable, don't get me wrong. You guys have had countless years of combined experience watching "friends" turncoat on one another, and someone getting hurt in the end. I'm sure it happens a lot, and I'm sure it could happen to me. If there is even a small chance that something could tear apart my future career, I am not dumb enough to leave myself unguarded.

It's simply a very, very different view from what I'm used to, and definitely a difficult transition, at first. And at all costs, even when I do load up the parachute, I still can't help but be naive enough to think that the ground is much farther than you might suspect. However, I will take your advice. We'll see. If I'm lucky, I'll never have to pull it.

::EDIT::

Wait a second... can't minors sign contracts with parental consent? That would certainly solve a lot of problems.

Quote:Original post by TheArtifex
Alright... so I'll hope somebody has some advice on the topic of making legal contracts with underage employees. Surely there has to be at least some sort of workaround. I mean, I got my first part-time job when I was 13, and I had to sign a contract for that.

...

Wait a second... can't minors sign contracts with parental consent? That would certainly solve a lot of problems.

I started working as a programmer when I was 16 (18 now, still working there), and I think I just signed a contract by myself.

Speaking of that contract, it has a fairly stiff non-compete, so that may have been stupid in hindsight, considering I have to move away to go to college :(

Ah, okay. I've been looking over some of the laws, and I think I see at least one way that this would be possible. The underage employees would be required to have:

a) parental consent in the form of a signature
b) a work permit issued by their school

With those two things in mind, I am capable of working them for a varying amount of hours depending on age. So, this brings up a handful of new questions.

For one, I must confirm that I can legally say something along the lines of "our team operates by the laws of Indiana, USA." I am quite sure that this is permissible within the USA, and I am fairly certain this is possible even in an international setting. However, I do want to be absolutely sure before I continue writing the contracts with laws pulled from Indiana state code in mind, and you guys probably know much better.

Also, how exactly would one qualify a "work hour" spent on the project? But wait... no. This isn't an hourly project. Okay, wait a second now. If we are perfectly careful to never use the word "hourly" or "hour" in the contracts... aren't we freed up from a whole lot of these bothersome underage employment laws? It would be far less of a hassle if all that was required was parental consent.