I don’t think I’m the asshole, but my brother’s reaction was so extreme that I keep doubting myself. So here it goes.
I asked my older brother, who works with digital marketing, for guidance because I wanted to leave my exhausting job. Instead of advice, he made me a proposal: work for him, earn less than half of my salary, but learn everything and later build my own operation. He created urgency, sent audios about fear being the key to success, pressured me to take risks like he did. I trusted him, quit my job, and went in.
Three days after I quit, he told me all his accounts had been permanently banned. When I finally went to his house to learn, the supposed simple 4 hour job turned out to be 10 plus hours with a frozen computer. Tasks he said took minutes actually took nearly an hour. When I questioned it, his solution was buying me a new computer, but I would go two months without salary to pay for it. I had no income, so I refused. He said I wasn’t willing to sacrifice.
We renegotiated to fewer tasks for less pay. I worked like that for 15 days and learned most of the process. But whenever I asked if I could start my own operation on the side, he shut me down, saying I would get frustrated, that I wasn’t ready.
Then he asked me to create new accounts under my ID and host his entire operation at my house, using equipment and internet in my name because he was banned. I refused. Reasons:
• That’s not what I agreed to.
• If the platform banned me too, I’d lose everything.
• I didn’t want equipment and responsibility in my house.
• I had already lent him my name once and got into legal trouble.
• Taxes and legal risk would fall on me.
I offered a middle ground: I would help with tasks, but not put everything in my name.
He exploded. Called me a coward, ungrateful, said I was messing with his face and screwing him over. Sent an audio listing every time he helped me in the past, using it as a debt. Said I was a leech, that I only went there to suck his knowledge. He even claimed he got me my previous job, which is simply false. Then I found out he used my resignation as an argument in a lawsuit without telling me. He blocked me everywhere and said our relationship was over.
Three months later, using only what I learned in those 15 days, I built my own operation and now earn double what he wanted to pay me, working around 250 fewer hours per month.
I know I was naive. But I keep wondering if saying no to something risky and not agreed upon was really a betrayal or if he was manipulating me like he always does whenever someone sets a boundary.
AITA?
Oh dude. Don’t work with family.
NTA. He works in digital marketing and somehow got all his accounts banned? I don’t think that is the person you should be learning from.
First cardinal rule of working: NEVER WORK WITH FAMILY! Sounds like what he did at the beginning was definitely on the shady side, and he would’ve continued doing it, but had you as a cover. Super shady and good on you for saying no. NTA
NTA here. Like someone else said, working with/for family can be tricky and should be avoided. Personally, when I graduated from college, the guy who managed my brother’s business website was retiring, and my brother asked me to take it on. As much as I would love to help him out, I knew taking on that role would be a mistake. As it was, he already treated me like I was his on-call IT department whenever one of the computers would run into an issue, even though on multiple occasions I told him I had no idea what was going on with them, all I was doing to troubleshoot was googling. I referred him to a friend with much more experience, and it was a good call because it ended up being “a lot” of work that I’m sure I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying “you owe me $$$ for these hours.”
My brother isn’t half as toxic as what your brother sounds like, and I still wouldn’t take on the web master role when my friend that I referred retired from that service.
“Digital marketing” aka spamming. And likely scamming.
Yeah, it turned out to be basically that. I genuinely didn’t know at the time — he was very vague about the details and I trusted him blindly because he was my older brother. I only understood what the “operation” actually involved after I had already accepted and quit my job.