Student Question:
Hello Master, some background: I’m a college senior. Both my parents work at my uncle’s company. It started when my father’s factory investment failed and our family went bankrupt — no debt, but no money either. That’s when my uncle invited my father to join his company as a manager. The role was demanding, overseeing many employees, but paid around four to five thousand a month — not much, yet it was rain after a long drought.
Meanwhile, my mother was selling insurance and bringing in ten to twenty thousand a month, and our family gradually got back on its feet. In my final year of high school, my mother quit to look after me and never went back to work afterward. Then in my third year of university, my uncle invited her to join his company too, giving her a loosely defined management role at around three thousand a month.
My uncle and my parents have a genuinely warm relationship. My father is extremely dedicated at work, and whenever my uncle’s family needs something, my father will bring his son over to our house for lunch. When my aunt had a birthday, the whole family was invited to a restaurant dinner. Over winter break, my uncle even proactively asked for my résumé, wanting to ask a friend to help me find an internship. That’s the full picture.
My uncle has a son in middle school. When I came home for winter break, my uncle said managing his son was exhausting, and suggested having the boy come to my place for me to tutor him — he even offered to pay me. But I didn’t want to get into that kind of financial transaction with my uncle. Asking too much or too little both felt wrong, and if the tutoring didn’t meet their expectations, it could create a rift between our families. So I declined, saying I had studying to do over the break. Was my thinking correct?
Then yesterday, my mother came to me with something. Because I study computer science, she said my uncle wanted to develop a dedicated WeChat mini-program for the company, and she thought to ask me to build it. I wasn’t sure whether this was my uncle’s idea or something my mother volunteered on her own. Either way, I felt that with my thesis to complete and a second attempt at the graduate entrance exam coming up, I simply didn’t have the time — and honestly my skills have limits too. Getting involved seemed like a bad idea. So I told my mother I was afraid my abilities weren’t up to it and I didn’t want to hold things up, but that if they told me what features they needed, I could help look into whether there was an existing off-the-shelf mini-program they could use directly.
My mother pushed back, saying the company didn’t need anything cutting-edge — nothing too sophisticated — and that if it wasn’t perfect, it could always be revised.
So I looked into their requirements and replied as follows: I recommended skipping custom development entirely and using the platform’s built-in mini-program, because anything custom-built would never match what an official development team produces. Beyond that, building a program from scratch, setting up a server, and handling ongoing maintenance genuinely exceeded my capabilities. I acknowledged there might be specific features — like tracking how long users linger on a particular product — that I couldn’t confirm were available. But I was certain that if I tried to write it myself, it would take a very long time and might not even work. If after trying the built-in option they still wanted something custom, I suggested they hire a professional outsourcing team — they charge fees, but the quality is reliable.
Was this reply appropriate? My mother will almost certainly screenshot our conversation and send it to my uncle. Based on your experience — will he think I was just making excuses to avoid helping? Could this affect my parents’ jobs? If there’s anything I handled poorly, please guide me on what the right approach should have been.
Master Chi’s Response:
1. On the tutoring situation — your instincts were exactly right. This kind of arrangement is thankless work. Unless you’re confident you can genuinely deliver, don’t take it on. Otherwise, you risk damaging a relationship that’s currently warm and harmonious.
Knowing the proper distance in human relationships is essential. When the closeness between two parties isn’t truly there yet, forcing too much intimacy tends to create friction rather than goodwill.
2. Based on your description, I believe your uncle — and his company as a whole — simply doesn’t understand new technology well. Because of that, going to outsiders feels risky to them. You happen to be in this field, so reaching out to you was a perfectly natural thought.
When you reply, the key is to emphasize that you are willing to help, but that your current abilities fall short of what the company actually needs. You can offer your professional perspective, and express that while you can’t handle the development yourself, you’d be happy to follow along and stay involved in the process — that way, at least their side has someone in the loop who understands the space, which gives everyone a bit more peace of mind.
The logic of your response should be:
- Make clear that you want to help — don’t leave people with the impression that you’re indifferent or self-serving.
- Honestly explain why you can’t do this independently, while signaling that you can still offer indirect support and help move things forward in some way.
Also — you mentioned the mini-program is for selling goods?
If that’s the case, there are already many mature third-party platforms built exactly for this purpose. They can be used directly without any custom development at all.