[meric]

>> Although I was director, engineering was basically under the control of product and upper management.

IMO if you're the lead of the engineering organisation then you have the responsibility to convince your CEO when you feel you're right. As director it comes with a responsibility to do some politicking.

[byoung2]

This company was past the point of no return as far as convincing goes. The founding CTO quit for the same reasons. We built an amazing product that nobody wanted. The tech was impressive, but customers don't see the tech, they see (or don't see) how it helps them solve a problem. When the sales didn't come in, the investors wanted answers, and the CEO blamed tech for building a bad product when really it was lack of product market fit. The founding CTO tried to convince the CEO that it was bad marketing and a flawed product vision that was to blame, to no avail. When he quit, I was promoted to director of engineering, but I didn't have any more success convincing them. Engineering was buried under a boatload of feature requests that sales anecdotally heard customers wanted.

[meric]

Sounds like a difficult job. I'm happy for you to be out of it now.