[steven2012]

One thing you need to come to grips is that regardless of how smart you are, the VP of engineering is probably someone that has a lot more experience and clout than you do. If they aren't, then the senior management of the company is terrible. If your company has grown to the size of 40-50 people, that's the time when they need real experience to help drive them forward. They can't take a chance on a great programmer who has never managed an organization before or grown it from 40 to 200 people. So you need to accept that.

But you should stick by the VP of Engineering and learn whatever you can from them. Be their right-hand person, and try to become someone that the entire company goes to for technical issues. It's not hard to be the de facto CTO, just make sure you are a part of all the technical decisions, and a positive guiding force for the company. As you become more and more the face of technical decisions, eventually you'll be recognized for it, or you can go to another company in that higher role.

[rubiquity]

Why is it acceptable for the Founder/CEO to continue leading the company at 40+ employees but not acceptable for the engineer to lead an engineering team at 40+ employees? Seems like a double standard.

[balls187]

> Why is it acceptable for the Founder/CEO to continue leading the company at 40+ employees but not acceptable for the engineer to lead an engineering team at 40+ employees? Seems like a double standard.

It is a double standard, but however it's hardly that cut and dry.

Post Series B, if the board does not believe the current Founder/CEO can take the company to the next milestones of growth, they will replace them.

Typically engineering teams need to scale sooner, so you you see a more experienced manager be brought in before the CEO is considered for replacing.

The CEO may also has the additional benefit of having the investors and board help him or her in their decisions.

[fluffheadsr]

reason number 472 to never take funding.. if your business can not be bootstrapped successfully, it's likely your business is going to never turn a profit. Funding is silly, i'd never subject any business i'm involved with to a board room full of investors that don't give a shit about me or my business and only care about PROFIT! MOAR PROFIT! blech.

So glad we're bootstrapped.. we're not doing millions a month in business, but we don't need to.. we've been profitable for nearly a decade, a SaaS service since 2002, and we do about 100k/mo in revenue. Pays the bills, pays our people, and we're all so much happier with life.

[knd775]

>if your business can not be bootstrapped successfully, it's likely your business is going to never turn a profit. Funding is silly...

Well, this just isn't true at all. Many companies have very high costs up front due to the nature of their business. This is especially true in hardware startups, but can also be true in software startups.

[fluffheadsr]

I guess, but there are so many better ways these days, if your product is worth building to get it built than to give up a huge piece of your pie. Crowd funding, etc.. if you have 10 years of R&D well you're better off just taking the idea to another company.

This is a generalization, but I think owners get their priorites mixed up when they are sitting on millions in free money.. their burn rate is insane.. they spend money on the wrong things, etc.. fancy offices, whatever, and they aren't even profitable. We work from home, and share a co-working space as well as an office with 2 other companies..

Office life is over rated and is a giant waste of startup funds. =/

[angersock]

The board is just a bunch of old white dudes with money. The fuck do they know?

EDIT:

balls187 suggests they know how to make money--which is perhaps true, but not necessarily in your field of endeavor or business, unless you've picked them.

kelnos is closer to it, which is that the board tells you what to do because they're the board and that's the power you've granted them.

Again, in neither case, do we actually need to assume they are making the best or even informed decisions. There are some great stories of boards I've known locally suggesting really dumb things that hurt and even killed companies.

[kelnos]

Assuming you're correct (very debatable), it doesn't matter: they're the ones funding the company, so they get to make the decisions. This doesn't always work out well, but it's not unreasonable.

[wpietri]

One could make the same argument for hereditary monarchy. Which I would take as a sign that maybe it is unreasonable.

[infinite8s]

Except that taking funding is a voluntary action. Living under a hereditary monarchy is not.

[balls187]

Presumably how to make money.

[UK-AL]

Investors are like companies, 60%-80%(Dubious estimation) are not that great, but every so often there is a good one.

[gravedave]

Are you implying that young, poor black people know better?

[throwawaymaroon]

What are you thinking? You can't just point out that decision-making in Silicon Valley lies with a clueless investor class.

You've got to keep the charade going: keep them writing checks and thinking their input is valuable.

[31reasons]

One BIG reason to start your own company but never ever become an employee at a startup.

EDIT: The only benefit of working at startup (and a significant one) is to learn how startups work. If thats taken away from you then there is no point in risking your career.

[scolson]

Frequently in VC backed companies, founders are removed from the CEO role if they aren't showing the ability to monetize and determine "what's next." Sometimes the founder goes to a glorified secondary tech role like a fellow, and sometimes they leave the company all together.

[bjelkeman-again]

We are doing it differently. We don't think a tech driven business can be run by non tech leadership. We also don't think it can be run without business leadership. So we have two CEOs, on from tech and one from the business sector we are in. It works really well.

[pbiggar]

The two are not equivalent, as you need different attributes in each case. The CEO needs to have the product vision and complete information about the company (see http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_we_prefer_founding_ceos for discussion), which typically only the founding CEO can have. You'll note that this is a continuation of the role they had when the company was small, though of course it requires a massive amount of learning.

However, for all other roles in the company, the important thing is having the experience to scale and lead that part of the company: sales, marketing, product, support, engineering. When the company is young, those roles will be filled by allrounders: people a few years experience who do everything in that area. As the company grows, you'll want to hire VPs who have the skills to lead those areas, often people with >15 years experience as a practitioner and/or leader in those areas.

It's not just engineering: you want a VP of Sales, a VP of marketing, a VP of product, etc. Those people will have the skills to take your existing sales/marketing/product/engineering org, and scale it without damaging it. If you have that skillset in your engineer #2, than it would make sense for them to do that role, but it's unlikely that they do, and certainly doesn't seem like it in th OP's case.

[steven2012]

Ownership has its privileges.

[marincounty]

I understand, but you are right it's a double standard. The Founder/CEO usually got that position for reasons other than their their technical know how. Personally, If a CEO doesn't understand most of the nuts and bolts of the company they are running; bye! bye!(That is unless they are brilliant in other areas in business.)

[Toenex]

Your observation is known as 'Founders Syndrome' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder%27s_syndrome)

[stevewilhelm]

> Why is it acceptable for the Founder/CEO

Chances are the Founder/CEO has a controlling share of the company's stock.

[zo1]

Not to be snarky or anything but the first thing that pops to mind: "Because it's his company".

[marktangotango]

This x1000. The last thing you should do is withdraw, and leave everyone high and dry. I've seen this situation, where the 3 remaining of the original cohort, for some reason, resented the new CTO, and basically abandoned the company. Only reason they're still here is they have an ownsership stake and are friends with CEO. They could've been hugely impactful to the success of the company, but instead, they're sitting back to watch the everyone else fail.

Also, with this crew in particular, they really weren't that good. They begat a lava layered monstrosity that doesn't scale and isn't maintainable. Make sure that's not you.

[v13inc]

What is wrong with leaving everyone high and dry? The CEO has no qualms about doing that to devs.

If an engineer leaving puts the company in a bad spot, then they are understaffed and need better management that can foresee and handle those transitions before they happen.

It's all part of proper engineering culture.

[pm]

This is what happens when one person stops communicating to another due to lack of awareness; the other assumes the worst, and stops reciprocating. They are the only one who knows what's going on, yet it almost always comes down to them saying "Why should I be the first to re-establish communication?". You should do it because you're an adult, and the other person isn't a mind-reader; if you don't, you don't deserve any sympathy when the shit hits the fan.

[takemikazuchi]

I think even before you bring responsibility into the picture, there's a lot for each actor in this situation to gain from reestablishing communications(I certainly can't see what they would lose, except for face). This is assuming the other party is mature and rational though.

[peteretep]

You're suggesting he owes them something, and it really sounds like he doesn't - they've passed him over for career advancement, so he needs to find somewhere he'll be appreciated

[LunaSea]

I don't understand why this attitude is a problem in this context.

It's their last and only pressure point in the political game that happens in the company.

If you don't feel that your skills are fairly compensated and you can't leave (due to contracting or vesting time) you don't have any other options.

[marktangotango]

Being a dick is not an option or a negotiation tactic, it is just that being a dick. Note I'm speaking to my experience, where tbe people in question do everything but actively sabotage the CTO in question.

[paulhauggis]

"Being a dick is not an option or a negotiation tactic"

I disagree. Leaving is not "being a dick", it's looking out for yourself. If you don't, nobody else will. It's apparent this is the case with the OP: He was pretty much built the entire company up and was there for the company when they needed him (I would imagine late hours, weekends, etc).

Now that they don't need him anymore, they pushed him off to the side. I've heard this story 1000 times and experienced it first-hand.

I don't work for startups for exactly this reason. If I'm spending my life building your company, I better be getting 50% in equity. It's really not worth the fooseball table in the lunch room and the Red Bull in the fridge. This is why you need to get the young and naive to fill these roles.

[marktangotango]

I agree, leaving is not being a dick. Staying and not helping, or actively hindering new staff through lies and misdirection about implementation details of a complex application in a complicated domain is.