[charlesdm]

He's probably a director of the company and not an employee. That tends to give him additional rights (and responsibilities) that you don't have.

One of those is that you usually can't "fire" a director without board approval. Some director agreements and vesting schedules (if drafted properly) also have special acceleration clauses on termination without cause, so even if you could get rid of him, he'll still get his part of the business.

tl;dr: I don't think you can make that decision - it's up to the co founders and the investors. There's nothing you can do, and even if you could, he'd probably leave with his fully vested equity stake. Time to find a new job if you can't deal with that.

[tech_nofounder]

Thanks for the advice.

  tl;dr: I don't think you can make that decision

You're right, it's definitely not my call; but I feel that I owe it to my team (and future team) to make the case to the CEO to do something more than just "oh, find him a desk in the basement".

Imagine how I talk to prospective hires: "yes, he's the engineering co-founder -- but we just let him do QA work while the rest of us call the shots". In the valley there's some expectation that the co-founders are, well, in charge, and keeping someone around like that in a limited capacity seems.. unusual.

[jeffmould]

I think you are overthinking the situation and looking to justify your feeling that the guy needs to be fired over reassigned. Why tell anyone anything in regards to the prospective hires? If the individual's strength is QA of the product then that is simply what he does. Doesn't matter if he is the founder or not. A good co-founder (or any founder) knows their strengths and weaknesses. More importantly they can own their weaknesses, and know when to bring in others to fill the holes so that the company succeeds. It is no different than a founder giving up the role of CEO to a more experienced and capable person. As the company and product evolves I don't see anything abnormal, or unusual, about a co-founder taking a back seat to other more experienced developers or whatever position it may be.

[charlesdm]

I totally get what you're saying, it can definitely pull down morale across the engineering team. But it doesn't look like the CEO is interested in fixing the situation?

It can also create tricky situations if, for example, you're a two co-founder team. The CEO might be on good terms with the CTO about the vision of the company, and he needs his continued support/voting power coming with equity stake to push through that vision.

If they each own 30% then he'll be dead in the water without his co founders support if things ever get tough.

[6d0debc071]

> Imagine how I talk to prospective hires

"This is Bob, he does the QA."

It might be unusual, but at the same time it seems odd that Bob's position would be an issue to them as compared to their compensation package, duties, etc.