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Ask HN: Technical director from 6 years, my boss recruited a CTO

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Re: Ask HN: Technical director from 6 years, my boss recruited a CTO

#11

Post by bengali3 »

Learn to be a CTO. Experience has told me this has nothing to do with coding ability or technical knowledge, it's about being able to sell yourself and positioning yourself to get what you want.

Why did the CEO turn down your plan for increasing profit ()? My point is clearly he weighs the new guys plan over yours. Figure out how to change that perception. Read Seth Godin

Roles can get created out of thin air. Does your company already have a Chief Marketing/Revenue/Content/Product Officer?? You dont need to go head to head with the new guy, find your next path.

Best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: Technical director from 6 years, my boss recruited a CTO

#12

Post by hga »

darklighter3 wrote: post #8

Successful startups go through a couple of phases as they grow. At each phase the skills needed from the team will change because the challenges to get to the next level are different. And the team will often turn over along the way. Not everyone who was there in the beginning will be there at the end. And that's okay. Now maybe you have the skills and experience to grow with the organization along the way or maybe y…

"Whether the CEO lied to you or not really depends upon context...."

While you have a point here, I think the real issue is that the CEO never came back to lejeanvaljean and said "I made a mistake, we're going to have to...." Instead, without warning, he hired an old friend who's not apparently qualified for the position.

It's the latter act that tells lejeanvaljean exactly how bad his position in this company is. Heck, it wouldn't be in the least surprising for him to get fired no matter what his performance is going forward, that's a very common pattern in companies that turn political like this.

Re: Ask HN: Technical director from 6 years, my boss recruited a CTO

#13

Post by notahacker »

alain94040 wrote: post #9

This can go one of two ways. 1) Let's be optimistic: this new CTO is an amazing person, super smart, will bring a lot of value to the company, and you will grow a lot by working with that person. So it's good. 2) The pessimistic view: this move was purely political, this new CTO is no one special, it's just one extra layer of management and taking your responsibilities away. You were doing a great job before, and now…

There's also option (2b) The new CTO is no-one special, but actually spends most of their time dealing with administrative bullshit related to the integration, leaving you more free to focus on managing your team and architecting ad-servers.

Given the only context we've got is that the new CTO has no background in design decisions related to your problem domain or affiliation with any of the acquired companies but is an ex-company leader with the trust of the CEO, I'd even speculate that's the most likely outcome.

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