Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

Provided you're not writing anything that detrimentally impacts the product, there's no reason for you to leave. It's your company.

Now I say this not so you can sit back and let others do the hard work, but for you to figure out how else you can contribute. Every startup, hell every mature company, has issues to deal with on a daily basis. I would be very surprised if there wasn't something else you could be doing for the company.

Worst comes to worst, your job from here on out is to do the tasks nobody else wants to do. From a technical perspective that could mean things like sanitizing the database (if it needs it) or going back and writing some good tests for already-implemented code. From a business perspective, this could mean researching, scraping, generating leads to customers, users, etc. Hell, you can even be the glorified secretary by helping others manage their day-to-day tasks, schedules, appointments. Be the office janitor. Be the guy they send to campus events to talk to students.

If you can no longer contribute to the code for your product, that's OK. There's a million and one things you can do outside that realm to support the product as well as your teammates.

Of course you can always buckle down on your coding game and get better at it. Take online courses. If you (and your company) can afford the time and money, go to one of those schools that teach you to be a better programmer. Tell your CTO that you want to get better and want to learn from him/her.

Be the glue that holds everyone together. Be the swing man that can bounce from activity to activity and ensure everything is running smoothly. Be the founder who's relentlessly resourceful and continues to move the company forward in any shape or form.

Uh, you are a founder. Nobody asks you to leave. You took part of the risk to start the company, the new CTO did not. He does not get to tell you to leave. Ever. Period. I'm actually shocked that you're even considering it.

He has overstepped his boundaries. The CTO works for the founders, he cannot really fire you (asking you to leave is just a polite war of phrasing it). Remind him that it is the duty of any smart manager to hire people who are smarter than him. That is what you did.

My guess is that your position with your cofounder is rather weak at the moment. The cofounder is probably stepping back and saying "This CTO guy knows what he is doing and if I have to choose, I would much rather go with him". That is a tough situation to be in. If that is true, it isn't your CTO firing you (he is just the front man), it is your cofounder. In fact, ONLY your cofounder can fire you (or your investors if you have sold them a big enough share).

As mentioned I would have a lawyer review your contracts thoroughly. When money starts coming in the door, the game changes completely. Situations can be brutal, don't be one of the sad stories.

I really don't understand this story, most tech entrepreneurs with successful companies have to hire people better than them, mark zuckerberg, jack dorsey(especially the twitter guys), snapchat etc. You 2 guys are the founders and hired a CTO and the CTO is telling you to leave, imagine the CTO of snapchat telling Evan Spiegal who cannot code to leave, it just doesn't add up.

If i had to guess, your cofounder who is the business guy realizes that the CTO is a better coder than you and is trying to push you out and offer the CTO a better share of the company. You really need to stand up for yourself, do not limit yourself or feel inferior, i mean even Larry and Sergey had to get better programmers than them.