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Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

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Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#171

Post by perlpimp »

Bluestrike2 wrote: post #110

You need to hire an attorney, one who works in business litigation (if you can find someone specializing in minority shareholder disputes, that much the better). Right now. If you're delaying on this point out of some idea of wanting to "try to fix things first" or "not wanting to be the bad guy," you're just shooting yourself in the foot and downing blood thinners to keep the wound from clotting. Working with an att…

Only thing I see you have to be sure what kind of people you are striking partnership with. Checking references however casually is paramount to binding yourself for the long haul.

So if you get a whiff of partner's mischievous behaviour in past business dealings, it might be better striking out on your own or looking for other options.

As in being squeezed out get your partnership drawn up right after starting out on the project, whether you horizon for getting investments/public launch is 6 months or 2 years. After all you don't want to waste your time. If you don't have iron clad paper work covering you, most likely you have been played. If you are prepared for this then you would not have questions.

If the venture is out to grow big, talk to a lawyer and get the injunction against them so they can't proceed until they sort out your stake in the company, how much they owe and al the other business relates stuff. Also check if you have rights to the property you just might launch your own competitor product if there is nothing that explicitly forbids you from doing so. Savlage what you can, I am sure you can come out on top if you play your cards right and have honor in you intentions.

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#172

Post by wowsig »

Cannot stress more on the part about writing/archiving everything. Relationships between the founders, during the very early days of a startup can swing between extreme brotherhood to extremely sceptical. Everyone is bearing the brunt of pressure and if things are not moving, it is human to delegate the responsibility of performance onto the other guy. I started a content-based startup in my college, and created much of the content myself. The trust that I bestowed upon my other co-founder was futile though. In the end, when things weren't looking up much, he ended up with not giving back the original content to me at all. Since the content was in the form of hand-drawn cartoon strips, I was just left with nothing. I saved up emails, but they didn't achieve much. In the future, the other co-founder tried to do things his way, but he didn't pursue the idea further, and all my hard work of creating just went down the drain. Make sure it doesn't happen to you.

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#173

Post by cantlookaway »

gaoshan wrote: post #71
carbocation wrote: post #65

You have phrased this as an almost apologetic post, focusing on your ability to write code. An analogy to medicine might be worrying about your ability to take a good history and physical exam, but in the meanwhile the patient is bleeding in front of you. The problem is not your ability to write code - the CTO even admits as much when he says he needs you now but wants to replace you later. Your code is desperately n…

>You have phrased this as an almost apologetic post And I bet this is why the CTO has taken the path that they have. They sense the same thing that we sense from the tone of this comment so they are going after that perceived weakness.

I am a very easy going guy who dislikes confrontation, I also assume the people I am working with are my peers, and treat them as such.

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#174

Post by thailehuy »

Many people have already made the bad guy out of the CTO. But in my point of view, he's not.

You do admit that your skill is not up to par yet, so in a sense, you are a dead weight to the company (though you are improving, but it's better if you can just hire another good dev)

Now I'm not saying that you should quit the company (hell, it's your company). Remain as a co-founder, or a member of the board of director, or become product owner, agile master whatever you name it, just not a dev. If you really mean it, you can take a pause in your product development, learn more first, then re-join the team, let the team asset your skills to see if you are up to par.

Take a deep breath, and think about the future of the company. Whatever products you are developing, would it sustain this harsh world with your skills? This is the whole point of your decision.

TL;DR: if you are bad, leave the dirty job to others.

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#175

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Bluestrike2 wrote: post #110

You need to hire an attorney, one who works in business litigation (if you can find someone specializing in minority shareholder disputes, that much the better). Right now. If you're delaying on this point out of some idea of wanting to "try to fix things first" or "not wanting to be the bad guy," you're just shooting yourself in the foot and downing blood thinners to keep the wound from clotting. Working with an att…

>Painful though it may be, you never ever litigate on principle. Not if you have any brains at all.

It's not worthwhile to litigate on principle, but it may be worthwhile to be the kind of person who litigates on principle. It really depends on how often you expect a reputation for being litigious to help you out.

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#176

Post by cantlookaway »

jonsterling wrote: post #43

I don't know anything about business or founding a startup: but as an engineer in one, if you have hired a CTO who is better at engineering than you (kudos!) and he/she has asked you to stop writing production code, you should listen. Coding "for old times sake" is pretty damaging when a team of actually trained engineers has just got your old broken code-base under control and instituted better engineering practices…

> if you have hired a CTO who is better at engineering than you

He doesn't do development himself(he does review everything before it goes into the production branch), simply that he knows better developers than I.

I have re-written much of our original code to a point where it is of good quality, both in it's intended role and in readability.

I did have a habit of cutting corners which later came back to bite us but that is not the case anymore.

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#177

Post by vayarajesh »

The CTO has surely overstepped the boundaries.. the project/company is your baby and no one and i mean NO ONE should tell you to leave your baby.. the CTO is just like a 'hired' babysitter for your baby (you want to ensure that your baby is growing in a good and right direction) and you might lack some parenting skills but that doesnt mean you have to give up your baby in the hands of the babysitter.

Even though you may not be a great coder you can and will grow to be one great coder.

CTO should know this clearly that this company is yours and he is just an hired help.. he may be the best CTO out there in the world.. but he cannot even suggest you to leave the company..

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#178

Post by dchichkov »

gaius wrote: post #165
dchichkov wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd second your words about "bad coder" arguments. This argument is ridiculous, particularly if he had managed to to build a production system that is gaining traction. And did it single-handed (or in a team of two). I would disagree however about the advice to 'fire him immediately because the politics will fk the company'. The problem is, the moment there is some money on the table politics and power play starts. U…

You can be a terrible coder and build an MVP in PHP or something. Doesn't mean you can scale it, both in terms of adding new features, or in terms of increased traffic.

Um. That kind of thinking is pretty close to my own from some years back. Not any more, but who knows, I may change my way of thinking again ;) In the moment I'm just reserving my judgement regarding skills of other developers. And only make judgements regarding particular pieces of code, mostly trying to find positive things in it, rather than negative ones.

Out of curiosity, a personal question. In terms of years of active software development, what's your level of experience? Is it say, 20 years of building code for moneys? Two times less than than? Two times more? You don't have to answer.

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#179

Post by gaius »

dchichkov wrote: post #178
gaius wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be a terrible coder and build an MVP in PHP or something. Doesn't mean you can scale it, both in terms of adding new features, or in terms of increased traffic.

Um. That kind of thinking is pretty close to my own from some years back. Not any more, but who knows, I may change my way of thinking again ;) In the moment I'm just reserving my judgement regarding skills of other developers. And only make judgements regarding particular pieces of code, mostly trying to find positive things in it, rather than negative ones. Out of curiosity, a personal question. In terms of years o…

About 20 years, yes.

There's nothing bad about being a terrible coder who manages to put together a basic product. There are plenty of terrible musicians who still release albums for example. But it takes wisdom and maturity to understand ones own limitations.

If I owned 50% of a company, and a guy who had measurably increased my wealth by improving the product and hence the value of the company, gave me some advice like this I would listen very carefully. I would not "cut off my own nose to spite my face" or "throw the baby out with the bathwater".

Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

#180

Post by smoyer »

Bluestrike2 wrote: post #110

You need to hire an attorney, one who works in business litigation (if you can find someone specializing in minority shareholder disputes, that much the better). Right now. If you're delaying on this point out of some idea of wanting to "try to fix things first" or "not wanting to be the bad guy," you're just shooting yourself in the foot and downing blood thinners to keep the wound from clotting. Working with an att…

I'm reading the two stories completely differently:

In the OP's case, he's the technical co-founder without sufficient technical skills to launch a company. I think this is actually under-reported in start-up failures and missed as a root cause in debacles like the ObamaCare web-site. So you have to ask whether the company would still exist without the CTO and whether this co-founder was/is a liability.

In your case, you were clearly the technical guy and capable of producing the required product, but you were worse at picking your co-founders.

I'm not disagreeing with the idea of legal representation, but I think your best paragraphs are buried near the end. He should let the CTO take over the technical domain and move onto another area where he can help ... or he should leave.

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