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Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
181–190 of 293 posts
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#182Wow. The lawyering up stuff. It is so depressing that the US works like that. Anyway, as someone who fired himself from his own company twice, I would say that he might have a point. You don't lose your shares (if you do, then arrange that you don't) and he is just making things better. If you are (like I was on occasions) the wrong person for the job, he is just making solid management decisions. The paranoid and lawyer crap could be true but often isn't. So you need to find that out. Sounds like you need to move closer to your co-founder in the business or indeed leave and just enjoy your equity.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I invested all my personal wealth. I think this is being overlooked. You invested all your personal wealth into this company and in return you got unvested shares ?
This right here. The money OP invested -- whether hard cash, or equivalent deferred pay or both -- should have resulted in direct, fully vested stock, just as it does for angels and VC's. (to clarify: it should vest at the rate that the work is performed, not over some arbitrary schedule). There's this underlying meme in our community that "elbow grease" investment -- working for low pay, no benefits, rejecting other…
What I don't get; shouldn't it already have vested if he is a founder? I'm not sure about the system there but when I found a company those shares are mine?
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Interesting. Well, my current way of thinking is that there are no terrible coders, it is just that mature and experienced engineers are slightly less prone to making terrible and difficult to correct mistakes. Like using an obscure language or something, just because they feel that way and without considering the implications ;)
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#185Fire. CTO. NOW.
You are a co-founder, not an employee. Remember that. It is you company, he works for you. If you would be hired in an company, would you dare to ask to the owner of the company to leave?? It doesn't matter how good or bad are you for the company, it is your company!
Fire him now.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#186Interesting. I was just thinking, do the CTO and the CEO know each other from before? Was it the CEOs idea to hire this CTO maybe? If that's the case maybe this was planned between the CTO and CEO.
Since you're the founder with the focus on the tech aspect (basically you should be the CTO) what was the reason for hiring the CTO in the first place? A CTO that's obviously not a better software developer than you. Hard facts, but maybe it was your partner who planned this since the very beginning.
After you've talked to your lawyer you could possibly strike a deal with the CTO / CEO and go become an employee if you are interested in just keeping on coding for the company. Maybe getting a bonus that if you decide to leave or still be on the companies payroll provided that the company reach a certain revenue / value etc.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#187Listen Eduardo Saverin: FIRST THING GET YOUR OWN LAWYER AND TALK TO THEM NOW! The key question here is : do you have equity, and how much equity do you have in percentage terms? If you are an equal cofounder, then when someone turns up and says "you have to leave cause better people have been employed", you say "fuck off". Think about it - EVERY company that grows will employ people who are better than the cofounder…
"Do you think that Zuckerberg is the best developer at Facebook - legend may say so but it's not true"
What is this legend? I think everybody is aware of the fact that the infrastructure that allowed facebook to scale was not (and probably could not have been) built by Zuckerberg. He had guys like Adam D'Angelo working for him from the beginning.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Most people assume their colleagues are their peers. Not all management people though, but that's the best type of CEO/CTO an employee could have IMO.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#189Interesting. I was just thinking, do the CTO and the CEO know each other from before? Was it the CEOs idea to hire this CTO maybe? If that's the case maybe this was planned between the CTO and CEO. Since you're the founder with the focus on the tech aspect (basically you should be the CTO) what was the reason for hiring the CTO in the first place? A CTO that's obviously not a better software developer than you. Hard…
"A CTO that's obviously not a better software developer than you."
What? The OP clearly points out the CTO is a better developer.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#190I 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's pretty sleek. He is in a rather powerful position then.