I'm confused about your talk of vesting. Founders don't vest, they create the stock and sell/give it to others with a dollar amount or vesting schedule. Are you a founder or an early stage employee?
Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
231–240 of 293 posts
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any competent attorney will tell you that you should never litigate on principle (such as "punishing" them). If that's your only reason, many attorneys will choose not to take you on as a client right then and there. All the court can do is use money to attempt to redress your grievances, assuming you win. But that's not why you need an attorney right now. Even if you're never going to file suit, an attorney will hel…
You are suggesting that the lawyer can help in two ways: 1. Negotiations 2. Understanding the legal situation Regarding the second point, the correct advice is not to sign contracts whose consequences you do not understand. Regarding the first point, engaging a lawyer will destroy whatever trust and mutual understanding is left in the relationship between the founders. This might be the US way of doing things. But be…
> But before telling someone to hire a lawyer, you should make sure that the case in question is not taking place in a country where doing this is generally taken as a big offense.
Interesting. Can you give an example of such a place, and how things tend to work there? What would be your advice to the founder if they were in that country?
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#233You 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'd go for a shorter version, but: yes, you are right on. Important points: 1. Have legal counsel 2. Deal with the issue now, not later. I'd get a lawyer and fire the CTO. Small teams require absolute trust, and that is now breached. You'll find out in the process how the CEO aligns. Give your partner a heads up, but don't let yourself be moved from the task of firing the CTO.
I want to highlight the trust issue. If there is an issue of trust, it must be dealt with immediately and decisively or the company will tank (and you don't want that because you want a successful business more than smug self-satisfaction).
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#234First off, I'm sorry about your situation. Nobody here will be able to judge with any degree of accuracy whether he has a point. I personally would not look at this situation as a technical one; this is a business relationship situation. Regardless of whether there is any grain of truth, the CTO has lost confidence in you. Not just a little bit. He has asked you to leave. The rest of my advice assumes the CEO (your c…
Thank you for taking the time to respond. > The rest of my advice assumes the CEO (your co-founder) has quite a bit of confidence in the CTO. This is the case, it is in my interest however to remain in the company because my equity is vested, the sooner I leave the less I will get in return, apart from my time, and opportunity cost I invested all my personal wealth.
> apart from my time, and opportunity cost I invested all my personal wealth.
You can try to negotiate a settlement (still consult a personal lawyer) of retaining some of your money put in (maybe after they receive investment) as well as an additional accelerated vesting of a small part of your remaining unvested shares. You still have some rights to make a big stink about all of this, but I wouldn't advise trying to stay on. You may end up with nothing and have burnt some bridges with the CEO and future investors.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#235I 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…
Hmm, how big is this company? I can't imagine a startup with a CTO that doesn't actually doing any coding until well beyond the bootstrap stage, this seems odd to me.
Unless your are failing to get your code working there is almost no good reason to tell you to leave, this seems like some sort of power play. I would tread carefully if I were you. Even if they did decide it's better off without you "Expect to leave in 3-6 months" is a giant WTF? Why tell you now unless they are going to sweat you to give up equity. Telling you you aren't a good coder is a good way to get you to feel like your contribution to the company is less than it really is, but it sounds to me like you must have done all the work. Even if this CTO helped with the scope and guidance to get everything going better, what would they have if you took all your work and left with it? (Not saying you should try that, just realize how much of what is important did YOU actually create) Unless almost everything you've done is getting thrown out, you are probably undervaluing your contributions, from what you've said.
Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ;)
I disagree, somewhat :-) There are people whose contribution is horrible but it's rarely confined to the quality of their code. It's more about being able to lead the company in directions that are ultimately wasteful in some way or other and not being able to change direction when the time is right. That leadership may be expressed in code, but the code is as much or more a symptom than the root cause.
With basic QA practices in place (peer review, coding standards, designs grokked by teams not individuals etc.) a single person usually can't muck up the codebase very badly. He or she can still poison a whole project or company.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#237Try and find out if the CTO is the only problem, ie. he's not conspiring with the other founder.
If the CTO is acting alone, get rid of him and continue with the business. If not, ruin their fundraising chances, cut your losses and move on to bootstrap a business on your own.
A prolonged fight won't do you any good.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#238One of the privileges of being a founder is that employees don't get to tell you when to "leave".
It's your company. Consult an attorney and stand up for yourself.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#239I 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…
So, a CTO at an early stage startup who can't be bothered to code wants to oust a co-founder?
If true, that's beyond absurd.
Re: Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
#240You 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,…
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