Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
We brought in a guy as CTO to help us move past problems we were having (feature creep, project management, enterprise level etc.).
The guy has a lot of experience as CTO (I had very little, also little as a coder), and he was instrumental in getting us to the point of launch where we were enterprise grade ready (as opposed to hacker ready).
Now he is advising me to leave, that I'm not a good coder, that he wouldn't hire me if I wasn't already a founder and not what the company needs.
I have improved significantly in the last few months from where I was (generally unstructured development, no tests, poor formatting / naming etc., but functional, generally coding to working with others instead of by myself) but he has said that it's not enough.
We have hired another coder who I get along well with and I have learned from.
My question is, does he have a point? Is this something that is common? Has he overstepped the boundaries?
EDIT: He's not asking me to leave now, since I'm still desperately needed, but in 3-6 months time after we have raised more funding.
292 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 528 ms ] threadRegardless 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 co-founder) has quite a bit of confidence in the CTO. If that is the case, I'm not quite sure you can come back from having the CTO asking you to leave, nor am I certain you should.
I think it would be advisable to talk to a lawyer to see how you can cleanly and professionally leave on your own terms. Save the emotional stuff for friends and your alone time. You will no doubt need to grieve (this was your baby). But I think it would be better for you to be proactive about leaving and professionally extract yourself from this situation. That said, make sure you know your rights and what your contracts entitled you to in such a situation.
Once extracted, take your hurt pride and prove them wrong.
> 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.
Either way, if possible, figure out a compromise which feels fair for everybody involved. This doesn't need to be completely one-sided.
Being asked to "leave in 3-6 months" is the new CTO's opening gambit in the negotiation you're about to start.
Your _worst_ negotiating option will be to say "OK, bye".
Work out what you want.
Work out your best idea of what the CTO/company wants (depending on what you want, the first step here is most likely to be asking them outright - if what you want most is to get rid of this CTO, this step will need to be approached much more subtly and delicately, and probably with someone much more experience helping you out).
Work out some "next best alternatives" to your optimal outcome, and what you'd accept as compensation for agreeing to those non-optimal alternatives.
Mostly though - work out what _you_ want - and why, and once you've done that, look at it with the most objective view you can and determine if it's actually plausible and realistic. (To be honest, a guy who wasn't even writing tests a few months ago _isn't_ going to be the technical lead or chief architect of an enterprise software startup - at least not a startup with a high chance of succeeding or getting serious funding. Be realistic here.)
If it's just the vesting(/money) - you'll negotiate one way. It's it's actually an ego/ownership/founderdhip issue for you, then acknowledge that (at least to yourself) and work out how to negotiate your desired outcome while keeping that perspective firmly in mind (and seriously, think about whether you need to rethink that - if it's mostly an ego thing).
This is negotiable. But you shouldn't necessarily be the one to negotiate it, so you should probably start talking to your own lawyer (not the company's).
I think this is being overlooked. You invested all your personal wealth into this company and in return you got unvested shares?
There's this underlying meme in our community that "elbow grease" investment -- working for low pay, no benefits, rejecting other career opportunities -- is somehow worth less than an investor's cash. IMSHO, it's just the opposite -- cash typically doesn't draw down one's pool of emotional well-being and spirit the way hard work does. Work investment should be rewarded with a premium, not treated as somehow less than just money.
OP's situation sounds more like a bootstrapped small business where he invested his life savings and blood/sweat/tears. I'm not sure that vesting shares is ideal there -- perhaps a well defined shotgun clause or similar is more reasonable to handle unruly founders.
If he wanted to start with a less-experienced technical person, and jettison them early on -- he could have hired an employee and paid them.
Instead he co-founded with you, as a partner. He was happy to take your money -- you have skin in the game. He doesn't get to shoo you out the door now like a temp.
He also doesn't get to do it via the CTO. He owes you a frank conversation. Also you need a lawyer.
tl;dr: From hearing your side of the story, although the CTO is handling this like a tool, the CEO is the biggest schmuck.
Definitely lawyer up, that would be a first thing. Then, if you want to regain control about he company, consider CEO your enemy, not the CTO. Invent a reason and fire the CTO, if you can do it. Then, step up as CTO yourself, or at least hire a person you trust. Then, hire COO, CFO, CMO. Make sure those are people that are loyal to you and where each one will take over one of the CEO responsibilities. At the latest stage, let those people document every mistake of CEO, and you try to push him out together with C team and investors.
That's exactly what he is doing to you. He convinced you to voluntarily step out from CTO position and hired his tool. Now, your chances to fight back are much worse from this position, but the war is not yet over.
So, lawyer up, read Machiavelli, know your enemy and fight fire with fire. Remember, the CEO that did this to you is not your friend anymore, and deserves whatever you do to him.
45% share of 100M$ worth company is still much more than 10% share of 200M$ worth company or 1M$ compensation. You are not fighting to optimize for the company success, you are fighting to optimize your own wealth. If the company gets destroyed, and you still manage to get more then what would be your compensation package, you are still better off then retreating. Why caring about the company that doesn't benefit you, you would certainly not enjoy the success of the company that squeezed you out.
So yes, lawyer up and fight if it's worth to you to fight for the control. Don't be emotional about he company and business. It's your weakness, and they are already playing on that.
I would work on retaining control of the company and your shares, possibly isolating the CTO in terms of power, if not outright dismissal.
The CTO is way out of line speaking to a board member, and majority shareholder like that. I assume you are a director and hold ~50% of the company in addition to a few of the officer positions in the company. Utilize corporate law to eliminate risk to your portfolio.
The tech shit is completely irrelevant, you should be discussing with the other shareholders how out of line the CTO is and your contingency plan for dealing with officers who are not respectful of the owners of the company.
Also check whether the company owes you any debt, if the other founder can't come up with the money you could also use debt to take control. Again, talk to a lawyer, and keep in mind that it doesn't matter if the company tanks if you're not going to be part of any success it has. Scorched earth the mother fucker if no one wants to play ball. (Shareholder and board meetings can be a great way to get internal feuds into the corporate minute book)
Do you think anyone at Facebook cares that Mark Zuckerberg is not their top coder? (And even if he was do you think that the best value he could provide to the company would be from writing code?)
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.
This just has to be true.
"I have improved significantly in the last few months from where I was (generally unstructured development, no tests, poor formatting / naming etc., but functional, generally coding to working with others instead of by myself) but he has said that it's not enough.
We have hired another coder who I get along well with and I have learned from."
There's quite possibly a good argument to be made saying "this guy shouldn't have commit access to our code base" and it's not beyond the bounds of reasonableness to read into that "a few mid level developers under normal CTO oversight will give us a much better starting codebase than this guy is likely to deliver without significant extra training and experience".
Not saying that's definitely the case, but it's certainly plausible. (And I've seen it before, more than once... Hell, I've _been_ "that guy" myself, back in the day.)
But it's another thing entirely to be telling a founder that they should be leaving. This is saying 'not only are you not good enough to write the production code, you're so awful that you shouldn't even be involved in the company you founded any more,' as if the OP has no possibility of developing him/herself as an owner of the business.
The fool who tells the business owner that he should probably leave _his own business_ may as well go and tie the noose to hang himself because that's what he's doing here.
Fuck what is right, fuck what the CTO thinks. The business owners always have the last say. This CTO is toast.
Do you always assume people are full of malice based on one side of the story or...
If the CTO came and said hey in 6 months I think we should discuss you stepping away from coding and into a new role. I wouldn't want to hear it but if they told me to leave my very small company I would think they crossed a line. The CTO maybe management but he isn't the owner.
Means they do actually need you, the CTO is waiting for a payday before kicking you out for a higher stake. Tell the CTO to go stick it if they need you before funding but not after.
Does he want me to leave the company or does he want me to stop writing production code for the product?
If its the first one, there is likely a personal issue between the two of you that needs to be resolved one way or another.
If you think the second option is what he is really trying to communicate, then I would look for other opportunities to contribute to the company. It sucks to grasp your own limitations and admit that you might not be a good enough coder to contribute to the product at this point, but this is a critical time for the future of the product. Any technical debt acquired at this phase of development is going to be very costly to pay off later since you are developing the core of the system.
However, you are a founder of the company, and I am assuming very passionate about the company's mission as well as financially motivated to see this thing through. There are tons of jobs that will need to be done as you guys grow, and each one of those is an opportunity for you to contribute above and beyond what a new hire off the street could accomplish. A lot of those jobs can also take advantage of your coding skills to either automate processes or utilize your deeper understanding of how the product works to better support it.
This is of course assuming that you guys have the cash in the bank to pay you for this work, if that is not the case then the situation is a little trickier and you will have to explore other options.
This was my thought. It would be worth looking into roles like developer evangelist, if it makes sense for your company: you're clearly technical enough to make things happen, and you have the domain knowledge to be very useful.
In a small team, infighting is a much bigger threat to survival than losing skills/results of any single individual.
Depends on the circumstances. If one founder controls a majority share, they can fire anyone they wish.
In this current situation, if the CEO controls more than 50% of the shares and the CTO reports directly to the CTO, the CTO can fire the OP.
If it's not political, and you agree with his assessment of your production code, then there's an R&D role that probably needs filling and that you've already proven you can do - finding profitable market niches and creating prototype products/services to address them.
Don't sweat being a "bad coder". Every coder (yes, even the awesome ones) feels a little worried that their code is bad, and he's just playing on this insecurity that we all have. Part of the 'your code is crap' syndrome we see in tech is just defensive projection.
You managed to build a production system that is gaining traction, which is amazing. Go do more of that :)
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. Unavoidable.
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.
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".
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.
When I was younger and slapping shit together any old how, I thought I knew it all.
Some of the coders simply can't deal (or, more accurately, their egos) when someone less skilled is above them in the hierarchy.
If this is the case, I'd say just fire him. It sucks now, but will save from a lot of pain later on. For instance, when you hire someone else who might happen to be less skilled than the CTO.
Good software developers know that there are less skilled people, they used to be like them, and deal with that appropriately (i.e. with respect and without offending). And then there are prima donnas who can't deal with working with another human being for whatever the reason is.
At the end of the day, being a good software developer is not all about writing code. Far from it.
Or is this all about money/power? Is the new CTO threatened by you for some reason or trying to consolidate his power? Does the new CTO just not like you?
If you and your other co-founder are even remotely close, you guys need to talk. Sit down and figure out what other roles work for you at the company. Perhaps you will need to move out of management and become something like a "developer evangelist" or "head of support". Anything to keep vesting, right?
It makes no sense as there are so many other positions that become available as a company grows.
Go learn Product. It doesn't take nearly as long, and you can have just as big of a positive impact.
You not only own part of the company but can use this experience to grow both technically and professionally.
Don't waste the chance to learn more than you ever could.
Are you taking a salary?
I don't see how you could contribute negatively to the company if you are at least somewhat productive and know the domain.
Getting out with compensation for the equity or accelerated vesting might be the best case scenario, depending on how far this has gone.
Oh, by the way, can you come to this meeting and pretend you're happy here?
Whose company is this, you and your co-founder's or the CTO's?
You are a co-founder. That counts for a lot. I am also assuming that your equity stake is significant.
First of all, deal with this right now. Don't wait for the 3-6 months. You are basically being told that once they have raised money, they will find a way to get you out. Right now, it's a fishing expedition between the CTO and the other founder. Will you be a nice gentle person and go along with their approach or are you going to turn into an attack dog.
You likely have tremendous leverage right now due to this funding round coming up. They will not want to rock the boat. But this is exactly when you should be doing it as I don't believe the "we need you" bit means anything other than "we don't want you to fk up our funding round coming up".
At the end of the day, if they really want you out, they'll find a way to do so. The main thing is that you got to get on the offensive and make sure if you do end up leaving the company, you've left on the best financial terms possible for yourself. Make them pay. In fact, throw out a number you are comfortable with and have them pay you out from that in the next funding round.
If you approach this as "what's best for the company", you have already lost because that's not what this CTO and your other founder are approaching this from.
EDIT: You should provide some more detail on the equity position you have and how formalized it is (ie. proper contracts). Being a co-founder isn't about just writing code. As others have said, if you have significant equity, you have a lot of power. Don't underestimate this.
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 cofounders in some way, that is the whole point. You are the FOUNDER, you brought value to the company early. Just because smarter or more experienced people have been employed in no way devalues what you did in the early stages. In fact this is PRECISELY what is meant to happen. Do you think that Zuckerberg is the best developer at Facebook - legend may say so but it's not true - can't be. So should Zuck be fired cause he's not their strongest tech guy?
You also need to think separately about your rights as employee and rights as a shareholder/owner - they are not the same thing. You DO have clear contracts as both employee and shareholder DON'T YOU? Those contracts specify (or should specify) your rights.
And who the fuck does this guy think he is that he can tell a cofounder to leave? You are his BOSS.
DO NOT LEAVE. And if you do leave, DO NOT SELL YOUR SHARES IN THE COMPANY - just say "I want a MASSIVE payout to accept being fired, and I WILL NOT sell my shares as part of settlement". Hang on to those shares because now these guys are going to do all the hard work in growing the company and you can chill out and do other things and when they IPO, you'll take home your share. And if this is the path you take, look out cause some time in the future they will try to play a legal game in which you hang on to your shares but they get diluted down to almost nothing. This cannot happen if you are careful to look out for it.
This is all on the assumption that you do have equity and contracts in place. If you don't, then you should go and watch "The Social Network" repeatedly until you learn your lesson.
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.
This is the key point. OP founded the company. Presumably he has close to a 50% equity stake. There are other CTOs available -- ditch this one you can't trust immediately.
That said, is this someone who you want to be working closely with? It could be something in your work relationship that is hard to get past. As others have said, understand what you are entitled to in terms of contracts and equity, and try having an open conversation with the CEO if you haven't already. Handle it professionally, and keep in mind that if you are desperately needed now (as you said) that you have some bargaining leverage. :)
I'd fire the CTO,no matter how good he is,you're the boss,he is merely an adviser,he shouldnt be talking to you like that. What matters in business is loyalty, not skills.You'll learn it soon enough.
You got that one right.
And what matters even more than loyalty, in this kind of game?
Contracts.
If this is getting ugly, and the company has a product/service that could take off and be worth serious money, your only friend is your lawyer, and your primary assets should words with some signatures underneath.
And if, heaven forbid, we're talking about a cofounder who doesn't have a rock solid contract, the time to fix that is right now, with the help of that lawyer, while leaving immediately still appears to be a significant threat to the business.
Another poster said exactly the right thing. Contracts, agreements, documentation, MOU, etc are the things that matter. Case in point: I am leaving company after being acquired. It's a mutual decision so both sides are happy, but we are negotiating an agreement right now to release me so I am free to pursue concepts (repeat: concepts not IP) that I pitched the CEO 2 years ago. They are only ideas but it still needs to be in writing since I don't want them coming back some years down the line. It's all about contracts.
The great thing about being human is our ability to learn. If your willing to learn, then there is nothing to argue about. You want to keep doing this and that is that. It took me 7 years to get where I am now, but I believe I am excellent at coding, where I didn't know anything 7 years ago. So if your willing, tell him to back the f off.
Let's say you are a brilliant CTO/cofounder, but you are already doing something. Now you had this idea (or someone else had this idea) ... and you want to set them up for seed/series-A round and then you want to leave. assumption - you trust the CEO to not screw you.
How do you structure your equity compensation so that you have some benefit after 5 years? One of the thoughts I had was to show the short-term CTO as an investor with vested stock (in return for some negligible investment ... say 100$). Does this protect you from future investor rounds ?
The issue in that respect is not what you legally can do, but structuring it in a way that won't scare away investors with too much complexity.
Generally, though, nothing will "protect you from future investor rounds" if they really want to fuck you over, other than being diligent and keeping a lawyer around, and picking honest co-founders. If the investors coming in and other still employed founder(s) wants to mess things up for you, it can be tricky to protect against them diluting your share holdings to next to nothing, for example (e.g. do a round on a very low valuation; issue large amount of options to remaining founders to make up for the extra dilution they take). Of course, if investors try to do that, chances are they'll screw the remaining founders first chance they get too.
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.
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).