Ask HN: Experiences with a CTO of a Series A startup who is checked out?
I’ve been a “fullstack” web app software engineer for about 11 years. I currently work for a remote startup out of an East Coast city. The company develops an enterprise SaaS app meant to help companies with certain regulatory tasks. There are 14 engineers and 70 total employees.
Things aren’t great for the company. We have little to no revenue even after an unexpectedly large Series A. Our particular market is tough, and sure enough we have no growth and just 3 “big” customers. There are lots of problems with the company, but I have a specific focus for this post: I recently realized that the CTO hasn’t made technical comments on any document, anywhere, in over a year. In general we have no technical leadership. (There are no other leaders in the tech org except a single people manager between the CTO and us engineers.) No PRs except one liners. They take few meetings, not even 1:1s, and while they nominally head the small product division too (3 PMs under them), I see almost no deliverables, like documents. This is odd, because this person CAN code. They are really talented. I’ve seen it — before. And they have a lot of knowledge about this industry. So… something’s up. It seems to me that this person doesn’t care.
The thing is, our company has enough money to zombie along for 4 more years. I work 40 hour weeks and make 165k, with a lot of flexibility. With a 2 year old at home, life is good, especially in this tech economy. I feel very lucky, but I guess I’m worried still because it feels like the ship is sailing without a captain, just a couple of lookouts.
Does this resonate with anyone? I’m not complaining so much as looking for … perspective? Could there be invisible strategy work I am missing, especially because the company is remote and visibility into coworker tasks is hard? Is there anything I could do? Should do? And obviously I’m going to get a new job if I’m laid off, and when the company fails. But they already laid off 15 engineers (I know, we were bloated) and those cuts were deep, so I feel safe “for now”. And rather than hunt for a job, I’m inclined to ride this out while my kid is still young.
This is a bit of a ramble, but does anyone have thoughts? Similar experiences of a disinterested founder?