> especially since the founder has pushed breaking changes directly to master and then I got flack since I am now the "systems" guy and am responsible for the h

> especially since the founder has pushed breaking changes directly to master and then I got flack since I am now the "systems" guy and am responsible for the health of the app > use of a staging environment - is met with suspicion and doubt If he doesn't want to give you authority to design the deployment pipeline, then he doesn't get to make you responsible for it. Responsibility/authority mismatch is a classic management mistake, they cover it in lower division business supervision and management classes. It's generally a result of one or more personality defects and/or something interfering with proper reasoning. If you can't get it fixed by figuring out how to work with the founder, then you need to find another job because it's only going to get worse as things ramp up. Based on what you're saying about wanting more research and suspicion when presented with change, it sounds like they have Groucho Marx syndrome due to either a self-esteem issue or impostor syndrome. The usual line of reasoning is: 1. I need expert help. I will look outside my organization for it. 2. I hired expert help, and they are now working for my company. 3. It is self-evident that this person does not know what they are doing because they are working for my organization, and I have a low opinion of myself and/or my organization. 4. I need expert help. Rinse and repeat. I'm currently working with a founder who constantly pushes to master, and I didn't push back because he earned my trust by being a really decent programmer. He's broken things in the past, but in general he fixes things faster than I can detect them so I'm ok with it. The engineering organization doesn't have many complaints about it because the company needs him free to work on the hiring pipeline, which is crucial because our staff keeps getting poached. If he was mediocre, I'd have privilege separated his accounts a long time ago and enabled annoying 3FA on his account with master commit privileges.