Some good advice in this thread, but missing the most important thing: people & process. (1) You need visibility. You don't seem to be plugged in - what were t

Some good advice in this thread, but missing the most important thing: people & process. (1) You need visibility. You don't seem to be plugged in - what were the CEO's goals? How did his exec team manage towards them, what orders were passed down, and how did you execute on them? If you don't know, it's because you weren't plugged in - for all you know, you _were_ irrelevant. (2) How to get visibility? You need to set meetings: project kickoffs, 30-day SteerCos, quarterly updates, AND end-of-project readouts. Out of sight, out of mind. You need to get in front of people who matter, and explain the value of what you do in a way that they can claim credit to their boss. (3) When you get in front of $important_people, you need to speak their language. Show them the money (your exec summary is always the same: I [made, saved] $X M in the past Y months, which is Z% of total revenue). Mark progress against a roadmap. Make pretty presentations they can forward to their boss. And talk slowly (not so they can understand, but so _you_ can avoid looking silly). When you're a freelancer, the above is _more_ important, not less. I'm sorry you got screwed (if engineers have to be good at business management crap, WTF are business managers for?) but these are, I think, the skills you're looking for here. A good book to read on this is The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins, if you're curious.