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It is just business -- if the CEO & VC have the power to replace you, and believe that replacing you with a more experienced candidate is, after consideration o

by shoo 6y ago

It is just business -- if the CEO & VC have the power to replace you, and believe that replacing you with a more experienced candidate is, after consideration of the downside (the potential that you and some of your team might quit), a bet that is likely to result in a more valuable / more successful business, then from their perspective it might seem like a sound and profitable business decision to replace you. You haven't talked about what you want -- that might be worth thinking about, when you're in a place where you can mull it over in a fairly unemotional way. Do you want: enough wealth to be retired in 5 years/buy a house/whatever; a C-suite job with high status ; a job with a large degree of autonomy and responsibility ; to gain experience growing an engineering organization ; to gain experience shipping a great service/product ; revenge ; ... edit: it is also possible to reframe things as: different people can be a good fit for different phases in a company's lifecycle -- instead of staying with a single growing company for a long time, there could be a quite interesting and profitable career in jumping from early-stage company to early-stage company and helping them get on a good trajectory for future expansion

throw_away_cto 6y ago
I want: - enough wealth to be retired in 5 years/buy a house/whatever - a C-suite job with high status - a job with a large degree of autonomy and responsibility - to gain experience growing an engineering organization - to gain experience shipping a great service/product But DEFINITELY NOT revenge. Selfishly speaking, I want all the above but to do it myself and go through the journey myself. Bringing the experienced person onboard will not give me the front seat of the journey which might be selfish. But what do we live for if not to live our lives and make decisions and risks and to be accountable for them? On the VC side of course they will pick the safest route to a successful exit and return. I just think it's unfair but justifiable.
- shoo 6y ago
  the next exercise might be to rank the wants from most to least important, & consider if some of those wants are things you are willing to defer if they're not immediately available now, and what your longer-term paths to attaining them could be. e.g. for myself, i want autonomy, and my strategy for getting that autonomy (perhaps sub optimal) is building wealth. the wealth in itself isn't really an end in itself, just fuel. but the path to build the wealth is grinding away at a high-paying job that happens to have relatively low autonomy and status -- so my path to achieve my longer-term goal is to roughly do the opposite of what i want in the short run.

by shoo 6y ago

throw_away_cto 6y ago

I want: - enough wealth to be retired in 5 years/buy a house/whatever - a C-suite job with high status - a job with a large degree of autonomy and responsibility - to gain experience growing an engineering organization - to gain experience shipping a great service/product But DEFINITELY NOT revenge. Selfishly speaking, I want all the above but to do it myself and go through the journey myself. Bringing the experienced person onboard will not give me the front seat of the journey which might be selfish. But what do we live for if not to live our lives and make decisions and risks and to be accountable for them? On the VC side of course they will pick the safest route to a successful exit and return. I just think it's unfair but justifiable.

shoo 6y ago
the next exercise might be to rank the wants from most to least important, & consider if some of those wants are things you are willing to defer if they're not immediately available now, and what your longer-term paths to attaining them could be. e.g. for myself, i want autonomy, and my strategy for getting that autonomy (perhaps sub optimal) is building wealth. the wealth in itself isn't really an end in itself, just fuel. but the path to build the wealth is grinding away at a high-paying job that happens to have relatively low autonomy and status -- so my path to achieve my longer-term goal is to roughly do the opposite of what i want in the short run.