3 ms·

Sounds like you are being asked to do pointless technical work that will probably add overhead and complexity without tangible benefit to the product and busine

Sounds like you are being asked to do pointless technical work that will probably add overhead and complexity without tangible benefit to the product and business. You are right to question this. Who do you report to? The CTO? How is your relationship with other execs in the company? Given that you have been around since close to the beginning, hopefully good. You should discreetly escalate to someone else who might be able to influence the situation. Try to stay positive and constructive. Make a pitch that your skills could be put to better use building new features, adding value to the product, or possibly (since you say the product is stable) exploring new product areas that may open up new business for the company. If this doesn't result in change, then yes, quietly do the work the CTO demands while privately preparing your exit.

roflyear 4y ago
I report to the CTO, but I have a lot of clout with the founders. I would say I am even friends with them. They certainly respect me. I feel the current CTO may even feel threatened by me because I helped the company through some awful prior tech leadership issues and I'm sure he knows about that. How would I discreetly escalate this? I really don't want to be a snake here. I have thought about saying "I need to work somewhere else in the company as I can't buy these changes" but the issue with the CTO now is he doesn't want a product unlike his vision for how it is set up. This product is my product and it is very simple in terms of deployments and config. So there is no room for that, unless I somehow pivot into a non-tech role or a tech-adjacent role like QA or something which sounds unpalatable.