I was the first technical hire 8 years ago, we'd been friends for over ten years prior. We had some tensions and disagreements in the beginning when the company

I was the first technical hire 8 years ago, we'd been friends for over ten years prior. We had some tensions and disagreements in the beginning when the company was small, but as his CEO role took him away from engineering and as I got into progressively lower level backend work, that all ironed out. I'm still happily working as an IC despite all the attempts to get me to accept a management roll, and we still have a great friendship and a lot of trust (though we live in different countries now and don't see each other very often). Being an unquestionably-trusted IC with a direct line to the CEO and all the other upper management is pretty sweet, and though the salary is maybe 2-3x lower than I could get at some other places I wouldn't trade what I have here away for that.