Ask HN: Startup Co-Founder Only Trusts Seed Team
I joined a startup this year, and the CTO only trusts those who joined him during the seed phase. It's two years old and he doesn't give newcomers a chance. He's trying to hire senior engineers, and I'm one of them, but he doesn't give us the freedom to do things our way. For everything, he wants things done the way his pet developer does it, and that's usually Django-driven. The HR is powerless, since they report to the CTO as well (CEO manages global operations), so what are my options? I feel like I should leave, but I'm not the sort to job jump every so often. Sometime back I read a blog post by an early Amazon employee. I am not able to find that blog now, but the title was something on the lines of "The best decision I ever made." In that blog post the author narrated an incident at Amazon involving himself. When that incident happened the author had just joined Amazon. After a few weeks of working there, the author realised that his manager was taking credit for all the work his team members were doing without giving any credit to the team members who actually did the job. So he decided to raise this issue in the all staff meeting. At that time Amazon was a very small company. Jeff Bezos use to conduct the meetings. So when the author raised this issue(without naming the manager) in the meeting, Jeff Bezos replied that life is too short to work on or work for someone where you will not be happy. It is better to keep looking for the things that will make you happy, here or somewhere else. The author left Amazon in a few days. Driving back home, stopped at a place not knowing what to do next. Decided to do his own startup, and after few false starts finally became a successful entrepreneurs himself. Just thought of sharing this story here. How about you work with him to figure out where YOU can change and adapt instead of expecting the other party to change at your will? If you are really open to learn and contribute he will see that and put you on a path to get what you want. Assess where YOU can change/improve and a better future for you will usually follow. Humans have this default behavior where they want everyone but themselves to change. We've been trying. My entire team has mostly newcomers. We put in a lot of work, even worked through New Year's, and delivered a feature, but he never appreciates us, only the old timers. It's hard to get through to him. Have you tried bringing this to him? “Look, I have done A, B, and C and judging from your response I feel like you don’t trust me. Is that accurate? Am I’m misinterpreting it? I expected X, Y, and Z would happen, but it didn’t. Can you please help me understand where the disconnect might be? I really would like to achieve X, Y, and Z. How can I get closer to that? Or is that not realistic?” Maybe “delivering” a lot is not what he values. You need to find what that is. You might be using the wrong tool to get in his good graces. You joined this year? 2022? That seems like a very short amount of time to expect complete trust. It's pretty normal that the old team has more trust. They put in the effort to get the product where it is today. If you plan to stick around you should put in the effort, prove your worth and gain the trust of the CTO, before challenging the status quo. Forgive me, I meant 2021. If you can’t find common ground with the CTO or the “pet developer” you probably shouldn’t be working there. Been thinking that, but I don't like leaving so soon.