tech-company, co-founder, founder, team, partnersProblem
More than a week ago on our Monday meetings a discussion was started in which my colleagues co-founders (there are 3 of them) said that I’m not fitting in CTO position because I don’t manage people enough. They said it’s vital for CTO to manage people and that I should pass the title to one of them who is less experienced in technical domain but is currently working closely with our developer (yes, we have currently 1 developer) and people in company usually ask him technical questions since he is on place more time than me / show up earlier. The concern about the titles was risen because in few weeks there will be about 5 new people in our company and they should know who is who.
How I felt
I was demotivated and sad that they thought I’m not the right person for the job since I didn’t share that opinion. I found it offensive. All of it resulted in too much emotions so I asked for postponing this decision/discussion for the next meeting so I could calm down and think it over. They agreed.
Second meeting
On the next meeting we were discussing for about 1.5h why they think that I shouldn’t be the CTO and why I think that I should. We even googled what CTO means and what are his responsibilities but I think that after that long talk everybody was a bit tired and they just saw what they wanted to see since there are websites where CTO’s meaning is very vaguely written. I asked what title should I have if not CTO. They offered me to be VP of Engineering instead. I managed to postpone the decision a few days later despite some objection. One of them even said that there are no arguments that would change his decision and that it’s waste of time.
After
Now, when I can google calmly I see clearly that my colleagues terribly confused these two titles since from the articles I read ([1], [2][2], [3][3]) it appears that the VP of Engineering is the man for managing people rather than CTO and that I fit perfectly for the CTO role.
Question
I’m not sure what should I do. Should I send them the articles now? Should I send them to everyone or just to one person (eg. CEO)? Should I wait till the next meeting? Or maybe I should just take the VP of Engineering title?
I generally never cared about the titles and I can take that VP of Engineering title just for the sake of peace but now that I’m sure the meaning of these two it would just feel awkward and confusing for the people who actually know what it means.
I might want to add that the whole thing significantly worsened our relations. [1]: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/want-to-know-the-difference-between-a-cto-and-a-vp-engineering-4fc3750c596b [2]: https://medium.com/engineering-leadership/defining-roles-cto-and-or-vp-engineering-f1c7563643a3 [3]: https://www.ivyexec.com/executive-insights/2015/cto-versus-vp-engineering-whats-the-difference/
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