Effectively demoted. Should I leave?
Joined a startup as the founding electrical engineer, was referred to as "head of engineering" by CEO constantly even though the title I chose for myself was Senior Engineer. Have worked there close to three years and have just been told that my role is being reduced in scope with multiple new hires being placed at the same level as me. Would you leave if this happened to you?
Depends on who these new hires are?
Pretty talented guys. I am happy they were hired, I hired one of them personally. One of them is satisfied with this decision, the other one didn't want a leadership role and would prefer that I was still in charge.
Speak to him about it
Does your ownership in the company get diluted? If not this should be a welcome change since you clearly wanted to just be an engineer in the first place. If your ownership is getting diluted then depending on what your goals are, ask for a leadership role to help the company (and yourself) scale. Otherwise job market is hot and just find a new role. Keep in mind soon that when a slowdown or recession occurs, capital will get sucked out of the system so long term only stay in the startup if you feel strongly about its chances of success.
My goal was to be the leader of the entire EE team, with a change in title to VP of engineering as we expanded. Instead now it seems like I will be only in charge of the specific products assigned to my team
Most startups hire outsiders into the exec roles. Sorry
Don’t surrender so quickly.
Often startups will give lofty titles at the start because it's cheaper than salary or equity. It's also important for them to look like they have a "head of engineering" even if they can't afford to pay someone who would normally hold that title. These employees often don't grow as quickly as the company, and others are hired over them. None of us know the details of your individual situation, but if you're still doing interesting work and your compensation is growing along with the company I wouldn't worry about it.
Looks like the founder/your manager hasn't been communicating well (about these changes) and setting the right expectations with you. How's your relationship with your manager? You should definitely talk about this openly before deciding to leave, but if you feel this relationship is not going to get better or isn't changing, and they are not taking your feedback seriously even as someone in so early and with 3 years tenure, then it's better of leaving if you can do/get better.
What's the story on $$ , as long as that's not getting diluted rest is bs.
Base pay is 110k a year in Boston, equity is being diluted as they issue more shares to investors
A startup goes through many phases. Except the CEO, most early employees need to be demoted (meaning report to new external executives) as the company grows into the next stage. Not all people can/want to grow with the company. Not doing this kills most startups.
I would totally accept if I was reporting to someone with more mentorship and better decision making skills. Instead I've been absorbed into an org that reports to the CTO rather than having others in the org report to me, as it was before.
The skill set to be the VP is probably different than what you are contributing. It may be a demotion but it may be for the better.
Not sure if that’s a demotion...they could just be expanding.
To give you guys more background, I was in charge of that entire team (about 12 people at this point) as far as the CEO was concerned. I am now only in charge of 3, with the others being divided between the two new hires
Being in charge of a bigger team doesn’t matter. They could still just be expanding with a targeted focus. Also managing 12 is hard to do 1:1s and actually have focus. How do you propose they expand? Even if they had teams report to, your direct reports would go down. And what does “as far as the ceo was concerned”. Was it not official?