". Similar situation happened to myself, except I wasn't the CTO but the de-facto "lead architect" of a major project/death "
Ohh that brings back memories. A Senior Vice President at one of the largest software companies in the world asked me to meet him because he was looking for a "lead architect" for an "elite group" he was putting together. I met him and went over what he needed in detail and it seemed like there was a good fit (and the senior VP was a very nice person).I specifically asked him " So who makes technical decisions? " the answer "You do of course, you are the architect. You'll be reporting to me so just keep me in the loop". So I accepted the offer.
By the time I joined a week later, I found that I would be reporting to a (newly hired) "Director of Engineering" and would have a "dotted line reporting relationship" to a "Chief Architect" (who in turn reported to a [Company] Chief Architect. The VP Engg chap I reported to (he turned out to be a very Dilbertian middle manager type) reported to a VP India, who reported to a Senior VP, Emerging Markets, who reported to yet another VP who reported to the CEO. The "Chief Architect" who I had a reporting relationship with was a very nice person but couldn't code to save his life and always spoke in very abstract terms like "scaling Enterprise SOA across business units".
The VP who hired me led a "product development" group totally disconnected from what we were doing.
I found I could make hardly any decisions but had to attend plenty of meetings about meetings. A memorable meeting was when I had to deal with the "General manager (SCM)" to demand Licenses of the company standard proprietary Version Control system for my team and he asked me "Do you really need Version Control? Couldn't you just use directories? Make a directory per version and save your code in it. We back up all the directories every day "(!!).
Long story short, I felt like I was working in Arkham Asylum
but the money was good so I stayed a few months and left with a nice bank balance and am now back in consulting mode.
Getting back to the point, from what I've observed of company politics it looks like the CEO has a two step plan to get rid of the Original Post-er. First, cut away your power base by having all the dev chaps report to the new guy and then ask " so what does he do here anyway?". He probably just wants to keep you around for a while as "insurance" . If I were you (depending on how much power you have with the board/founders) I would either (a) make sure I had some real work to do as CTO (in the corporate world this often means having people report to you )even after the VP chap were hired (b) make sure the hire didn't happen, in practice this depends on how much clout you have in the existing setup or (c) start making plans to leave.
The good news is that even in he case of option (c), you have some time to make your move. If you have a sound enough financial base, you should probably quit immediately.
My 2 cents. But ultimately only you know the finer details of your situation that make a difference.
Ohh that brings back memories. A Senior Vice President at one of the largest software companies in the world asked me to meet him because he was looking for a "lead architect" for an "elite group" he was putting together. I met him and went over what he needed in detail and it seemed like there was a good fit (and the senior VP was a very nice person).I specifically asked him " So who makes technical decisions? " the answer "You do of course, you are the architect. You'll be reporting to me so just keep me in the loop". So I accepted the offer.
By the time I joined a week later, I found that I would be reporting to a (newly hired) "Director of Engineering" and would have a "dotted line reporting relationship" to a "Chief Architect" (who in turn reported to a [Company] Chief Architect. The VP Engg chap I reported to (he turned out to be a very Dilbertian middle manager type) reported to a VP India, who reported to a Senior VP, Emerging Markets, who reported to yet another VP who reported to the CEO. The "Chief Architect" who I had a reporting relationship with was a very nice person but couldn't code to save his life and always spoke in very abstract terms like "scaling Enterprise SOA across business units".
The VP who hired me led a "product development" group totally disconnected from what we were doing.
I found I could make hardly any decisions but had to attend plenty of meetings about meetings. A memorable meeting was when I had to deal with the "General manager (SCM)" to demand Licenses of the company standard proprietary Version Control system for my team and he asked me "Do you really need Version Control? Couldn't you just use directories? Make a directory per version and save your code in it. We back up all the directories every day "(!!).
Long story short, I felt like I was working in Arkham Asylum but the money was good so I stayed a few months and left with a nice bank balance and am now back in consulting mode.
Getting back to the point, from what I've observed of company politics it looks like the CEO has a two step plan to get rid of the Original Post-er. First, cut away your power base by having all the dev chaps report to the new guy and then ask " so what does he do here anyway?". He probably just wants to keep you around for a while as "insurance" . If I were you (depending on how much power you have with the board/founders) I would either (a) make sure I had some real work to do as CTO (in the corporate world this often means having people report to you )even after the VP chap were hired (b) make sure the hire didn't happen, in practice this depends on how much clout you have in the existing setup or (c) start making plans to leave.
The good news is that even in he case of option (c), you have some time to make your move. If you have a sound enough financial base, you should probably quit immediately.
My 2 cents. But ultimately only you know the finer details of your situation that make a difference.
Good Luck man!