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Alex looked like he had it all figured out.
(That’s not his real name, I’m using a pseudonym to respect his privacy.)
A very smart engineer, working at an awesome startup for a couple of years. He led a complex cloud migration, built a couple of brand new web dashboards and even invented 2 patents.
Everyone was looking up to him and was going to him with the most complex projects.
When the CTO position at his Series A startup opened up, he applied. Who wouldn’t? It felt like the next natural step and he got it!
But what happened next almost broke him.
The unfortunate story
The startup had 60 people. 20 permanent engineers and some c…