Should I turn down a role I've already accepted?

December 29, 2024 9:45 PM

I'm a contract software engineer, and I've been working as the Interim CTO of a scale-up company since spring. Originally the plan was for me to apply for the full-time role or help the company hire a permanent successor. In summer I was offered the permanent role, without there being any real application process. At the time, I accepted the offer, but now, with some time to reflect over the holidays, I'm having serious doubts. I need some help with a) checking in with myself that I've made the right choice and b) telling the CEO that after three months of saying I wanted the role, I've now decided that I don't.

It's been a tough year for the team that I've been leading — which at the company I'm working for is a relatively small team of developers, QA engineers and DevOps people. There's far too much work to go around for such a small team, and far too many competing priorities from different stakeholders, ending up with the team being pulled from one thing to another, with things often being left unfinished.

That said, I've definitely been able to influence things for the better:

• Our releases now happen on a regular basis, rather than in an ad-hoc fashion which was at best unpredictable and at worst would lead to slippage after slippage, much to the annoyance of the C-suite.
• I've brought in a far more robust process for requesting and specifying changes, though it's been a struggle to get this adopted. When it's followed the team delivers on time and under-budget. When it's not, we often have to do re-work and miss our deadlines.
• I've reshuffled the development teams to ensure that each of them has a strong lead and a good spread of seniors — previously there was one team that was really struggling to deliver, in my opinion because no-one was there to lead them and mentor them. Things are improving.
• I've spearheaded a bunch of work with third-party companies, and I've pushed back on technical decisions which had been made by non-technical people, and which were going to make things more expensive when working with these companies. As a result, we're far more confident that what we build together will work first time than we were before.

All that said, I've got some serious reservations:

• I don't love being a manager. I'm good at it — or at least I think I am, and the feedback I'm getting from my peers in the C-suite, and from my immediate direct reports, is good — but I don't wake up in the morning wanting to do it.
• When I have had moments of real joy doing this job, it's for one of two reasons:
  1. I've enabled someone else to do a really good job, and am able to publicly praise them for it.
  2. I've managed to fix some knotty engineering issue whilst the rest of the team were focussed on other work.
  This last point reminds me that what I've always known: I'm at my best when I'm making things better for other people. And I far prefer doing that as an engineer than as a manager / CTO.


• Most of my days are spent in back-to-back meetings. Sometimes I struggle to get time for a drink or to use the bathroom. I've tried fixing this by reducing my meetings to a max of 50 minutes, but they invariable run over, and other people in the C-suite often turn up late for the meeting. I don't feel I've had the stature to end the meeting on time even when they arrived late (at least not until now).


• I really dislike the politics of the C-Suite (which I won't go into too much). I find having to manage other C-level folks' expectations and inputs absolutely exhausting some days.


• From being offered the full time role around September, it took the company until the week before Christmas to show me a draft contract and tell me what the compensation package was. As I run my own business — which has other income streams and which I don't want to close down as a result — I told them that the contract needed amendments. As of December 24th, when the company shut down for Christmas, nothing has yet been signed, and the contract isn't one that I'm happy to sign yet anyway.

Finally, and most importantly: since the start of the summer I've suffered terrible insomnia. Either I can't get to sleep because my mind is racing (I call this "getting 'the fizz'"), or I can only sleep for 90 minutes (at most) before being wide awake. I often have the choice of thinking lying down or thinking standing up — standing up seems more useful, most of the time.

When I'm wide awake I find that I don't want to be in the house. Partly this is because my SO is a light sleeper, and I'm liable to wake her if I'm rattling around, but also it's because I largely work from home, and I don't want to be an insomniac in my place of work — it's far too tempting for me to start working in order to direct that energy. I've been to my doctor about it and he's recommended therapy. CBT-I hasn't helped at all; I'm trying to get a sleep study done and I'm currently on a waiting list.

Luckily I have a studio (I'm a sculptor) a few miles from home, so I'll drive over there in the wee hours and do some clay work, which is meditative and soothes my mind until I can come home and sleep (or sleep on the couch). This was fine at first, but my sleep has now been disturbed for 4 months, and it's starting to take its toll on my SO too. She doesn't like going to bed on her own, or waking up to find me gone, and after some worries about my having an affair (which I've soothed by always having my phone's location switched on, and by giving her access to the CCTV at the studio on her phone) she made it clear: this can't go on. She doesn't want me to take the role on as a full-time employee.

If you add partner feedback to the list of things bothering me above, and add in the insomnia, I think the right choice for me — once I go back after the holidays — is to say "I've reflected on this over the holidays and I've decided that it's not for me."

So, my first question to you, MeFi: am I making the right choice? I'm a 43 year old man in tech; my career as an engineer and contractor may well be limited by age and technological developments (e.g. so-called 'AI'); jumping to CTO, even at a small company, would have on paper been an excellent and remunerative career move (though I would have made a net loss, income-wise, by moving away from contracting). That said, this job is definitely not filling my cup; I just feel like I'm forever without the spoons to do one thing or another, and it's affecting my relationship too.

Second question: How much of an asshole am I going to look by turning this down four months after originally accepting it, and how can I mitigate that perceived assholery? I've considered offering them the following:

1. Step down once my current fixed-term contract is up at the end of January (doesn't feel great for either me or them, but it's possible they'll accept this)
2. Sign a contract extension for 3 months and in that time help them hire a new CTO who can fulfil that role in a way that I don't enjoy, but which is necessary. I'd additionally cover any notice period that the new CTO would have to serve, plus some handover time, then I would leave the company.
3. As (2), but stay on with the company as a contract engineer for as long as they wanted me to.

Of these I feel like (2) is the best option for all concerned, and (3) would probably not serve either me or the new CTO very well. I can't discount that the company might just tell me to fuck off for messing them around.

Any thoughts or advice at this stage would be welcome.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (11 answers total)

If they wanted you locked in they should have had you sign a contract, this is their problem, not yours. 3 sounds good, but maybe have that person in a different role that is just the stuff you hate so you keep, on paper anyhow, C-status and pay etc. If they don't like it, fine by you right?
posted by Iteki at 10:25 PM on December 29 [3 favorites]

Say "I've reflected on this over the holidays and I've decided that it's not for me."

Sign a contract extension for 3 months and in that time help them hire a new CTO who can fulfil that role in a way that I don't enjoy, but which is necessary. I'd additionally cover any notice period that the new CTO would have to serve, plus some handover time, then I would leave the company.

This sounds like a great plan. Nice job working it out.
posted by Toddles at 10:38 PM on December 29 [8 favorites]

Your body is telling you not to stsy, so I think you need to listen to it (and your SO) before you become ill.

Option 2 is classy but go for Option 1 if you can for the sake of your health.
posted by purplesludge at 11:20 PM on December 29 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure that if the company gave the CTO position to someone else and left you hanging, they wouldn't care. Don't put too much investment into a role.

If you think this role isn't good for you, then walk away. Your health is more important.

One other thing- as an alternative, see if you can make the role the way you want it to be. Skip meetings that you don't think are useful for you. Don't permit back to back to back meetings. Empower someone below you for major things.
posted by coberh at 11:37 PM on December 29 [5 favorites]

Whatever the outcome, some of it is not under your control. You can't unilaterally select from your choices, this has to be with some degree of agreement, and the ultimate option may not be on this list.

Either way the journey to a conclusion seems like it would start with you saying that you don't find the current contract acceptable and you're not interested in negotiating further for this role. Then see what proposals they make, judge them on their merits, and make counterproposals as you see fit. 2 and 3, to my mind, would be better options if you could change your mind and leave - that is, if they are not fixed term contracts.

Based on what you describe, I think you might make a good engineering director somewhere else, and you would probably enjoy it, since it is a job of enabling people to do their best work. You've could also use some of your writing here almost word for word in your resume. Even as a senior IC role the descriptions work well - communication skills are particularly important in those roles.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 1:05 AM on December 30 [3 favorites]

You didn't actually accept back in September if they didn't tell you what the compensation package is. Their "offer" 4 months ago was not a real offer if it did not include the compensation. It was merely a signal of interest on both parts.

You can tell them, "After receiving the offer and thinking deeply about it, I've decided not to accept the offer." There's a good chance they also view your prior acceptance as a signal of intent, and they only view this as the real offer. If they actually say you've already accepted, they're being a bit manipulative and you can say "It's not a true offer without the compensation."

For example, if I ask my neighbor, "Are you interested in buying my house?" and they say "Sure! We've been house shopping and I've always loved your house." I can't then say "Oh good, the price is 3 times the market value, but you just said you accept my offer, so now you have to pay anything I say."
posted by vienna at 3:20 AM on December 30 [13 favorites]

I’ve been in a very similar circumstance before. My small company I loved merged with another company and I went from being cto part time for a tiny company to being cto full time of a larger company.

I struggled with getting the compensation stuff right. I struggled with the other c level execs personality, negativity, and unrealistic demands. I’ve been in the cto seat before in a similar sized company so I know that I can enjoy the job, but this wasn’t good fit for me. I stuck it out until end of contract because of golden handcuffs, but it sucked and without and end it sight I would have lost my mind.

Absent golden handcuffs I would say getting the search on for new cto and cutting down your work week. If you slow the bleeding it might be more sustainable. I recommend a rule within your fiefdom of no meetings on Friday and then also outwardly push the idea of keeping meetings to a minimum on Fridays.

Also consider dropping down to 4 days a week during the search.

Also if you are working a lot of overtime to try and make it all work STOP. Let work be more chaotic, but get back your work life balance. Once you actually start doing this it will get easier! Good luck!
posted by alicebob at 4:37 AM on December 30 [4 favorites]

I really dislike the politics of the C-Suite (which I won't go into too much). I find having to manage other C-level folks' expectations and inputs absolutely exhausting some days.

Life's too short to waste much of it working with assholes.

Work with enough of them and it gets even shorter.

Listen to purplesludge.
posted by flabdablet at 4:53 AM on December 30 [1 favorite]

On my phone so can't write much. But. You say you like engineering more than managing. Another option might be to stay on as a technical architect or staff engineer or something similar where you are still an engineer with a lot of responsibility and expertise and autonomy but not responsible for managing other engineers.
posted by number9dream at 10:25 AM on December 30 [1 favorite]

Whilst on your way out the door, how do you feel about:
-- getting to your sculpture studio to decompress before it's bedtime?
-- Seeing the time spent working with the C-suite as helping the other C's do their best work?
-- instigating effective meetings: don't go to a meeting without an agenda, expect people to come prepared and send out agendas some days in advance to allow people to prepare, have a nominated chairperson who directed the discussion and pushes topics not in the agenda to later on, and end the meeting when all the business is done but no later than the time box allows. Perhaps some blocks of meetings could be email or wiki/knowledgebase discussion.
posted by k3ninho at 3:09 PM on December 31

I did exactly this a few months ago! Here’s what my therapist had me do in order to help me make the decision:

1. Imagine myself working in this new position. Try to imagine it in as much detail as possible. How do I feel in my body? What emotions come up?

2. Now do the same thing with the scenario of having turned down the job.

I was driving myself crazy with pro and con lists and she told me: you can make a compelling list for most arguments. But your body doesn’t lie to you.
posted by sugarbomb at 4:43 PM on December 31 [2 favorites]