Discussion
My CEO is burning out
I'm working as a software engineer at a small 15-employee company where the atmosphere has turned really bad recently. It's not really a startup, but the structure is similar: my technical supervisor reports to the CEO and the CEO reports to the board, which is composed of stakeholders of our service.
In the past couple months, the CEO has stopped listening to the opinion of the technical team (my supervisor included) which too often contradicted the opinion of the board. The CEO is under a lot of pressure from the board to release new features.
A couple days ago I had a meeting with our CEO to plan a major development of our infrastructure. Basically, she wanted to cross-check what my technical supervisor had already told her. During the whole meeting her hands were shaking. My feeling is that she now distrusts the entire team.
She was a great leader when I joined the company a couple years ago, and I had a lot of respect for her. Now she is asking for major technical changes that make no sense at all, neither from a technical nor a business point of view -- without referring to the technical team.
I'm not a physician, but this looks like a burnout-in-progress to me. I have the possibility to quit my job, but I'd rather find another solution. Has anyone ever been in a similar situation? Should I go directly to the board?