I made it six months
Well technically five but will give another month until my resignation is official. I posted to this reddit a few months after I started and received some good advice but Im back because I'm still unclear of if I'm making the right decision. Since I have started as the CIO at this company ($55 million a year, 400ish employees, 1200 endpoints, 80+ unique apps, healthcare) I have had the following negative interactions:
I Have no budget, not like 0 dollars of budget but literally no budget. Every item has to be approved by the CEO. I've had to ask this person to purchased $25 worth of cables. Its exhausting.
We have no schedule of contract renewals. Some of the big ones I was able to find through our vendor but every month I get at least two or three usually for over 20k and since I have no budget I literally have to go to the CEO and ask for the renewal and hope we A: Have the money, B: I don't get yelled at for it. I'm working on a schedule.
I had an employee (a direct report) i moved into a position that we needed and they were very interested in. The CEO moved them back and I got berated for not asking the CEO first (the employee immediately resigned).
I'm a "functional" CIO because we only have 5 total IT staff. This means I get to do multiple jobs a day. I'm also the only one allowed to be admin of the ERP system because "someone may look at something they should not."
My pay is about that of a high level analyst at my last company.
I'm the CISO as well but I do not have a background in security. I've asked if we could fill that gap and had a plan ready. That plan was rejected and we instead are looking at an MSP. The conversations with the MSP happen mostly without me being in the room. This is by the CEO's request.
There is a lot more bad. I was offered another role with another company, much lower in pay but less responsibility. Yet all of this I still feel bad like I should be trying to make this work and to stick it out. So i'm back here asking for advice, move on only after six months or try and stick it out for longer?