Our company runs an online photo sharing application, letting users edit pictures, create slideshows, share them on blogs and social networks and so on. The company is small, roughly 15 people, with a technical staff of 5, 3 seniors and 2 interns, with another intern coming soon. Our CEO is also the head of the marketing team.
We had a CTO until August 2009. When our CTO left, the company was having financial issues, and it was decided not to hire another CTO immediately. The technical staff (only the 3 seniors at the time) decided, between them, what to do.
Without a CTO, we have trouble getting some decisions to be taken by the CEO. This has created some issues on technical level, like quality problems in the infrastructure and code base.
My question is: how do we improve this situation? Should we insist on hiring another CTO which would have a hard time integrating and gaining legitimacy (I designed and created the whole server application. I will not let anybody explain to me how I have to do my job)?