6 ms·

Not everyone wants all the information and with many business plans, knowing the full version might be confusing to people working on today's stuff. I advocate

Not everyone wants all the information and with many business plans, knowing the full version might be confusing to people working on today's stuff. I advocate balancing full transparency (I certainly don't mean to hide any info!) with a culture that can create a time and place for conversations that might go beyond today's work.

whimsicalism 4y ago
I rarely find the "people will be confused by full transparency" line very convincing. To me it seems like there is some other, unstated reason to be less transparent - because confusion is easily remedied by prioritizing certain information while making the rest just accessible if someone wants to look.
- ysavir 4y ago
  > To me it seems like there is some other, unstated reason to be less transparent Hiring, mostly. If you hire people that don't want, care, or are able to understand the full picture, the transparency won't pay off. But at small sizes, you generally want to hire people that both can and are eager to understand the whole picture.
  - sasquatch69 4y ago
    If you have cash and you're transparent, your employees are likely to ask for it if you have a personal relationship with them. I would say this is frequently even the case for big picture employees. I'm saying this also as the lowest compensated person at my company for ~5 years. To me it's more of an ideal world vs real world. Ideally you can share everything, in reality the outcome is likely to have a negative impact on both employee satisfaction and profit. Ie most likely giving employees a raise and them still thinking they aren't getting enough due to them seeing the big $ in the bank. My preferred approach is budget level (we can spend x on y, I am open to your ideas) and number light executive summary (we have x months runway, not we have y in the bank). You can also give someone a smaller piece of transparency and see how they react if you think the employee could be someone with the skill set to manage a budget in the future.
    - sanderjd 4y ago
      I don't relate to this. It seems like there may be a lack of understanding of or alignment on the long term path if this is a problem. I'm at a very transparent fairly early stage company right now and when I see how much money we have in the bank, I think "that's great news for our roadmap and long term path to profitability or further investment", not "how can I get me more of that sweet cash".
      - sasquatch69 4y ago
        My company would widely be considered as stable, I'm personally 100% long term on our company. So it's past the "great news for our roadmap and long term path to profitability or further investment" phase. Although we're not massive either (few mil, rapid growth). Also bootstrapped from $300, so I could see it being different for venture funded situations. Different companies/team compositions might have different best paths. It's more "why are you hiring someone, when you could give everyone a bigger bonus" vibes. Where my goal is to say, give 2x the bonus in the future via the hire instead, but an employee could justifiably, for their own reasons, want more money today. I'm saying that^ in the context, of, in my opinion, big picture employees as well. I agree there's sometimes misalignment, everyone has their own goals/aspirations/career, and they sometimes aren't the same as the company goal/timeline. At the end of the day, that doesn't mean that they aren't capable of making valuable contributions or that we don't want to support their goals. That is ok, it's impossible to be everyone's everything.
        sanderjd 4y ago
        Yeah this makes sense. I still think it might make more sense to be transparent, and also capable of having those conversations with the team about why people are being hired instead of bonuses being juiced. Maybe you're right that it would be bad for morale, but I feel like owners / executives should be able to tell that story compellingly.
        taneq 4y ago
        > "why are you hiring someone, when you could give everyone a bigger bonus" Or even "we just invoiced $5k for that project, I didn't get $5k, that seems unfair". Some people find it difficult to see all the different places that gross revenue has to go in order to keep the lights on and the wheels turning.
- morelisp 4y ago
  I also used to think this way, until I tried being fully transparent with my team. There really are people whose mindset is 100% "what should I do?" and never "what are we doing?" I think the mistake is assuming it correlates with seniority or skill or something; it seems to be independent of both. On the other hand, I'd never want a "what should I do?" person as an early startup hire.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    > On the other hand, I'd never want a "what should I do?" person as an early startup hire. This doesn't apply to tanks or healers, only dps. Playing tank as an infra person I would do my team a disservice if I didn't make myself available on a dime to unblock my team. Big picture is fine for the planning meetings but on small teams I'm usually the only one, I have a bunch of cooldowns to keep track of, and don't always have the context because I have a separate workstream that has to telegraph out ahead of the dev work. I am always asking what I should do that has the most impact for my devs.
    - vageli 4y ago
      Healers don't go around asking who needs healing, they see low health and prioritize. That is not asking "what should I do?", that is being proactive about the needs of the team.
      - morelisp 4y ago
        This framing is extremely stupid and misses the point entirely.
        vageli 4y ago
        That's pretty uncharitable of you. I am an infra person myself and while I appreciate the parent's point about making themselves available to pick up other things on a dime, I was trying to point out that you can also proactively identify needs and address them as an infra person, often in ways that can be applied to other teams and that this is very much not asking for what they should be doing.
- izacus 4y ago
  In corpspeak of companies I've worked for, "this will cause confusion" is a codephrase for "we want to prevent someone complaining and making a fuss about shadier parts of our work". It's the ultimate "let's hide this because we know people won't like it" phrase.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    It's not necessarily about anything shady though, it can just as easily be legitimate differences of opinion, too many cooks in the kitchen, bikeshedding, or landgrab concerns.
    - izacus 4y ago
      You are right, I'm a bit cynical here. But that's what makes the phrase brilliant - it can be used for both and it's hard to figure out which one it is on the spot.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    How did you verify this was the case every time you heard it?
    - Ken_At_EM 4y ago
      What sort of information could cause confusion in the workplace, exactly? Excluding private HR data obviously.
      - 6510 4y ago
        You go from focusing on executing a well defined strict set of tasks that closely fit your brag worthy skills to pondering a partially defined set of fuzzy "more important" goals that poorly fit your skills while unsure if your noob input would either make you look like an idiot or be very valuable.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- cpitman 4y ago
  Here's a non-conspiratorial reason: many engineers are not used to the uncertainty involved in day to day business negotiations and sales, and allow themselves to be stressed out what they see how the sausage is made. The reality is that lots of deals fall through, and that is normal. But if someone hasn't had a front row seat to that, they start wondering "are we failing?", "am I not doing a good enough job?", "is our product a failure?" etc etc. I say this as someone who leads a team that handles the promotion and enablement of engineers into a role where they have a lot more visibility into sales and strategy, and have learned that they really need to have someone reassure them until the point that they realize that things are working out just fine. That being said, I'm not sure of the wisdom of inflicting that stress on employees that don't have a need to see the Backoffice negotiations. Is there anything productive they can do, other then getting stressed?
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    > many engineers are not used to the uncertainty involved in day to day business negotiations and sales 7 person startup, right? Presumably they hired people who can wear lots of hats and who can deal with uncertainty. > they start wondering "are we failing?", "am I not doing a good enough job?", "is our product a failure?" etc etc. Good. Questions lead to answers where there's transparency. I'd hope that the people making the product would understand the product, the business, and the customers.
    - dilyevsky 4y ago
      This. Additionally this should lead to more responsible decision making when questions like “is my re-architect gone wrong going to sink the company?” are pondered at all levels. This could lead to more stress sure but if someone can’t handle it probably best to go work at big corp.
    - ido 4y ago
      7 person startup, right? Presumably they hired people who can wear lots of hats and who can deal with uncertainty. Not necessarily! Or not necessarily all of them. As a small startup you also don't have much money so may hire very junior people as that's all you can afford. Good. Questions lead to answers where there's transparency. Only they don't always ask these questions - especially if they're junior. Sometimes they just keep it to themselves and worry instead of asking for clarification.
IshKebab 4y ago
You obviously don't have to force people to care about it. Just share the information. They can ignore it if they like. I have no idea why you think anyone would find this sort of information confusing.
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  Yeah, this is an extremely weird take.
squeaky-clean 4y ago
> knowing the full version might be confusing to people working on today's stuff. Are those really the sort of people you want joining your <10 member startup?
- Ken_At_EM 4y ago
  Yeah, I’d agree with you and say absolutely not.
darkerside 4y ago
With a bigger company, you need to manage communications. This is a huge tax to pay. Defer it as long as possible.
DiggyJohnson 4y ago
I think ‘don’t firehose them with all your startup’s problems’ (or: use common sense and follow professional and conversational norms) is built into OP’s point. I don’t even think you’re disagreeing.
Ken_At_EM 4y ago
I have never had anyone become negatively confused by our transparency. They ask for clarification, you provide it, and they are that much more effective.
mhh__ 4y ago
If they're confused you've hired the wrong people
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > If they're confused you've hired the wrong people If they think their people will be confused, they don't trust their people. That's not necessarily the same thing as hiring the wrong people.
fredophile 4y ago
In my experience, people that actively don't want full info are usually not the same people who are interested in being early employees at a startup.
majormajor 4y ago
Sometimes "the full version might be confusing" is the same as "I haven't done a good job of explaining the full version," whether that's the roadmap for a company or a department or even just a team.

whimsicalism 4y ago

I rarely find the "people will be confused by full transparency" line very convincing. To me it seems like there is some other, unstated reason to be less transparent - because confusion is easily remedied by prioritizing certain information while making the rest just accessible if someone wants to look.

ysavir 4y ago
> To me it seems like there is some other, unstated reason to be less transparent Hiring, mostly. If you hire people that don't want, care, or are able to understand the full picture, the transparency won't pay off. But at small sizes, you generally want to hire people that both can and are eager to understand the whole picture.
- sasquatch69 4y ago
  If you have cash and you're transparent, your employees are likely to ask for it if you have a personal relationship with them. I would say this is frequently even the case for big picture employees. I'm saying this also as the lowest compensated person at my company for ~5 years. To me it's more of an ideal world vs real world. Ideally you can share everything, in reality the outcome is likely to have a negative impact on both employee satisfaction and profit. Ie most likely giving employees a raise and them still thinking they aren't getting enough due to them seeing the big $ in the bank. My preferred approach is budget level (we can spend x on y, I am open to your ideas) and number light executive summary (we have x months runway, not we have y in the bank). You can also give someone a smaller piece of transparency and see how they react if you think the employee could be someone with the skill set to manage a budget in the future.
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    I don't relate to this. It seems like there may be a lack of understanding of or alignment on the long term path if this is a problem. I'm at a very transparent fairly early stage company right now and when I see how much money we have in the bank, I think "that's great news for our roadmap and long term path to profitability or further investment", not "how can I get me more of that sweet cash".
    - sasquatch69 4y ago
      My company would widely be considered as stable, I'm personally 100% long term on our company. So it's past the "great news for our roadmap and long term path to profitability or further investment" phase. Although we're not massive either (few mil, rapid growth). Also bootstrapped from $300, so I could see it being different for venture funded situations. Different companies/team compositions might have different best paths. It's more "why are you hiring someone, when you could give everyone a bigger bonus" vibes. Where my goal is to say, give 2x the bonus in the future via the hire instead, but an employee could justifiably, for their own reasons, want more money today. I'm saying that^ in the context, of, in my opinion, big picture employees as well. I agree there's sometimes misalignment, everyone has their own goals/aspirations/career, and they sometimes aren't the same as the company goal/timeline. At the end of the day, that doesn't mean that they aren't capable of making valuable contributions or that we don't want to support their goals. That is ok, it's impossible to be everyone's everything.
      - sanderjd 4y ago
        Yeah this makes sense. I still think it might make more sense to be transparent, and also capable of having those conversations with the team about why people are being hired instead of bonuses being juiced. Maybe you're right that it would be bad for morale, but I feel like owners / executives should be able to tell that story compellingly.
      - taneq 4y ago
        > "why are you hiring someone, when you could give everyone a bigger bonus" Or even "we just invoiced $5k for that project, I didn't get $5k, that seems unfair". Some people find it difficult to see all the different places that gross revenue has to go in order to keep the lights on and the wheels turning.
morelisp 4y ago
I also used to think this way, until I tried being fully transparent with my team. There really are people whose mindset is 100% "what should I do?" and never "what are we doing?" I think the mistake is assuming it correlates with seniority or skill or something; it seems to be independent of both. On the other hand, I'd never want a "what should I do?" person as an early startup hire.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > On the other hand, I'd never want a "what should I do?" person as an early startup hire. This doesn't apply to tanks or healers, only dps. Playing tank as an infra person I would do my team a disservice if I didn't make myself available on a dime to unblock my team. Big picture is fine for the planning meetings but on small teams I'm usually the only one, I have a bunch of cooldowns to keep track of, and don't always have the context because I have a separate workstream that has to telegraph out ahead of the dev work. I am always asking what I should do that has the most impact for my devs.
  - vageli 4y ago
    Healers don't go around asking who needs healing, they see low health and prioritize. That is not asking "what should I do?", that is being proactive about the needs of the team.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      This framing is extremely stupid and misses the point entirely.
      - vageli 4y ago
        That's pretty uncharitable of you. I am an infra person myself and while I appreciate the parent's point about making themselves available to pick up other things on a dime, I was trying to point out that you can also proactively identify needs and address them as an infra person, often in ways that can be applied to other teams and that this is very much not asking for what they should be doing.
izacus 4y ago
In corpspeak of companies I've worked for, "this will cause confusion" is a codephrase for "we want to prevent someone complaining and making a fuss about shadier parts of our work". It's the ultimate "let's hide this because we know people won't like it" phrase.
- dasil003 4y ago
  It's not necessarily about anything shady though, it can just as easily be legitimate differences of opinion, too many cooks in the kitchen, bikeshedding, or landgrab concerns.
  - izacus 4y ago
    You are right, I'm a bit cynical here. But that's what makes the phrase brilliant - it can be used for both and it's hard to figure out which one it is on the spot.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  How did you verify this was the case every time you heard it?
  - Ken_At_EM 4y ago
    What sort of information could cause confusion in the workplace, exactly? Excluding private HR data obviously.
    - 6510 4y ago
      You go from focusing on executing a well defined strict set of tasks that closely fit your brag worthy skills to pondering a partially defined set of fuzzy "more important" goals that poorly fit your skills while unsure if your noob input would either make you look like an idiot or be very valuable.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
cpitman 4y ago
Here's a non-conspiratorial reason: many engineers are not used to the uncertainty involved in day to day business negotiations and sales, and allow themselves to be stressed out what they see how the sausage is made. The reality is that lots of deals fall through, and that is normal. But if someone hasn't had a front row seat to that, they start wondering "are we failing?", "am I not doing a good enough job?", "is our product a failure?" etc etc. I say this as someone who leads a team that handles the promotion and enablement of engineers into a role where they have a lot more visibility into sales and strategy, and have learned that they really need to have someone reassure them until the point that they realize that things are working out just fine. That being said, I'm not sure of the wisdom of inflicting that stress on employees that don't have a need to see the Backoffice negotiations. Is there anything productive they can do, other then getting stressed?
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > many engineers are not used to the uncertainty involved in day to day business negotiations and sales 7 person startup, right? Presumably they hired people who can wear lots of hats and who can deal with uncertainty. > they start wondering "are we failing?", "am I not doing a good enough job?", "is our product a failure?" etc etc. Good. Questions lead to answers where there's transparency. I'd hope that the people making the product would understand the product, the business, and the customers.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    This. Additionally this should lead to more responsible decision making when questions like “is my re-architect gone wrong going to sink the company?” are pondered at all levels. This could lead to more stress sure but if someone can’t handle it probably best to go work at big corp.
  - ido 4y ago
    7 person startup, right? Presumably they hired people who can wear lots of hats and who can deal with uncertainty. Not necessarily! Or not necessarily all of them. As a small startup you also don't have much money so may hire very junior people as that's all you can afford. Good. Questions lead to answers where there's transparency. Only they don't always ask these questions - especially if they're junior. Sometimes they just keep it to themselves and worry instead of asking for clarification.

IshKebab 4y ago

You obviously don't have to force people to care about it. Just share the information. They can ignore it if they like. I have no idea why you think anyone would find this sort of information confusing.

LadyCailin 4y ago
Yeah, this is an extremely weird take.

squeaky-clean 4y ago

> knowing the full version might be confusing to people working on today's stuff. Are those really the sort of people you want joining your <10 member startup?

Ken_At_EM 4y ago
Yeah, I’d agree with you and say absolutely not.

darkerside 4y ago

With a bigger company, you need to manage communications. This is a huge tax to pay. Defer it as long as possible.

DiggyJohnson 4y ago

I think ‘don’t firehose them with all your startup’s problems’ (or: use common sense and follow professional and conversational norms) is built into OP’s point. I don’t even think you’re disagreeing.

Ken_At_EM 4y ago

I have never had anyone become negatively confused by our transparency. They ask for clarification, you provide it, and they are that much more effective.

mhh__ 4y ago

If they're confused you've hired the wrong people

drewcoo 4y ago
> If they're confused you've hired the wrong people If they think their people will be confused, they don't trust their people. That's not necessarily the same thing as hiring the wrong people.

fredophile 4y ago

In my experience, people that actively don't want full info are usually not the same people who are interested in being early employees at a startup.

majormajor 4y ago

Sometimes "the full version might be confusing" is the same as "I haven't done a good job of explaining the full version," whether that's the roadmap for a company or a department or even just a team.