Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 209 posts

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#31

Post by musingsole »

Ken_At_EM wrote: post #25

Share it all. Complete transparency. Show them the cash flow. At your small size you will benefit from the additional trust and alignment this will bring. You may find yourself delighted in finding that many of your team can see and solve problems that you may have missed. You can be super secretive to combat the BigCo mentality like Apple when you have the first class problem of being a BigCo.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#32

Post by whimsicalism »

musingsole wrote: post #31
Ken_At_EM wrote: post #25

Share it all. Complete transparency. Show them the cash flow. At your small size you will benefit from the additional trust and alignment this will bring. You may find yourself delighted in finding that many of your team can see and solve problems that you may have missed. You can be super secretive to combat the BigCo mentality like Apple when you have the first class problem of being a BigCo.

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#33

Post by throwagag100 »

> I'm the founder of a small 7 person startup in the fintech space.

If you can afford $1m/y in payroll, you're not small :)

> Should I share info on upcoming behind-the-scenes partnerships, etc with employees to pump them up? Or is giving too much information counterproductive/risky if an employee leaves?

The kind of person who needs "full transparency" that these Internet randos are advocating isn't going to be working very hard. You can't afford to blow $1m/y on people who use Twitter. That said, don't conflate "full transparency" with having meaningful direction and vision, and rising above the fray of agile development.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#35

Post by ysavir »

whimsicalism wrote: post #32
musingsole wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#36

Post by webmobdev »

aintmeit wrote: post #2

Here are things that I would consider significantly more important than wanting to pump up employees by giving them information on partnerships: - making sure your business model is viable - involving employees in the software development process so they understand the user's perspective when developing the product - paying people fairly - helping employees structure work/life balance - having clear and scoped value…

This is great advise - if everyone could be a businessman, all of us would be and nobody would be an employee.

Employees only care about their salary / stock options and professional growth and fulfilment. If an employee isn't confident in your ability to manage the business, they will jump ship (which is their right to do so, just as it is yours to fire them when the business falters). And so it is best to keep them focused and motivated on the job they have to do. There maybe some employees that you think have partnership or managerial potential. You should be confident you can groom them, and thus can share some business information with them and observe how they make the best use of that to help you grow your company and / or advance your goals.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#38

Post by IshKebab »

musingsole wrote: post #31
Ken_At_EM wrote: post #25

Share it all. Complete transparency. Show them the cash flow. At your small size you will benefit from the additional trust and alignment this will bring. You may find yourself delighted in finding that many of your team can see and solve problems that you may have missed. You can be super secretive to combat the BigCo mentality like Apple when you have the first class problem of being a BigCo.

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#40

Post by squeaky-clean »

musingsole wrote: post #31
Ken_At_EM wrote: post #25

Share it all. Complete transparency. Show them the cash flow. At your small size you will benefit from the additional trust and alignment this will bring. You may find yourself delighted in finding that many of your team can see and solve problems that you may have missed. You can be super secretive to combat the BigCo mentality like Apple when you have the first class problem of being a BigCo.

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.

> 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?

Post reply on HN