Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees? • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by darkerside » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

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.

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

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

#42

Post by DiggyJohnson » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

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 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.

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

#43

Post by danielmarkbruce » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

greatpostman wrote: post #9

Startups are largely a financial vehicle to shift value created by employees to founders and investors

Most startups create zero value and go out of business.

So: startups are largely a vehicle to take money from hard working people's pensions (the LPs are often large pension funds) and put it in the pockets of employees who have created zero value.

Now that's a cynical take. But no more than the alternative view.

A positive take might be: startups are a financial vehicle to take a risk on a new business. The parties enter voluntarily, and different parties take different risks and have the opportunity for different rewards.

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

#44

Post by eigenrick » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

Give them as much as they want to know.

Some folks don't want distractions. They don't care about the state of things that don't directly pertain to their job. They just want to build stuff.

Other people, like myself, want to know everything.

If you want honesty and transparency from your employees, you have to create a culture of it. Which means it starts with you.

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

#45

Post by morelisp » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:49 PM UTC

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.

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.

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

#46

Post by rroot » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

I walked away from a start-up and potentially a lot of money, largely due to lack of transparency.

I think the worst thing that can happen is that your employees stop trusting you. They're still on the payroll but they're there only until something better comes along.

Be careful with your answers to them when they ask for information you don't want to give out.

If it's confidential, say that straight out and explain why. If the employee doesn't understand it or feels you're being deceptive or not totally honest, accept that there now has been a breach of trust between you.

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

#47

Post by nibbleshifter » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

Be as open as possible.

The places I've worked that were basically "open books" and super transparent tended to be more successful than the more opaque places.

Largely because people felt they had more of a stake in it, felt more involved and engaged, and would bring more ideas/contacts/knowledge to the table, etc.

The more opaque places that practiced unnecessary levels of "need to know" tended to not work as well, as the company couldn't leverage its peoples experience, networks, etc as efficiently, and people generally work less well if they are kept in the dark.

Being open tends to create opportunities, and your employees can warn you about risks you might be missing.

Being closed? You lose that advantage.

A decent NDA and properly written contract will cover you if someone leaves.

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

#48

Post by nibbleshifter » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

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.

> You may find yourself delighted in finding that many of your team can see and solve problems that you may have missed.

This is something a lot of founders seem to overlook.

Also, along with spotting problems - people who are engaged in a transparent org can more easily spot unexploited opportunities and bring them to the table.

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

#49

Post by buro9 » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

I've seen everything shared really well.

Typically cash flow at a high level is shared, the KPIs are shared (revenue per employee, annual run rate, deals being worked on, etc).

As it scales then I've seen things being held closer to the chest... companies tend to learn that the people they've hired between the 500-1,500 headcount range are less family, more likely to leak things publicly... so then cards get held closer to the chest, more consideration is put into what is shared.

What I've never seen shared: cap table, who has what options, salaries. The latter two things are usually solved by whisper networks between staff, the former is the big one... without aspects of it one cannot really know whether their options are worth anything at all and how much they're getting, and for early employees (within the first couple of hundred) that's typically how they get screwed on negotiations or simply through inexperience/greed by founders.

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

#50

Post by palata » Sun, Aug 28, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

webmobdev wrote: post #36

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…

I disagree. Startup employees care about making a good product, too. That's the rule when you join a startup: you won't have the highest salary, and maybe your startup bankrupts in 6 months, but you get to have more impact.

If you don't want the risk and don't want to care, go in an established company.

But that all means that you should be transparent with startup employees, because many decisions depend on that at all level. If you hire employees who believe that they have infinite time and money to get the product to work, then you probably did not hire well, IMO.