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

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

#181

Post by jjav »

ljfp wrote: post #98
mupuff1234 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that level of transparency for a public company not lead to insider trading?

They can put in place some things to mitigate/prevent this. One example that comes to my mind is the use of trading windows for employees. I.e: you can buy company stocks only during some specific time windows announced at the start of the fiscal year.

> One example that comes to my mind is the use of trading windows for employees.

But when you have access to info that could conceivably impact the stock price if revealed, you cannot do any trading even during those trading windows. That's why the top execs can typically (always, I think) only trade via pre-planned schedules.

I've been placed on the insider list in public companies when involved in secret projects (future acquisitions, typically) and that means zero trading for the duration of the project regardless of when employee trading windows open or close.

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

#182

Post by ghiculescu »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #176
ghiculescu wrote: post #164

Don’t worry about leaks. At this stage, nobody else cares about you. But what you should really worry about is risk appetite. Your employees will have different appetite for risk to you. That’s why you’re a founder and they are not. That’s neither good nor bad. It just is. Be conscious if this when you share things. Even if you can control the message, different people will respond to events differently. For example:…

> Don’t worry about leaks. At this stage, nobody else cares about you. Actually, it’s better to pick a level of transparency that can be maintained well beyond this stage and stick with it. If a company starts out fully transparent and then walks back the transparency later, employees will become suspicious. Much better to choose a sustainable level of transparency and demonstrate consistency over the years. Don’t pl…

Okay, I agree with that. My point was more that leaks are a minor issue relative the one I raised.

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

#183

Post by vivegi »

It is helpful to think of all communication with employees using a lifecycle model. As the company grows in headcount and functions, the composition of a core team that has the ball keeps changing depending on the nature of the deals. It would be helpful to form some guidelines on what gets communicated when you form a core deal team. Obviously, when the deal reaches different milestones, you may want to communicate it to all employees. This includes both positive outcomes and negative outcomes (they both provide opportunities for organizational learning on what went right and what went wrong/could have been done differently).

It is important that employees feel they will get communication at the right time if the communication is relevant to them and not feel like they are being left out of the loop.

Also, be ready to give honest answers when there are followup questions.

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

cpitman wrote: post #95
whimsicalism wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by ido »

Ken_At_EM wrote: post #109
robertlagrant wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you verify this was the case every time you heard it?

What sort of information could cause confusion in the workplace, exactly? Excluding private HR data obviously.

The problem is that it's very hard to convey subtlety & uncertainty. Sometimes the truth is "we may go in one of these 3 ways so we have to cover our bases to be able to go in either once we do know" but people (especially programmers) want to hear "we will do exactly x and it will not change in the short term".

EDIT: I think this is a good way of phrasing it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32630650

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

#188

Post by ido »

drewcoo wrote: post #107
cpitman wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

    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.

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

#189

Post by senguidev »

kbos87 wrote: post #81

My experience kicks in quite a bit north of where you are, but for what it’s worth, I joined a company as employee ~150 that practiced near total transparency on everything. We went public, are now north of 8,000 employees, and it’s still nearly as transparent as when I joined - financials, product metrics, anonymized employee trends/HR data, major decisions… the list goes on but pretty much everything is done in the…

Nice! I'd love to learn more about this. Would you mind sharing the name of this company to be able to study the case further? This could be inspiring. (potentially via hn[at]dominici.io or DM @senguidev on Twitter if not possible publicly?)

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

#190

Post by aml183 »

I run a media company. We are very transparent about our KPIs with employees. We only share things that have materialized. For example, we don't want to mislead about something that might happen especially in an early stage company where it's hard to estimate the accuracy of something happening.

I would never want to work at a company that is secretive about everything and thus we chose to be transparent.

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