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> You need to communicate, build relationships, and get feedback from many people in the organization. One of those people is your manager's manager.

That's an unreasonable expectation. That's your manager's job, not yours. If you have a skip level manager that is expecting direct updates from you... they're doing management wrong.

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Building relationships with a skip level manager doesn't have to be about direct updates. It's not about going around your manager, either. It's building another channel of communication where you can ask for help on blockers, get updates on issues specific to what you're working on, build visibility for the work you are doing, and create good working relationships. Unless your manager never goes on vacation, you're going to have to work directly and report to your skip level manager at some point in time anyway. In my company, my manager has regular sync-up meetings with his skip level manager, and encourages me to do the same.

It's hard to do but an effective tool to build political standing and gain insight to be able to assess the quality of feedback.

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