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No it's not. If my current boss is talking German fast enough, I can barely understand. Whenever he's talking with the legal team he's using German. This is a clear indication to me that my participation is unneeded (altough I do communicate with our lawyers on variety of subjects). Moreover, I think overhearing other people's conversations is impolite.

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> No it’s not.

Maybe to _you_, don’t assume other people are the same way.

Along my whole career path (I’m a senior now) I’ve always been curious about the high-level technical stuff and took every opportunity to listen to knowledgeable people.

I think there’s a term for it: incidental knowledge transfer.

You might be stripping that person of the opportunity to grow, or maybe just to hear about something interesting for them to follow up on later.

I was sharing my personal experience with my boss because of > think from someone else's point of view.

As for "incidental knowledge transfer" as you call it, there's another side of it: it's called distraction.

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