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Comment by gambutin | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I’m not sure.

If I know what was going on transparently I am stressed. As an ordinary employee, I don’t need to know everything and therefore don’t need to worry about it.

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As a leader, it's important to provide not just the meat but also the veggies. What people end up eating is up to them, but serve the full course! If as a ME, I start deciding who needs to know what, information will be perceived as incomplete because people always talk and engineer are often smart enough to read between the lines. So the transparent umbrella is a great analogy. Communicate bad news as fast and coherently as possible - group meeting with open questions works well for me but be ready to address the potential fears: "In my current assessment, that's not going to be a problem, I'll let you know if that changes." and of course "Thanks for asking, I didn't consider that and I don't know yet. I'll clarify" is a valid answer, if you do indeed clarify.

If you're genuinely stressed with that, talk to your lead about it and they'll find a way to filter a little more while not giving you the feeling of being left out.

Knowing more about your company and how well your employer is doing allows you to plan your exit strategy.

If you get stressed about that, imagine finding yourself redundant by close of business today, and job hunting from tomorrow.

Very much this - often the signs are there but I'd always be grateful for a heads-up.

I humbly disagree.

I want to be aware of enough to be productive, yes, but not so much that I get bogged down in the minutiae of corporate politics and can’t focus on my daily work.

Yes. I don't want to know the politics either, but on at least one occasion, for me, it gave me a very good and correct indicator of when to jump ship and saved me a lot of uncertainty (i.e. unemployment).

You're right, probably not everything! It's a managers job to understand what you don't need to know or worry about. But I find it very useful to understand why something is happening, or what else is happening out there that might have an impact on us and we should worry about.

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