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Comment by jan_g | Hacker News Reader

> This is confidential. If you say something about someone else I’m not going to go and tell them.

Warning to all of you in non-managerial position: be very wary of confidentiality proclamations. It happened to me that my manager ran immediately to the CEO, when I said I'm going to start looking for a new job in 3-6 months time. I told him that I specifically don't want this information to leak, but yeah, everybody knew it by the next working day.

Lesson learned: never tell anything sensitive or important in your 1-on-1s with the manager. Except pleasantries, hobbies and other useless stuff.

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Very true. For me saying this conversation is confidential has a negative connotation. It raises some flags like:

1. Are we going to talk about something which we can't broadly address? 2. How do I trust someone new on the team to actually keep things confidential, what have they done to earn my trust? 3. I'm going to be more guarded about what I say, because now I'm thinking this person will probably want to misconstrue what I'm saying to their benefit.

Talking about career conversations. I wouldn't tell anyone about my career plans until the day I have to. In my experience telling people early has no tangible benefit.

It's stupid in hindsight, but I just wanted to give him a chance to better prepare for me leaving, like start looking for new developer(s) or shift plans, etc.

I don’t think it’s stupid at all, it just shows you had a not so great manager. They could have used this information to start preparing without revealing the specifics. Unfortunately it’s these types of incidents that make people weary of engaging in this level of candidness.

At the company I just left, I felt extremely comfortable telling my direct manager I was interviewing. By the time I got an offer we had a plan in place for my departure.

It’s certainly a situation specific action, and it’s unfortunate that more managers aren’t equipped to handle this adequately.

> I don’t think it’s stupid at all, it just shows you had a not so great manager.

No, it was epically stupid. The manager was actually very good at their job for reporting that a key team member was planning on leaving and the process for replacement and knowledge transfer needed to begin ASAP.

What both you and the GP haven't figured out is your manager is not your friend, their duty is to the company and you can be friendly but you can't ever let yourself forget you're both their for a paycheck.

If either of you slip information to the other that jeopardizes that person's paycheck you've done them a disservice and force them to choose between financial stability and perceived loyalty to you.

The most pernicious propaganda I've seen in startups and small companies is that _we're a family_ and you can come to me at any time about anything. That's absolute dogshit and you need to put the coolaid down, family doesn't negotiate pay raises and equity, families don't quit or fire each other.

I disagree with almost everything you've said. That remark about financial stability is laughable at best.

Look, I don't have any problem with my coworker(s) being more loyal to the company than to me. I do have problem with lying, though. Lie to me once and I'll never want to deal with you again.

Isn't what notice period in the contract is for? If you find something nicer, you give a notice and they can prepare your replacement. Why this additional weird dance?

That's an extended courtesy. As a manager, one needs to continuously be planning on how to not let all the tribal knowledge collect with a select few. Pairing people, coming up with processes for documentation and presentations, etc are part of being a successful manager.

Another way to handle it might have been to say, "we need to improve cross-training on the team in case someone leaves". Let them figure out if the subtext themselves, if they manage.

From a managerial perspective, here is my issue: I want people to feel comfortable coming to me with issues and concerns. That is important in terms of doing good management. Yet if someone revealed something to me that is highly reportable, I may need to act on it. I'm primarily thinking HR issues, but can easily think of others.

One way to manage this is to have the casual conversation, and then in a separate 'official' conversation broach only that issue with the employee.

But yeah--highly recommend building relationships with managers before talking about career plans outside company. Career plans inside your company is a different deal. If you have a useful manager who actually is invested in the growth of the team, it is a great opportunity. (growth = expertise, not growth = number of direct reports)

Workplace these days is a minefield. If you have to talk to someone, only talk about what needs to be talked about and nothing more. Preferably also try to record every interaction or at least run a diary - location, time, who, few bullet points describing the encounter plus some additional facts - what was in the room? was there anyone else? how they looked like? in what manner the person talked to you? and so on. You will thank yourself later if it turns out you were working with a snake.

Yeah, this stinks. I've known a few people that got pregnant at 'the wrong time', and things could have gone a lot better.

would you say that you trusted your manager enough not say anything or were you just venting and maybe revealed too much?

For me, potential job changes is the only thing I will lie about to a current manager.

I appreciate that a manager might be concerned about losing staff but if half the team have gone due to very clear changes in the way things are run (dictated from above), why would I be any different?

I wasn't venting at all. I told him on purpose, so I could say that I trusted him enough. Obviously that trust was misplaced and we also didn't have a 1-on-1 again, I simply refused. What can they do? Fire me? Then didn't, but I left anyway in about 3 months' time.

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