Comment by cle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cle | Hacker News Reader

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> If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of.

You're assuming that the subordinate's feedback is sufficiently important to the business. It might not be. It might also not be important to the business if subordinates leave b/c their feedback is disregarded. I can imagine plenty of scenarios where a leader could still succeed while not giving a crap about subordinate feedback. It depends on the goals and the dynamics of the business, the leader's experience, market conditions, labor environments, etc.

> The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.

You can argue in your exit interview that you were just following handbooks.

It’s even more important to give it bluntly if the feedback is irrelevant. That way you’ve wasted less time.

Me: “we aren’t giving enough guidance to new hires” Leader: “it’s not a priority for us since we are freezing hiring”

Perfectly good interaction, where you didn’t waste time sneakily phrasing things you think you know better than the leader. And you learned some valuable info about the org priorities as a result.

If the feedback is irrelevant, you'll waste the least amount of time by not giving it at all. (I think that's slightly different from your scenario though, where you don't actually know if it's irrelevant.)

And how would you know if it is irrelevant? See prior comment.

Depends on the org and how information travels. Knowing tricks like this are the superpowers of people who move up quickly in large orgs and make things happen. You can sometimes do fine without knowing this, and going through the "official" route of the direct feedback loop. If you can figure it out elsewhere though, it'll usually build more trust with your superiors.

> You're assuming that the subordinate's feedback is sufficiently important to the business.

That's for the superior to evaluate impartially, and if the feedback was not important, feed that back to the subordinate. Are you suggesting that it is reasonable for superiors to shut down when faced with uninteresting feedback?

> You can argue in your exit interview that you were just following handbooks.

I believe you skipped over the following part of my comment;

> If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start polishing your resume.

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