| > You seem to start from this very distrustful premise and never look back. The OP writes "they want to replace the existing manager". Chances are this would have been phrased "the existing manager is moving on" if no deceit was involved. > Would you say the same of someone who gives significant notice of their departure When to make the information known to the rest of the team should be a management team decision. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all answer. > What if that person were a fairly high ranking one in the organizational structure Finding a replacement before announcing the departure to the team makes sense. It sounds like in the OP's situation the outgoing manager is not aware of his/her status. > Confidential replacement is pretty typical when the outgoing leader has no apparent (temporary) replacement and transitioning duties twice would be difficult/disruptive. It's not broken culture to ensure the wheels keep turning despite a pending high-profile departure. Not sure if you are referring to keeping it confidential from the employee being replaced or from the rest of the team. > ...the presumption that the nature of the search is somehow underhanded or deceitful is pretty one-sided I think you are suggesting that it is appropriate (not deceitful) to attempt to hire the replacement before informing the current manager. Ideally in situations where something isn't working out, both parties can collaborate to phase things out in a mutually respectful way, especially in a startup. Yes, in big companies there is an HR department and all sorts of reasons why "typical" HR practices make sense. But a person joining a startup should feel that the team he/she is joining is not typical and has the sort of integrity to act cooperative (in a game theoretic sense) in these sorts of scenarios. FWIW these sorts of scenarios are inevitable. Sometimes employment arrangements don't work out. How they are handled offers an indication of the character of the management team. |