alt Hacker NewsIME I blame Telephone(aka Chinese whispers) being the default communication between ICs and skip level manager. A skip level should address a team in writing instead of the manager vaguely mentioning things. Communications among a team should happen in a public channel instead of DMs.
This is super underdone these days. Management likes to talk about the importance of communication till the cows come home but somehow that's mostly upward directed, rarely downward.