When your coworker does great work, tell their manager • Hacker News Board

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#11

Post by lkrubner » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #10

lkrubner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do reliably know which of their co-workers are good and which of their co-workers suck badly. But also, the rule of 150 applies here. At a startup with less than 100 people, each worker often has an idea of everyone's strength, throughout the company. However, if you are at a big company, with thousands of employees in multiple locations, then it is often best to restrict upvoting to some subset of the company…

Every time this has been attempted, it devolves into toxic work culture. Also, how can you know what other people are working on? Most of the work is outside anyone's scope, and end up toxic when optimizing for arbitrary metrics. I speak for myself, mostly unrelated to articles put on www. I don't have to agree or disagree by anyone else's metrics and dominating rhetorics. Not meant to disrespect, but am not fully ab…

No, I think you are thinking of systems like the stacked rank system they used at Microsoft.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#12

Post by _y5hn » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #11

_y5hn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this has been attempted, it devolves into toxic work culture. Also, how can you know what other people are working on? Most of the work is outside anyone's scope, and end up toxic when optimizing for arbitrary metrics. I speak for myself, mostly unrelated to articles put on www. I don't have to agree or disagree by anyone else's metrics and dominating rhetorics. Not meant to disrespect, but am not fully ab…

No, I think you are thinking of systems like the stacked rank system they used at Microsoft.

That too. Not saying your ideas have no merit, but such always need refinement. People who think they're the shit usually local-optimize, so don't regard anyone's evaluations as much since people generally don't know what work other people do, or are excluded from.

This is regarded upside-down usually, since a good worker leaving should be unnoticed by the org. But some people play Hero, to detriment of every one around them, or expect others to do their work because all they see is their own little bubble. That's OK by itself, but doesn't merit enough opinion for policy and governance levers.

It's kind of like gardeners optimizing for monoculture, and complaining about falling market prices and disease leading to lower; but predictable yields.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#13

Post by T-hawk » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #3

This should be a monthly census: it needs to be automatic. If you're the manager of a company and you are relying on people to say something about their co-workers, then you will miss most of the information that you could be capturing, and you will get highly biased impression of your workforce, because only a certain type of person will come forward to praise their co-worker. There are various voting systems that w…

Wouldn't co-worker upvotes lead to workers prioritizing their output for what attracts upvotes rather than what the company needs to get done?

You'd get a team constantly making tools for each other and no sellable product.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#14

Post by ponker » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

AceyMan wrote: post #8

I worked for the airlines (first career) and for public-facing employees it was a big deal if you got a 'good letter' from a customer. (It was equally suck if you happened to get a bad one...). We also could file 'thank you / attaboy' paperwork for our colleagues, both in our own department or ones we interacted with. Those were just as valuable (if not more) than ones from the customers. Over the years (11) during m…

I saw a flight attendant being yelled at by a horrid passenger and knew that she might get a “bad letter” from them so I sent in a good letter for her about how she handled the abuse with aplomb. Glad to hear it was worth the effort

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#15

Post by benlumen » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

While we're at it - when someone you manage does great work - tell your manager.

I do this out of professional decency, not social justice (angle of the article).

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#16

Post by jedimastert » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

jkubrynski wrote: post #9

From my experience, especially in big companies (but not only) most of the feedback is negative. People are not sharing positive feedback, and when they contact your manager it's usually an escalation process. That's why it's so important to reach to people who support you or simply create a content you like (blog posts, webinars, etc) and say: "thanks, I found a lot of value here".

> That's why it's so important to reach to people who support you or simply create a content you like (blog posts, webinars, etc) and say: "thanks, I found a lot of value here".

I've been trying to start up a blog this year (three posts in 7 months, woo!) and someone recently contacted me to tell me that my RSS feed was down and they didn't want to miss the next post. It carried me into the next week it meant so much.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#17

Post by ping_pong » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

This is the biggest problem with stack ranking software engineers, the practice I had to endure while at a well known software company. All it does is create a zero-sum game, so I have no incentive to compliment anyone else. I needed to make sure that my rank was as high as I could make it, which really sucked during performance time. It was very stressful, even though I was a high performer, because it didn't foster the type of environment I wanted to work at, which is collaborative.

I heard from my friends at Facebook that the environment there is equally crazy. Everyone knows that the performance reviews are based on lazy stats, so they game the stats. Every time someone requests a meeting, they are expected to give a "thank you" which is one of the measures for performance. Also, things like the number of reviews commented on could be easily gamed by adding a "+1!" as a comment which sounds like another undesirable place to work at. Maybe current Facebook employees can comment, however.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#18

Post by ping_pong » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

T-hawk wrote: post #13

lkrubner wrote: post #3

This should be a monthly census: it needs to be automatic. If you're the manager of a company and you are relying on people to say something about their co-workers, then you will miss most of the information that you could be capturing, and you will get highly biased impression of your workforce, because only a certain type of person will come forward to praise their co-worker. There are various voting systems that w…

Wouldn't co-worker upvotes lead to workers prioritizing their output for what attracts upvotes rather than what the company needs to get done? You'd get a team constantly making tools for each other and no sellable product.

Yes, this definitely happens. The incentive system should align with good behavior, otherwise you get massive gaming of the performance system. I've seen this in a few companies I've been at, moreso the large ones because no one can keep complete track of everyone's gaming of the system.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#19

Post by yomly » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

I think showing awareness of your peers is a positive signal to a good manager in any case so it positively impacts you beyond just good karma

Anyone who really buys into "team" will value someone who is actually looking out for their team.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager

#20

Post by ravenstine » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

While I really like the sentiment, I think there's a reason why people naturally don't provide much positive feedback about individuals at workplaces.

What do you really get by pointing out the good work of a coworker? A warm fuzzy feeling, to be sure. Maybe greater comradeship. But wait, who's the next person to get a promotion? Maybe it'll be the person you keep praising to management. So you'll probably have to work smarter/harder to get that same praise, hence the same chances at promotion. But you don't want to work that much harder; you're already working hard enough as it is. But that 5% raise and that "senior" title look pretty shiny. Hey, how come nobody has been recognizing you for your good work? Meanwhile that coworker you've been praising is now your boss!