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

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

#111

Post by ravenstine » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

vp8989 wrote: post #99

ravenstine wrote: post #20

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 wo…

Positive feedback can be a good way to reinforce behaviors in your team mates that you want to see more of. For example, you wish that people on the team tested their changes thoroughly before opening a PR. If you mention that, you will be seen as whiny and a complainer. But if you praise someone who does it, well now you're being positive. Both things have the same effect, in that they communicate that you want peop…

Positive feedback is great in reinforcing good behavior, for sure. I think the difference is when positive feedback about a coworker is directed towards management which, since there's an adversarial nature underlying most workplaces, you are acting as someone else's public relations spokesperson for free. I'm not saying that people should never point out the excellence of their coworkers to management; what I'm saying is that the mechanics of the workplace make this behavior rare and simply not worth the effort in most cases. The safest thought pattern for one's sanity is to give praise, but never expect that praise to be reciprocated.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #35

ravenstine wrote: post #20

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 wo…

This is why I believe the best path to promotion is simply to quit and find a company that will give you the title you want. I'm not the kind of person that gets promoted, for whatever reasons, so I've been moving up by moving sideways. It sucks, but it is what it is.

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by skytrue » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #89

mark-wagner wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until November 2013 Microsoft used stack ranking.

Doesn’t Microsoft, as well as almost all other large software companies, still do almost the same thing by having a fixed distribution of ratings that needs to be met under some organizational unit? IE under each director of 100 people you have 5 A+, 25 A, 30 B, 30 C, 5 D, 5F?

Not to mention that there is a fixed budget, and so they can only promote so many people in a given period, as rewards are tied to promotions. That means that even if there are many top performers, they have to determine which ones aren't as "top" as others. This inherently creates a stack. Whoops.

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

#114

Post by ausjke » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

ar_lan wrote: post #30

ping_pong wrote: post #17

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…

Humans have proven time and time again that we are very good at optimizing for specific metrics, and apparently generally very poor at choosing the right metrics to target. School is a prime example, in my opinion - there is so much I "learned" in school that I'll never remember, because I didn't take a proper approach to learning - I just optimized for grades. I had a 4.7 GPA and could hardly tell you a thing about…

no better alternatives, if you do not do grading etc at school then what we have is a small group of kids learned a lot on their own(1% of them I guess), the rest 99% will just waste their youth totally and learned nothing at all.

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

#115

Post by jpadkins » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #108

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we don't have metrics, how are we to fairly and objectively compare one worker's performance to another?

I mean, what if you just don't? at my company, raises have more to do with the financial situation of the company than subjective reviews (although we do have these, they just don't factor into compensation that much). if the company is doing well, everyone gets a nice raise. everyone gets the same percentage bonus every year which is calculated based on the entire company's performance. maybe this makes us unattract…

the theory is that high productivity people will not want to work there, as everyone else benefits from their excellence. If companies that retain these high productivity people perform better than companies that don't, evolutionary pressure will force these egalitarian companies out.

I think this theory may be true in some fields like hedge funds or heavy sales performance based businesses.

In software, I am not sure high productivity people care about this issue, as long as their compensation is high enough.

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

#116

Post by beefield » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #95

GEBBL wrote: post #72

I hate the fact that in my current role, I am expected to give my colleagues ‘constructive feedback’. It seems like a minefield , when I am trying to focus on my own role, that I have to negotiate the feelings of a colleague as I leave feedback on them. I’d prefer to leave only positive feedback, but what my boss wants is that I need to find an improvement that my colleague has to make. I don’t like it.

Constructive feedback and most other negative feedback is really aspirational at the company level. It sounds good for HR to try to say it’s a company “value” and to encode it in reviews. In reality it’s never ever worth it to give constructive feedback to peers or upward (downward is OK). It’s bad for social dynamics, cohesion, and morale, especially when it’s formalized as part of some review process. It’s essentia…

Is there a company that consists of people that actually are willing and interested in getting "constructive feedback"? Basically I think that it would mean that the people are so intereted in the quality of the work they are doing that anything that might make their work better is interesting even if it turns out they have done something "wrong" earlier.

If there is , I might considering applying at some point. I assume that if there are, the companies must be relatively small, or in case of larger companies this might happen in selected departments like Skunk Works.

It would just be so refreshing to be able to hear and say the occasional "Hey, you know, actually there is a much better/nicer/less stupid/more efficient way to do what you are doing" without needing to waste time to think how to say that.

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

#117

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

moab wrote: post #101

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true peer bonuses in particular seem to be mainly reponsibly used. Probably because there's $$ and an accounting chain attached to them. But just last week I watched the hard work of a coworker get completely bowled over by another manager's "congrats on amazing work" email chain to someone else who used the work of my coworker without recognition.

That's really unfortunate. I agree that the $$$ and accounting help make sure the system is not abused in the usual case. Unfortunately jerks are unavoidable, and even if the manager knew the true story they could ignore it to emphasize the contributions of their own reports. It's hard to imagine a promo system that rewards hard work, where feedback comes from ones peers, and only promotes a fixed number of people wh…

Unfortunately I don't think it's a case of jerks vs not-jerks. Many years at a BigCorp has underlined to me now that the ethics and "professional economy" of working in one is entirely different than SmallCorp.

SmallCorp you all work for the bottom line or company goes bust. That acts as a damper on empire builders who build for their own sake, though there is still that behavior.

BigCorp it's unlikely your contributions are going to impact much of that kind of thing, even if you're up in senior management. So you're there for your Career(tm) first, company $$ success second. And in fact that is directly promoted through Perf, etc.

So the aggregate behavior of individuals is not only to self-promote but to encourage the self-promotions of others, that's how we get ahead by the measures defined as "getting ahead" by the company: internal promotion, project glory, internal and external speaking engagements and publications about your project, etc.

So a 100 person "congrats" and "that's amazing!" email (or its equivalent on LinkedIn) or whatever is just reasonable professional behavior. You're not a jerk for promoting yourself, you're just doing what is expected of you. The professional behavior of the modest but "plug along and do my job and help out and not self-promote" person is the one that's suspect in this scenario. The company _wants_ you to self-promote.

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

#118

Post by parliament32 » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

gfody wrote: post #106

parliament32 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found PRP to be a godsend when you're expected to give "feedback". PRP is praise-reprimand-praise: so construct your comment where your negative feedback is sandwiched between two positive feedback items. People respond well to it.

ah the shit sandwich, I trust you're joking ;)

If you're having a bad time with PRP you're just trash at implementing it. PRP doesn't mean you should literally "Good job on X. You fucked up on Y. Also good job on Z." -- you still need to have some human interaction skills. But in general, your feedback (whether it's a conversation or an email or a comment on a PR) should follow the general guidelines for what order to present things in.

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

#119

Post by sushid » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #53

ping_pong wrote: post #17

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…

> well known software company named...? :-)

Uber used stack ranking as recently as 2017 and routinely laid off the "worst performer."

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

#120

Post by Traster » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #107

ping_pong wrote: post #17

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…

This is what I loved about working at Netflix. We didn't have performance reviews. It was assumed that your performance was good to excellent, otherwise you wouldn't be working there anymore. You had a constant feedback loop with your manager on performance, but nothing was ever formal. Raises were completely divorced from any performance assessment. You were paid whatever they thought the max was for your skillset,…

I think this culture is often the difference between a company that's in exponential growth mode - where you care more about velocity than costs. When a company becomes a stable giant, the engineering department is no longer necessarily creating value in the same way it was before and often slowly becomes bloated.