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

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

#151

Post by khalilravanna » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

KitDuncan wrote: post #74

benlumen wrote: post #15

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).

Just in general say thank you more often. It helps a lot with team morale.

100% agree. I will build on this by saying that it’s almost as important to not go overboard such that you’re “thank you” is meaningless. I had a coworker once who did this constantly and it at least to me ended up coming off as disingenuous and kind of smarmy.

One way to fight this is to push yourself to give TSP: Truthful Specific Positive feedback. Instead of saying “nice job”, say “You did a nice job on that project by making sure to keep stakeholders informed. Especially when the API that was originally scoped got scrapped you made sure to loop people in early.” The former tells them they did a “Nice job” which feels nice but doesn’t tell them what they did right or how to do it well again. Anyone could say "Nice job" without knowing any part of what they contributed.

The latter specifically highlights why you’re saying it’s a nice job. Now they can 1) take that information knowing they can have good results by repeating it and 2) feel better about the thanks/compliment knowing it's based on something they actually did, instead of a just a general pat on the back.

Looping this back to the original post, the more specific your positive feedback is to the manager, the more they can do with it. If I went to my manager and said one of my reports deserves a promotion because "People said they were doing a 'Nice job'", I'd likely be laughed at. But if I go in with "So-and-so did a bang up on job on project X by doing A, B, and C", that's going to be a much more fruitful conversation.

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

#152

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #134

jedberg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm curious about the 360 reviews. Where I work, peer feedback is solicited by your manager. So your manager can choose the people writing your feedback based on whether the manager wants to reward you or to screw you over. As a byproduct, your peers do not fear any repercussions for bad behavior if they have confidence that their manager has their back. So, for example, people have no qualms about sabotaging the wor…

I don't think they are related. I think what stops that from happening is open feedback across the company and hiring the right people. No one is really thinking, "man I would totally screw this person if not for the bad review they might give me!". Especially since the reviews only happen once a year.

If you do something negative to someone, that person will either directly address it with you or your manager at the time. The reviews are more to address longer term behavior.

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

#153

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #139

jpadkins wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sur…

I think high productivity people by definition cause everyone* else to benefit from their excellence. So high productivity people who don't want everyone else to benefit are a bit of an oxymoron. (* or at least most others)

LeBron James wants his whole team to succeed, but he still expects to be paid the most.

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

#154

Post by xivzgrev » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

This is the biggest benefit of 15five. You can give a high five to anyone for exactly this - work that usually would go unrecognized but furthers the company’s goals

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

#155

Post by xivzgrev » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:19 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,…

Sounds like you are no longer there - what was the dark side?

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

#156

Post by velp » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #67

humanlion87 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I am also stupid in another way - I can't boast of my "incredible" accomplishments by sending out huge and beautiful emails to prove my "impact". With that kind of combination, I am looking forward to stagnation at my current level.

That's me. I don't like visibility. I like to do a good job for the sake of the job without bragging.

I feel this, and it's challenging because visibility is important for advancement. My manager advised me to think of the broadcast emails/posts as ways to boost the people I collaborated with, and that's helped a lot. It doesn't feel like I'm tooting my own horn, people still see the impact of projects I contributed to, and my colleagues are always enthusiastic to work on projects with me because they know they will get good visibility and be "given" they credit they deserve for their contributions.

Granted my role is very crossfunctional, but I think it's pretty unusual to be consistently impactful working in your own silo. So boosting my collaborators gets me the visibility benefits, without feeling insincere, and contributes to a work culture that is collaborative and supportive.

For context, I lead an analytics team at a FAANG company.

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

#157

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

fbanon9876 wrote: post #143

humanlion87 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I am also stupid in another way - I can't boast of my "incredible" accomplishments by sending out huge and beautiful emails to prove my "impact". With that kind of combination, I am looking forward to stagnation at my current level.

I felt similarly, earlier in my career. Until a manager explained it this way: "Suppose you make the greatest thing in the world, but nobody knows about it. Wouldn't it be better to have spent 95% of the effort on making a slightly inferior product, and 5% to actually get people to use it? Isn't it more impactful to make something people use? Well, in order to get people to use anything, you have to talk about it."

Thats a cop out by a lazy or self-centered manager. The difference is that it's the manager's job to evaluate you vs marketing a product to an unknown buyer. A good manager would actively work with their employees to know what is going on. Most managers I've seen care about their own performance and hitting target metrica.

If you're not good a marketing a product, you should still spend 100% of your effort on making it great, and hire a marketing person to do the other part.

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

#158

Post by sjtindell » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #21

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…

I'm stupid. I give people the praise they deserve, even when it hurts me.

How can giving praise hurt you?

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

#159

Post by gowld » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

humanlion87 wrote: post #49

giantg2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm stupid. I give people the praise they deserve, even when it hurts me.

Same here. I am also stupid in another way - I can't boast of my "incredible" accomplishments by sending out huge and beautiful emails to prove my "impact". With that kind of combination, I am looking forward to stagnation at my current level.

"stagnation" mens "avoiding the rat race" and it has mental health benefits that masy be worth more than the raise.

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

#160

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #149

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…

Stack ranking intuitively makes sense. Rank people by performance, fire the bottom 10% or so, promote the top 10%. The first iteration can work very well. But what about the next iterations? People will adapt to the process and change their behavior. Under stacked ranking, if you are interviewing someone brilliant that can potentially be the strongest member on your team, is it in your best personal interest to hire…

In my experience the biggest problem with stack ranking is that it's not easy to update. I mentored a developer and he skyrocketed from the bottom of the stack to near the top in real terms over the course of two years. But he could never escape his "reputation" as a lower tier person. He left, over two years quadrupled his income, and now I work for him. I doubled my income.