HN comments: 110 People who said thank you: 5
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Just Wanted to Say Thanks
121–130 of 257 posts
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#122On a side topic: any idea why the self-check can't be disabled in cert-manager? It seems like the project would not even exist otherwise.
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#123Expressing gratitude is one of the surest paths to a better day. One of my all-time favorite books -- "How to Want What You Have" by Tim Miller, PhD -- has as its central thesis the idea that: 1. Most people are relatively unhappy; 2. The root cause is our tendency always to want More [money/power, love, recognition] -- which stems from evolutionarily adaptive traits; 3. The remedy is to live in the present moment --…
I will find a copy of the book to see what I can learn from it. Until now I've learnt that one cannot attain happiness as a state. It's fleeting. I stumble across it in moments, and it's gone again. And so I try to be content, which is much more persistent.
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Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#124I’ve learned that when I have a positive thought about someone, it’s generally worth communicating it. If I think a coworker saved me on some project, I tell them. If my partner is making me feel warm and fuzzy, I tell her. If someone impresses me, I say so. I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have anoth…
> I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have another motive behind them. I have the displeasure of working with a team member who does the exact opposite: at every chance he gets, he expressed his displeasure regarding other team members to management. Once I confronted him about that behavior and he state…
I've had peers like that too. I'm sad at the proliferation of zero-sum thinking. It's like a prisoner's dilemma. The equilibrium state is competition, but collaboration gets us all ahead in a non-zero-sum way. Or, if you really do see it all as zero sum, there's still an analytical way out. Just take the long view. Collaboration will get our group ahead of the group who competes for the smallest things. Hyperbolically, we'd all rather be a low level IC at early my-shares-will-be-worth-infinity Google than be a VP at an imploding firm.
The pro-social way out of the prisoner's dilemma's shitty equilibrium requires deliberate effort to foster the sort of personal trust and collaboration-by-default attitude that makes the 8+ work hours of every weekday of most of our lives not suck.
And it makes people feel good, which is personally enough for me (while recognizing the privilege that lets me say I have enough).
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#125I’ve learned that when I have a positive thought about someone, it’s generally worth communicating it. If I think a coworker saved me on some project, I tell them. If my partner is making me feel warm and fuzzy, I tell her. If someone impresses me, I say so. I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have anoth…
> I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have another motive behind them. I have the displeasure of working with a team member who does the exact opposite: at every chance he gets, he expressed his displeasure regarding other team members to management. Once I confronted him about that behavior and he state…
This reflects just as badly on the org's leadership, as it does on the individual. Managers and other leaders need to give people a talking to, when they engage in toxic behavior. And they need to set a good example by promoting people who are good teammates. Do this consistently, and people will change their behavior for the better.
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#126I’ve learned that when I have a positive thought about someone, it’s generally worth communicating it. If I think a coworker saved me on some project, I tell them. If my partner is making me feel warm and fuzzy, I tell her. If someone impresses me, I say so. I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have anoth…
On every retrospective session we do, every other week, there is an additional column called “stars” or “heros” and we add a note each there giving praises to someone else for something they did those two weeks. We then read them all out followed by a round of applause for each one of them. It brings great positivity to the team.
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have another motive behind them. I have the displeasure of working with a team member who does the exact opposite: at every chance he gets, he expressed his displeasure regarding other team members to management. Once I confronted him about that behavior and he state…
Bad things and behaviours should be called out in order to actively fix them instead of just waiting on that they are magically fixed. But this must be done in a constructive way. Pointing that something is wrong won't fix it, and if in the meantime you manage to ruin relationships within your team you have actively made things worse just to pretend being a good leader, but just proving you are an awful person to wor…
Even if you don't accidentally ruin relationships, you might ruin the good behavior alongside the bad. I'm a big fan of a feedback system I've heard called "stop start continue." Stopping these bad behaviors, and starting these good behaviors are in the same vein of fixing bad things.
But continuing these existing good behaviors is really important too. If you tell people what not to change, then they won't accidentally change the good stuff in their efforts to fix orthogonal things.
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#128Github should natively cook in a project/user based tipping system to help people show their appreciation. This feels lazy to say but I know for a fact I would send tips way more frequently if they made tipping a one click experience.
I know there are third party tools that let projects cook tip functionality into their projects.
With how difficult it is to find time to write open source software alone, time put towards setting that up winds up feeling like me prioritizing thirsting for tips and donations over finishing whatever the original goal of the project was. I know for a fact I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#129I’ve learned that when I have a positive thought about someone, it’s generally worth communicating it. If I think a coworker saved me on some project, I tell them. If my partner is making me feel warm and fuzzy, I tell her. If someone impresses me, I say so. I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have anoth…
On every retrospective session we do, every other week, there is an additional column called “stars” or “heros” and we add a note each there giving praises to someone else for something they did those two weeks. We then read them all out followed by a round of applause for each one of them. It brings great positivity to the team.
> We then read them all out followed by a round of applause for each one of them
That may be good for team building and make some people feel better but, personally, I would find that situation very uncomfortable.
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#130Maybe GitHub should add an optional "Thanks" feedback channel, perhaps also include a place where users can submit success stories about their use of the given project. This could fill the role of a channel to express gratitude, and provide a place where prospective users could see how others have utilized the project successfully in the real world.
Nice! Now if there was a way to make it sticky, it would be perfect. Maybe a new label and milestone to better expose it?