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Just Wanted to Say Thanks

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Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#241

Post by lytefm »

gigatexal wrote: post #233

We need more of this. We need more of everything in OSS (funding, testing, support, etc) but the simple "thank you for your time, your efforts, your well crafted PR, your project that helps me accomplish X, Y, Z..." go a long, long way. I try to do this at work. Anytime I get help on something big or small I always say thanks, thanks for taking the time, thanks for explaining it, etc, because I know they're busy just…

Absolutely. I've maintained a fork of an abandoned OSS project mainly because I needed it for myself and it was easy to just do it on GitHub. Turns out some folks noticed, starred the repo, used the code and someone opened a „Thank you” - Issue earlier this year. That was a main reason for me to actually publish the code on NPM, work towards a stable version and write some documentation at some point.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#242

Post by gigatexal »

lytefm wrote: post #241
gigatexal wrote: post #233

We need more of this. We need more of everything in OSS (funding, testing, support, etc) but the simple "thank you for your time, your efforts, your well crafted PR, your project that helps me accomplish X, Y, Z..." go a long, long way. I try to do this at work. Anytime I get help on something big or small I always say thanks, thanks for taking the time, thanks for explaining it, etc, because I know they're busy just…

Absolutely. I've maintained a fork of an abandoned OSS project mainly because I needed it for myself and it was easy to just do it on GitHub. Turns out some folks noticed, starred the repo, used the code and someone opened a „Thank you” - Issue earlier this year. That was a main reason for me to actually publish the code on NPM, work towards a stable version and write some documentation at some point.

That’s awesome! Thanks for doing that.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#243

Post by bombcar »

qmarchi wrote: post #113
delgaudm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those who email me with questions never donate. Can you ask them to? It's not exactly the same problem, but I have a modestly successful youtube channel, and I get unsolicited email questions seeking help every day, and I personally try and answer all that I can. I've used the following technique and it helped me receive donations to offset the support effort. I added a quiet but clear call to action my support repl…

I've noticed something similar in my line of work. One of the major "metrics" that we track is how much a customer has to put effort in to fix an issue/ticket. This is measured via a survey that's sent out after ticket closure, but many customers never see it or choise not to respond. A few months ago, I started adding a little post script "A survey is sent out after this case closes. I would appreciate it if you ans…

I bet you could get that much close to 100% if the resolution email just included the survey link.

If I get that in the midst of solving the problem I always click - if the survey comes hours or days late I may not make the effort.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#244

Post by devilduck »

symlinkk wrote: post #148
ImaCake wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personally experienced this. My otherwise really good manager had a monthly vote for the best worker in our small team where each vote was publicly announced. I, and another coworker, never got a vote while others got several. Really great way to make some of your workers feel really left out!

If they handed out the award to everyone it would be meaningless

Awards are already meaningless

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#245

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

briandear wrote: post #154
kostarelo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds horrible to me. I’d much rather be in the background rather than getting effusive, mandatory public praise. Maybe I’m weird, but I’m not motivated by cupcakes, gold stars and clapping. If I do a good job, that’s just the minimum standard. If I do something worthy of clapping, then just remember that when it’s time to award annual RSUs and bonuses or when a special project comes up that needs leadership. T…

> Instead, perhaps recognize each week the people that didn’t meet the standard

My goodness. This is horrifying.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#246

Post by memling »

yiyus wrote: post #160
cjmcqueen wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gratitude is a skill anyone can learn. Accepting compliments is also a skill that anyone can learn. But, both of them take practice. It's okay to feel uncomfortable with something, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong. Sometimes we're just uncomfortable with something because it's not something we've had a lot of experience with.

Expressing gratitude and accepting compliments are nice skills to have, but making of it a public show is just bad taste, IMO.

> Expressing gratitude and accepting compliments are nice skills to have, but making of it a public show is just bad taste, IMO.

I wonder if this is a culture or generational difference. I've found my employer's incentives / gestures a bit lackluster compared to simple gratitude. I like working on a team where the members are publicly thankful for their teammates' efforts. Shrute Bucks stink.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#247

Post by memling »

warent wrote: post #194
adar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing's stopping you from praising people at other times, is it?

Nobody is arguing that. The debate is around whether manufactured public praise is tasteless

> Nobody is arguing that. The debate is around whether manufactured public praise is tasteless

I suppose it can feel that way, but on the other hand forcing oneself to find and appreciate others efforts and good qualities—even if there are perceptibly few of them—can be a good exercise, especially for those of us who are naturally quite critical. While I'd argue that it's a good virtue and intrinsically valuable, the habit is also practically beneficial: people perform better when they're appreciated and recognized; one's ability to form and work with teams is noticeably easier; it's easier to adjust performance and expectations; et c.

People often put the cart before the horse when talking about stuff like this. Manufacturing gratitude is doesn't make it less genuine or fundamentally less good.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#248

Post by berkes »

cutemonster wrote: post #167
berkes wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you. But having once worked with team-members who take critique at anything, personally, I feel there is more to this. I always try to praise a person. But I also want to "reserve all rights" to say that a codebase is crap or a choice made in the past was evidently a bad choice. Finding the balance to critique work that a person contributed to, without criticising that person itself, is hard. A true challenge,…

> if a project is Open Source and you truly feel you have to "warn" people against using [it] How did you go about doing that? (How did you warn others about an oss project, ... Maybe one/some project at GitHub?)

I don't do that in public.

Maybe when someone somewhere asks why I don't want to include X-lib or Y-dependency, I'll explain why for this case its not a good choice.

Generally, I keep this to the consultancy-reports and on-premise discussions though.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#249

Post by berkes »

vinay_ys wrote: post #228
J5892 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that if part of a codebase is truly shoddy or just plain badly written, the developer who wrote it generally knows how bad it is, or at least that it's not up to snuff. Criticizing the code itself (with useful feedback), and not the person who wrote it, gives them a chance to own up to it if they're comfortable with doing that. And if not, you're still able to improve the codebase without directly calling…

For someone to see your criticism as objective, the objective standard should be established ahead of time. For design/code reviews this means having coding standards/guidelines and training everyone to stick to them – rules of the game are known ahead of time to all participants. Then it is much easier to convince someone that it is objective feedback. A critical skill for a senior engineer in a team is to define an…

> as objective, the objective standard should be established ahead of time.

A lot of projects lack that "objective standards". I've been helping to solve exactly this. But code can be messy without having a clear defined "clean code" standard. And a project can perform horrible, without having minimum response times docutented.

Often my job was to define all those. And often those definitions already hit a nerve. When suddenly your code is marked as "far too tightly coupled" or "too complex: AB above 34" when you thought it was neat and smart code, that is confronting and, I've seen, is often felt as personal critique.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#250

Post by cutemonster »

berkes wrote: post #248
cutemonster wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a project is Open Source and you truly feel you have to "warn" people against using [it] How did you go about doing that? (How did you warn others about an oss project, ... Maybe one/some project at GitHub?)

I don't do that in public. Maybe when someone somewhere asks why I don't want to include X-lib or Y-dependency, I'll explain why for this case its not a good choice. Generally, I keep this to the consultancy-reports and on-premise discussions though.

Thanks for explaining

I would have appreciated working with you/people who gave some critical thoughts to third party dependencies.

I hope that each time you go to a new employer, you try again and see if they're happy with getting such warnings

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