Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

jvns.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 371 posts

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#221

Post by johnnyanmac »

mulmen wrote: post #212
johnnyanmac wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do not volunteer information. Well, I guess where you worked was either stack ranked or a generally oppressive atmosphere smothered in politics. Work should be a collaborative effort, even from the greedy billionaire perspective you hire 2 people to do twice the work. If you end up being 25% efficient something is wrong. And this is a sort of odd angle to begin with: your work isn't private to the manager stack. So…

That all sounds and feels nice but is divorced from reality. It is admirable to want to improve working conditions but you should consider the effect on your peers when you take that stand.

Divorced from the reality that you don't own the work corporations extract from you? From the reality that there are co-workers who aren't mutually planning your destruction?

Everyone's experience is different, I guess. But I assure you there are places where co-workers are fine focusing on work and not making specifically you miserable.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#222

Post by pxc »

eweise wrote: post #157
ori_b wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are calling out your colleagues for doing bad work, or not the way you would do it work, you should try to rephrase into praise w/ direction. “I really liked how you tackled this, have you thought about this approach?” Instead of “Why didn’t you do it this way?” I don't want to work with people that communicate this way.

I do. Having worked with so many engineers with almost no social skills, I think there's a lot of room for improvement in their communication style. "Why didn't you do it this way?" is aggressive and critical. "have you thought about this approach?" makes them feel like you have their back and are trying to help. I agree there's not a huge need to the "I really liked how you tackled this" part but even never praising…

> "Why didn't you do it this way?" is aggressive and critical.

'Why didn't you do it this way?' reveals an expectation that you would have done whatever it was 'this way', but it doesn't indicate that that expectation is normative. A junior might well ask that just because 'this way' is the only way they know how to do it, and they're curious about whether the developer they're asking chose a different route for stylistic reasons, performance reasons, or out of some entirely different consideration. Nothing critical about it.

Inferring criticism from mere surprise may be uncomfortable, but it also seems a kind of misapprehension that will very quickly sort itself out as the conversation goes on.

In contrast to the case above, by the way, 'have you thought about this [other] approach?' does imply that the asker knows better because it very directly and explicitly raises the possibility that the one being asked hasn't even considered alternative implementations.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#223

Post by pertique »

mulmen wrote: post #188
sethammons wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I let managers know about great interactions with their direct reports. It never occurred to me to ask. I may start doing so. But this reason for not doing it boils my blood: > One person mentioned that they got reprimanded by their manager for getting a spot peer bonus for helping someone on another team. This is a hill I will die on: people at $this_company are a team and helping one another is critical in building…

The phrase is “I won’t die on that hill”. It references the pointless meat grinders of the Vietnam war. There is no corollary hill worth dying on. If you still want to throw your life away on a meaningless endeavor do not bring me along with you. Talking to management can and will hurt people. Do not make decisions for others without their consent.

If there was no corollary hill worth dying on then there'd be no reason to specify that the hill in question wasn't worth dying on. Thus, we can assume there are hills worth dying on.

Anecdotally, I think I hear the "I will die on this hill" variant more than the converse.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#224

Post by reactordev »

ineptech wrote: post #195
gabereiser wrote: post #4

>Ask if it’s ok first… This is very astute. Not everyone likes getting praise in public settings or they might not want their micromanaging manager to know they helped you outside the scope of their work. You should be cognizant of when praise should be given (i.e. when is it appropriate) and in what context as mentioned in the article. That said, if you aren’t thanking and praising your colleagues for doing good wor…

Fair warning, the research mentioned at the beginning of this video is controversial and (I think it's fair to say) has generally failed to replicate. The research in question ("Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance", Dweck & Mueller): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9686450/ Overview of the controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism Previous HN discussion o…

Has it? Ok, I’ll follow up and see if a better example can be found/substituted. Thank you.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#225

Post by kayodelycaon »

karaterobot wrote: post #132
agloe_dreams wrote: post #5

I disagree with the angle on this about asking and how to go about things but mostly because complimenting in context is helpful. When someone does great work, tell everyone, not just their manager. Do it in public and clearly in standups after they talk about what they did last day/week. "I just want to mention, that work that Joe did on that module is fantastic, thanks!" It is so easy to be a force for good. Being…

I think people are coming up with edge cases like "what if they helped you do something they weren't supposed to do, and complimenting them on it gets them fired?! ", but that's an exception, and most people would use common sense and discretion in any reasonable scenario. As a rule, pass on a good word about people who help you, it's not that complicated.

Let's try a different scenario here:

My boss is great and part of that is being aware of everything that's going on. We're got some problem people who really love bypassing our support queue. And then some critical system goes down while their favorite developer is on vacation and we don't find out until they've escalated the problem to upper management.

If I got complimented by someone in another department for something he wasn't aware of, I will get asked for the context. If it's important, I need to create a support ticket to document it.

Personally, I'm fine with that but sometimes I really don't want to spend 15 minutes discussing and writing up what may have been a 30-second conversation.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#226

Post by Eric_WVGG »

I do this a lot with various service-people… I've missed a few flights here or there, and then contacted the airline, "hey I missed my flight, Janet Buttersworth helped me fix it up for a flight an hour later, she was super cool and I really appreciate it.

Or a cable installer, I'll just ask for the name of their boss so I can put in a good word for them.

Quite sure this has been responsible for a few bonuses here and there, pay it forward, etc.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#227

Post by pxc »

eweise wrote: post #186
tharkun__ wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's different though. I don't think your parent meant the "have you tried this approach" part but the very very fake and passive aggressive praise that then is turned into "actually I don't think you did great, please try this other approach". That's so fake and irritating.

Yeah I agree that comes across as fake, especially if done constantly. But its still good to recognize your peers effort even if sometimes it results in the wrong outcome.

Fake praise isn't recognition, though. It verges on (and sometimes is quite intentionally) mockery.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#228

Post by allarm »

gretch wrote: post #175
function_seven wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I didn't say any of that. I would like people to be straight with me. I try to be straight with them. Golden Rule and all of that, right?

> I would like people to be straight with me But you understand that people can genuinely like you right? Perhaps that person is trying to not throw the baby out with the bath water. “Hey I’m glad you patched the bug, but can you give the SREs a heads up next time? They p0’ed on an expected traffic spike” The person is actually happy with you for fixing a bug. They don’t want to you take away that in the future, to n…

> Hey I’m glad you patched the bug, but can you give the SREs a heads up next time?

I read it as passive aggressive. Pretty much everyone in my culture would read it this way. If you think it is a good example, please reconsider.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#229

Post by gabereiser »

Spooky23 wrote: post #59
gabereiser wrote: post #4

>Ask if it’s ok first… This is very astute. Not everyone likes getting praise in public settings or they might not want their micromanaging manager to know they helped you outside the scope of their work. You should be cognizant of when praise should be given (i.e. when is it appropriate) and in what context as mentioned in the article. That said, if you aren’t thanking and praising your colleagues for doing good wor…

I think that performative praise is obnoxious most of the time, and causes more trouble than it’s worth, unless there’s a process behind it. Individual public stuff tends to bias heroics or forget people behind the scenes. In public, team praise is the best policy.

Sometimes you just want someone to acknowledge the hard effort you put into it and share the rejoice that it’s over/complete.

Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)

#230

Post by mulmen »

pertique wrote: post #223
mulmen wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase is “I won’t die on that hill”. It references the pointless meat grinders of the Vietnam war. There is no corollary hill worth dying on. If you still want to throw your life away on a meaningless endeavor do not bring me along with you. Talking to management can and will hurt people. Do not make decisions for others without their consent.

If there was no corollary hill worth dying on then there'd be no reason to specify that the hill in question wasn't worth dying on. Thus, we can assume there are hills worth dying on. Anecdotally, I think I hear the "I will die on this hill" variant more than the converse.

> If there was no corollary hill worth dying on then there'd be no reason to specify that the hill in question wasn't worth dying on.

This does not hold. The hills in question were numbered arbitrarily. They had no value. We threw away lives to capture them only to give them up immediately. It was a pointless exercise. The phrase references this pointlessness. Attempting to assign meaning to the hill betrays a complete misunderstanding of both the history and the lesson.

Post reply on HN