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

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

#271

Post by r00fus »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #39

I always enjoy reading her posts. She must be an outstanding coworker. I have also found that some people are experts at "weaponized compliments." They can give a compliment that is an insult, or an attack. "That's great, how you roughened the edges." when talking about a graphic asset with obvious mistakes. "I always told Bob how great you are, at that." This is the "stolen valor" compliment. It insinuates that you…

Can you provide more details on this? I've always had a fascination with these kinds of subjects (eg, conversational terrorism like "distorted active listening" that politicians use) and the examples online seem to only hint at how a narcissist weaponizes this.

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

#272

Post by whats_a_quasar »

mulmen wrote: post #250
johnnyanmac wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments here show they need to get a job that doesn't abuse them. You shouldn't be so scared of a compliment because it will be used against you by your boss or coworkers. You'll never get work done if you spend all your time looking over your back. EDIT: looking through the 2020 thread, it's intersting how different the conversation went, especially wrt stack rankging. It felt like it was focusing more on proce…

The issue here is that you are making a decision for someone else.

No, you're not, you're making a decision to talk about your work experience with the other manager. Coworkers can talk to each other about work, what people work on is not secret information

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

#273

Post by thegrimmest »

trifurcate wrote: post #264
thegrimmest wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should just be the default. Many organizations do in fact write this down in their internal communication guides, where it's known as the ABCs (accuracy, brevity, clarity) of professional communication. > I always have doubts about others' work and suggestions on how they could do it better If you're right, they should listen to you (gratefully), if you're not they should tell you why so you can learn. There is…

> There is no good reason to react emotionally to professional criticism. And yet when it happens (not a rare event), it can be quite unproductive for both parties. I would hope that you deal with other worst-practices in your domain with greater grace than a total refusal to deal with and prevent pathological outcomes. Additionally, if you truly believe what you stated, then so long as I avoid sacrificing significan…

> And yet when it happens

When it does happen, like any other mistake, it should be corrected. Just like if someone put secrets into git, it should be explained to them why they shouldn't do that, and an expectation should be set not to do it again. If the individual fails to meet that expectation, disciplinary action should be taken, up to and including termination.

I've in fact had this happen to a developer who took PR comments personally. The rest of the team was very glad to see them terminated. Fifteen minutes per day adds up to a lot, and I'm quite sure it's more for staff whose roles are heavier on communication or those for whom anticipating people's feelings comes less naturally.

> rather than fearing being rebuked at each turn

My point is that a fear of professional criticism is a fundamental flaw in a professional, one that should be corrected to the benefit of the individual and the organization. A leader who refuses to correct this flaw in their reports is holding back their professional development and failing in their role as mentor. One should experience nothing but sublime gratitude that one's mistakes were found and corrected before they caused any damage.

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

#274

Post by johnnyanmac »

mulmen wrote: post #250
johnnyanmac wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments here show they need to get a job that doesn't abuse them. You shouldn't be so scared of a compliment because it will be used against you by your boss or coworkers. You'll never get work done if you spend all your time looking over your back. EDIT: looking through the 2020 thread, it's intersting how different the conversation went, especially wrt stack rankging. It felt like it was focusing more on proce…

The issue here is that you are making a decision for someone else.

I can see how it comes off that way, fair enough. But I'll clarify:

Abuse can be subjective and you shouldn't be abused based on your personal lines of abuse, which I of course cannot decide. If you are not comfortable in your work environment and have the capacity to leave, I hope it isn't a controversial take to suggest leaving. full time work is a good chunk of your life after all, and abuse will bleed into the other parts of your life even after you leave for the day.

If you have intrinsic reasons to stay despite having that capacity to leave, then I suppose you value those reasons above your personal mental health. Which is unfortuante, but your call.

----

This goes a bit beyond the topic of compliments. But such a topic seem to bring so many experiences of office politics out in this iteration of discussion, so I felt it be worth mentioning. As I edited in my above post, this post feels a lot more "personal" than the discussion 3 years ago.

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

#275

Post by ineptech »

mulmen wrote: post #209
jjice wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think correcting in private makes sense if also paired with a no-blame oriented retro after the fact for everyone to know what happened and to brainstorm about preventative measure in the future.

How can a correction be private and blameless? In a 1:1 if you talk about what “we” did wrong you’re clearly talking about me.

Those are two separate discussions. Even if I do something dumb and am rightly blamed for it, we can still have a retro to discuss process improvements that would make it harder for that mistake to happen again in the future.

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

#277

Post by gretch »

allarm wrote: post #228
gretch wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Okay, if we worked with each other in real life, I would accept that and I guess never speak to you that way.

Since this is a discussion of communication theory, I have to say, it’s crazy to me that you read it as passive aggressive.

Like when I say bad things about you, you can just accept those things in a straightforward fashion. However when I say good things about you, that cannot be accept in just as straightforward a way, and instead it is viewed as passive aggressive.

You don’t see the asymmetry there?

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

#278

Post by pertique »

mulmen wrote: post #230
pertique wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comple…

I'd probably take the more charitable view that usage of the phrase in the negative is a willingness to embrace the spirit of the saying rather than attribute it to a misunderstanding.

If it is a misunderstanding, that is. While all sources I've seen sdo agree the phrase is of military origin, the Ngram shows usage as early as 1908 [1], with usage between 1930 and 1955 in English fiction [2]. Maybe the origin of the phrase predates the pointless numbered hills of the Vietnam War, and perhaps those hills had value and were worth dying on.

Not that this is a hill I'm willing to die on, though. All I wanted to point out is that the opposite phrase is used often per past experience, and Google Trends [3]. I can't actually find any trend data for the "original," but it is used.

[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hill+to+die+on...

[2] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hill+to+die+on...

[3] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=w...

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

#279

Post by graypegg »

neilv wrote: post #253
graypegg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's about tone; it feels patronizing to me as well. "How does this approach handle {problem}?" is very socratic. You're asking a question meant to make them reconsider their idea in a very round about way. I think that actually comes off as assuming you're right in this conversation. I would imagine the person asking me that is being a snobby asshole showing off how intelligent they are. It's on the other pe…

> You're asking a question meant to make them reconsider their idea in a very round about way. How would you ask the question differently, if your intent was that you wanted to understand how they handled "{problem}"?

By not asking a question. “I think this won’t work because {reasoning}”. I’m fine being told that. If you’re working with level headed people, that starts a two way respectful conversation.

Honestly that’s just my mileage I guess. Maybe it depends on everyone’s own personal attachment to their ideas, but if someone thinks I’m about to pull the footgun trigger, I want them to tell me that.

If they’re right, they saved my foot.

If they’re wrong, I show them that the safety is on, and we go on.

Getting all “well what is it you expect to accomplish with that? Is this aligned with the incentives of the team? If there was a safety would it be on, hypothetically?” just serves to muddy the message and come off “smarter than thou”. I’d call it manager speak.

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

#280

Post by mulmen »

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #272
mulmen wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is that you are making a decision for someone else.

No, you're not, you're making a decision to talk about your work experience with the other manager. Coworkers can talk to each other about work, what people work on is not secret information

You're talking about someone else to their manager. That is the person you are making a decision for.
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