I've never worked in a large organization, so perhaps this is a stupid question, by why wouldn't the manager know that a person under him did a great job? Isn't that a manager's job?
When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
331–340 of 371 posts
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I think you need to revisit the definition. There is nothing accusatory about "Why didn't you do it this way?" okay: >indicating or suggesting that one believes a person has done something wrong. I believe the definition is apt here. You believe something is done wrong so you open it up with an accusation of not doing it "this way". It's almost textbook definition. There could be room for context, but in a vacuum it…
> You believe something is done wrong so you open it up with an accusation Nowhere is this belief stated in the text. It's simply not what the words mean. It is being fabricated entirely in your mind. The only appropriate thing to infer from a question is that the asker wants to know the answer. > I've been asked "why" so many times in an accusatory tone IRL that it's always going to put me on the defensive. The onus…
>Nowhere is this belief stated in the text. It's simply not what the words mean.
Why does one ask "why"? There's two primary reason: curiosity and accusation. And generally you're not too curious on what any single worker in day to day work is doing. You may not process it as an accusation, but it can come off that way.
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We seem to not being seeing eye to eye so no point continuing this conversation. Instead of pushing all the blame on me, consider other lenses and experiences and understand why they feel that way. I am very pragmatic and would like to simply assume a question is a question, but that's just not how 90% of questions work when a manager is DM'ing you in chat, or some lead pops into a code review to ask why you made this PR in their module.
Heck, consider this conversation. I give my experiences and you dismiss me and try to prove my experiences wrong with algorithms. Are you really surprised I act defensively when your first instinct is to say my experienced are wrong? Can you see why this may come off as insensitive and foster a hostile environment, an environment where no one cares about your opinions and pushes all blame on you?
Good thing I don't need to tolerate comments like this at work.
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#333Asking is CRITICAL . Do not praise me without consent. I have had too many abusive managers in my career to ever desire unsolicited praise. All information is a weapon in the hands of an abuser. I may have helped you complete your task but my manager could interpret that as wasting time not delivering my own task. In other words going over someone’s head (direct to their manager) is an aggressive and rude action. It…
>All information is a weapon in the hands of an abuser.
the only way to stop giving your company information is by not working there. Why does this come off like you can hide the work you do at work?
>I may have helped you complete your task but my manager could interpret that as wasting time not delivering my own task.
If I feel that worried I simply won't help. Direct them to your manager and make sure it goes down the chain of command before getting a task assigned to you. Boring, and inefficient, yes. But it is maliciously complient to the oppressive atmosphere your manager contributes to.
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
nah people know when they’re sucking and you just look patronizing talking like that ever play any competitive games? theres nothing you can say directly to a person when they screw up. you have to just have to ignore and focus on the gameplay. saying anything to them raises the likelihood of a negative outcome.
Mike Tomlin (coach of the steelers) is a master motivator. I really like what he said to his rookie QB after a bad loss https://twitter.com/sdextrasmedia/status/1585807604277657600 "There's going to be better days. Head, high, fighting all the time." You can see Kenny Picket visibly lift his head up as they walked back to the locker room.
yea that's because it's his coach. if his teammate said that and it wasn't someone he had a lot of rapport with he'd just say eat a dick
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s funny because I still feel the opposite of you — I think the example where you say that you like their solution is a better approach, as long as it’s not horrible. It leaves open the possibility that you as the reviewer are actually mistaken, and they possibly have a good reason for doing it that way. I may be the senior reviewing the junior’s code, but they probably spent longer looking at the problem than me a…
It feels stilted and weird to me. My first thought was "OK, that sounds unnatural, I'd have to say it different." Good idea, but I could never let it come out of my mouth that was since no actual human being talks that way.
as a manager, I'm not looking to challenge your outcome, I'm looking for you to explain why your solution works best compared to the others that were suggested. "have you thought about X?" is a genuine curiosity so that I may defend your solution to the higher ups when they ask me "what about X?". They are constantly being courted by vendors. Vendors who think they know the problem better than you do. Let's show them that you covered the bases and hit that home run properly.
In this context, is it weird to ask if you've "thought about X"? Is it disingenuine or condescending to you? Servant leadership is about supporting the team that I'm responsible for, to block and shield them from the wrath of VPs who want blood because their napkin-idea-over-cocktails wasn't selected for funding.
I'm trying to prepare you, the presenter of the solution, for the onslaught of questions that will come your way. If you feel these kinds of questions are a praise sandwich, I'm more than happy to present your solution for you.
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's right there in the description of the situation. You didn't like it: "If you are calling out your colleagues for doing bad work, ...".
There's a spectrum of "like" and "didn't like", you know. Have you ever truly come across a situation with a co-worker where there was no redeedming quality in their code review?
Yes? It's certainly not common but I've been asked to review PRs where the author misunderstood the problem, did completely the wrong thing, and did a bad job of doing the wrong thing too. I think it's always been from someone who normally does decent work but was in a rush for whatever reason and just completely botched things this one time.
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#337>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 really liked how you tackled this, have you thought about this approach?” Instead of “Why didn’t you do it this way?” Commonly called "Positive, to & try", taught to Snowboard Instructors. i.e. "I really like how you did that, to get even better results, try x" (I'm being vague to not make it about snowboarding, but it's important to be concrete) i.e. Instead of "that took too long, make it faster", use I really…
Except I’m not imparting some snowbro knowledge. I’m asking if they had indeed, thought about that approach because odds are, we’ll be asked about it. I’m trying to either see if you, indeed looked at all the options and carved the gnarly path forward through it, or didn’t know this other way existed and you could use some of that knowledge to improve your solution. I do know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the VPs will ask - “What about X?” because some vendor is in their ear.
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You believe something is done wrong so you open it up with an accusation Nowhere is this belief stated in the text. It's simply not what the words mean. It is being fabricated entirely in your mind. The only appropriate thing to infer from a question is that the asker wants to know the answer. > I've been asked "why" so many times in an accusatory tone IRL that it's always going to put me on the defensive. The onus…
>Nowhere is this belief stated in the text. It's simply not what the words mean. Why does one ask "why"? There's two primary reason: curiosity and accusation. And generally you're not too curious on what any single worker in day to day work is doing. You may not process it as an accusation, but it can come off that way. ----- We seem to not being seeing eye to eye so no point continuing this conversation. Instead of…
I’m with you on this. However, it’s going to take time for those who don’t understand this to understand this. You have to live through it I think. Once you have, you’ll see it immediately. If you haven’t, well, enjoy your direct tone deaf communication style.
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I think you need to revisit the definition. There is nothing accusatory about "Why didn't you do it this way?" okay: >indicating or suggesting that one believes a person has done something wrong. I believe the definition is apt here. You believe something is done wrong so you open it up with an accusation of not doing it "this way". It's almost textbook definition. There could be room for context, but in a vacuum it…
> You believe something is done wrong so you open it up with an accusation Nowhere is this belief stated in the text. It's simply not what the words mean. It is being fabricated entirely in your mind. The only appropriate thing to infer from a question is that the asker wants to know the answer. > I've been asked "why" so many times in an accusatory tone IRL that it's always going to put me on the defensive. The onus…
>The only appropriate thing to infer from a question is that the asker wants to know the answer.
Categorically incorrect.
Every question comes from either one of two places. Ignorance. Or Vindictiveness.
Let’s explore the latter.
You: driving home after having a great time at your companies happy hour. You finally got to discuss that project you wanted to work on and got a verbal green light.
Cop: “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
In this situation - if the question was indeed ignorance, you respond “going home from work”. You assume it’s ignorance because we genuinely want to believe people are good.
In this situation, the cop is not asking from a place of ignorance, but vindictiveness. He/she believed you broke the law, the next question will prove this…
Cop: “Have you been drinking?”
In my examples above (far far above), “have you thought about X?” Is ignorance. Do you see the difference?
Re: When your coworker does great work, tell their manager (2020)
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on context, but I have found the opposite. "Have you thought about this approach" can come across as condcending. Of course I thought about that, it was the first thing I tried before the much more complicated solution that actually works. "Why didn't you do it this way" invites them to share the war story of what happened when they tried doing that.
But your example are cases where you feel strong because you have this war story. How about the cases where you just made a mistake? That said, I never liked the 'sandwhich' method, saying; "Great effort. The result is horrible, like your indentation though."
The value of the sandwich method depends upon some sort of equivalence of the praise. It may have taken hours or days of work to produce the code that generated horrible results, while indentation would likely register as a triviality. To choose a better example: "Your code is great. The results were off, but how you structured it made it easy to isolate the problem."
Overall I agree with your assessment though. People giving this sort of feedback usually focus upon the problem and grasp at straws when it comes to the compliment.