This is exactly what we need in our industry as a whole. Please, express your gratitude to your teammates about every positive action you notice around. It helps to build up morale and stronger bonds and also has literally zero costs.
This is great to see.
Just Wanted to Say Thanks
111–120 of 257 posts
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#112Personally I think the Facebooks of the world ruined thanks.
I have no actual data but I swear people used to be more open with their thanks before everything was boiled down to one-click feedback (likes)
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#113I've been on the receiving end of such gratitude, and it always brightens my day. It's easy to think your hard work isn't noticed, until you realize how seldom you acknowledge other people's work. Unfortunately, explicit gratitude is very rare. Donations are even rarer. The "ask a question" and "support this site" buttons on my website are next to each other. I get 15 questions for every donation. About 30€ per 100 0…
>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 answered it!". Response rates for the survey jumped from 11% to 75%. Many of the responses were generally positive as well, trending our scores up by 11% and still climbing.
Sometimes asking nicely is a powerful tool, for good and potentially evil.
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#114Earlier 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…
I can confirm that some people think like this ( not me). I delegated some areas during a big event and I took one of those persons asside because he was too rude. He said that he pointed out mistakes ( which was correct, but they were new) and that they would remember it better if he was this direct. I just mentioned that he should not be this rude and just explain them what they did wrong and he adjusted. It was li…
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Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#115Expressing 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 found it in the Internet Archive's collection if anyone wants to try borrowing a digital copy for free: https://archive.org/details/howtowantwhatyou00mill
also plenty of secondhand physical copies:
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/how-to-want-...
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#116HN comments: 110
People who said thank you: 5
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I star projects that have caught my attention and might be relevant for my work, or that I will need to reference later. I don't see how this relates to a display of gratitude.
Wouldn’t “star” express gratitude?
Saying "thank you" expresses an infinite amount more gratitude than someone taking half a second to click a button. Please don't boil positivity down into just another dopamine fix. It's so fucking fake.
Star too, donate too, whatever you'd like to do normally too but nothing beats actually using your words
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#118I’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…
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 work with (and at this point you might still be wrong about your claim on what's wrong).
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#119I’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 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, I found.
It becomes even harder if a project is Open Source and you truly feel you have to "warn" people against using a solution in certain cases. It then becomes really hard not to sound like a grumpy old neckbeard or someone with a grudge. I lately decided it is best to just shut up, and let people find out themselves; to let them fail, fall or possibly succeed and prove me wrong instead. I do see the arrogance of that too, though.
Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks
#120I’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 is a terrible mindset to have. When I was a manager I took every opportunity to praise my employees (with meaningful compliments and feedback) and discouraged negativity. During a management team meeting I even stood against the others on promoting someone because he was always negative and I pointed out how inefficient his coworkers were around him and that he would only continue that, it didn't matter how good he was himself at the job, he needed to be encouraged to change for the better. After working with him for a while and helping him see how he was hurting others and himself, he changed his mindset, and was later promoted, I continued to coach him even after I left that location.
My basic point is this, even those with the wrong mindset can be swayed with the right mindset, as long as it is sincere.