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

351–360 of 371 posts

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

#351

Post by mcpackieh »

mcpackieh wrote: post #289
thegrimmest wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "your code sucks" is even more concise. It doesn't convey the same meaning at all though. One is a constructive criticism, one is not. Asking about reasoning for discarding alternative solutions is a perfectly standard part of any review process. It doesn't need to be further elongated and stylized to reduce directness. > "it's not my fault you feel bad about my abuse" Nowhere in my post did I justify abuse. Ad hom…

Have you noticed that the people advocating for emotional coddling in this thread also seem to have trouble with nuance? They pose this false dichotomy of "Wow I really love this but..." vs "This sucks go fuck yourself" Simply being direct and forward without wrapping your words with empty praise or naked insults doesn't seem to be an option they recognize.

More immature dichotomous thinking: "Why does one ask "why"? There's two primary reason: curiosity and accusation."

Shocking mentality.

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

#352

Post by confidantlake »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #192
confidantlake wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrasing seems confusing and manipulative. Did you like my approach or not? I would rather someone be straight up with me. If you don't like the approach or would have done it differently say so and we can talk about it. Save the compliments for when I do something you actually like.

>Save the compliments for when I do something you actually like. issue in cultures like this is compliments never come. Maybe a "thanks/good work" after the project/module is done, but by then it's empty words. feels more like "thanks for making me lots of money" instead of "thanks for contributing your skills to this project" if we treat compliments with a waterfall approach with no substance.

I tend to compliment people when they do something well at work. There is rarely a week that goes by where I haven't at least one compliment. To me that is more genuine. I am complimenting them with no ulterior motive. Not as some ploy to soften criticism.

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

#353

Post by pxc »

palata wrote: post #345
pxc wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My department is pretty siloed, so I don't offhand know who all normally works closely with whom. I don't consult the org chart when I see people praise or thank each other, either, so I don't have a good sense of how much public praise in my department is intra-team puffery. I can say, though, that I've (so far) never used that channel to thank anyone on my own team. On my own small team, my manager already knows wh…

Fair, I totally get your points. I was just saying that as someone who has a "gratitude" chat at work. It has made me realized that I was working very hard for absolutely no recognition, and it destroyed my motivation.

I've learned that recognition and feeling connected to others is really important for me as a developer, too. If I go too long without sharing my work with someone or getting feedback from a user, I can start to feel invisible, or even useless, and it's very demotivating.

Arranging demos/informal tests with users frequently (ideally once every week or two, or even more frequently if I have a lot of work to show and test) to solicit feedback from users and make my work's purpose more immediate to me has been hugely helpful. (Every single time I put a user in front of something I've made, it always helps me identify new UX and documentation bugs, too.)

I hope you can make arrangements to feel more connected to others in your work and acknowledged for your effort, up to and including finding a different job! It makes such a huge difference in life and it's really worth it.

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

#354

Post by michaelcampbell »

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…

> Compliment in public, correct in private.

Not for me, thanks.

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

#355

Post by johnnyanmac »

gabereiser wrote: post #338
johnnyanmac wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Gonna take a lot of time apparently. So much gaslighting in these responses.

I guess I can see why we still have all those "tech is a hostile industry to women/minorities" stuff even in the 2020's. People legitimately think they can talk like Linus Torvald could back in the 90's.But at least Linus was talking to faceless volunteers he had little power over.

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

#356

Post by eweise »

fatherzine wrote: post #315
gizmo686 wrote: post #179

Earlier 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.

"I see you went with ${solution X}, which is reasonable, though it suffers of ${major downside K} in fairly common ${situation T}. Would ${solution Y} address ${major downside K}? Granted, we are trading off a bit of ${minor downside J}, but at a quick glance appears a solid overall improvement."

That's a good suggestion. It makes clear what the questioner knows and why they asking about an alternative instead of putting the other person on the defensive, trying to guess why the question is being asked.

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

#357

Post by loco5niner »

jasonlotito wrote: post #123
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 don't want to work with people that communicate this way. "I don't want to work with people efficiently, and would rather cling to inefficient ways."

I think you have the efficiency backwards.

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

#358

Post by dang »

constantly wrote: post #6
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 hope I never have to work with you. I would be mortified if someone did this to me.

Please don't cross into personal attack.

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

#360

Post by grey-area »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #136
grey-area wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assertion that this sort of linguistic hedge is a lie is itself based on a few false assumptions: 1. That there is one correct way to do something 2. That you know that way, and they don't 3. That they didn't consider and disregard that way in early planning due to something you're unaware of What you see as lying is intended to avoid an arrogant disregard for their time and thought, and also to avoid having ego…

A few potentially false assumptions. The (very real) possibility of being wrong exists, but declaring that because of it nobody ever—or you specifically—can be right seems overkill and contradictory to the ethos of the engineering profession and the approach it uses for its chosen range of problems. (I have the vague impression that people who talk along these lines usually think that being wrong is somehow a bad thi…

Drop your insistence on a dichotomy of right and wrong and the advice may make more sense.

Most of the time there are lots of ways to do things and there are lots of trade-offs, some humility when addressing others is a useful skill and you will very rarely know for sure that you are right and the other person is entirely wrong.

Post reply on HN