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

&gt;Ask if it’s ok first…<p>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.<p>That said, if you aren’t thanking and praising your colleagues for doing good work - YTA of the team. 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&#x2F; direction. “I really liked how you tackled this, have you thought about this approach?” Instead of “Why didn’t you do it this way?”<p>*edit* There’s a whole bunch of interesting information on why behavioral praise is better than outcome praise. Here’s a video about it I find sums it up perfectly (though it’s geared towards how it relates to children) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;59gx55bNunU" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;59gx55bNunU</a>

I disagree with the angle on this about asking and how to go about things but mostly because complimenting in context is helpful.<p>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&#x2F;week.<p>&quot;I just want to mention, that work that Joe did on that module is fantastic, thanks!&quot; It is so easy to be a force for good.<p>Being the person who does this evenly for all good work is a guaranteed way to make others feel better, work better, and to develop real friendships. People tend to know when they are working hard.<p>Compliment in public, correct in private.

I disagree with the &quot;ask first&quot; suggestion. That&#x27;s adding friction to the process that makes it less organic and will disincentivize actually doing it.<p>Instead I will give feedback that I know won&#x27;t hurt the employee I&#x27;m praising. There is an art to writing this stuff - usually making it more about yourself and how your problems are easier.

Yes. This helps build the type of organization YOU WANT TO WORK FOR.<p>Reinforce it. You can&#x27;t provide material motivation to the business (unless you&#x27;re also the company&#x27;s biggest customer .. heh.) You CAN provide reinforcing feedback to management.<p>Quantify why XYZ coworker helped.<p>And if Management does NOT listen, f&#x27;em. Notice when mgmt responds in a truly incorrect manner. And vote next with your feet.

Not just coworkers.<p>If a customer service has really helped me with my issue, I will ask if I can talk to their manager to let them know how much I appreciated their help today.<p>So far everyone sounded pretty happy about that.<p>I tell the manager that &lt;employee name&gt; really helped me with my issue and made me happy to be a customer of &lt;company name&gt;. The managers also seem pretty happy to hear that and some have mentioned that they will be adding that feedback to the employee’s file.

The lab I&#x27;m involved in right now started off pleasant but there were definitely a handful of people who were less than pleasant to work with. Our PI has played a big part in picking the right people but we&#x27;ve all been very supportive of each other too. I don&#x27;t think any one person started it but we all speak well of each other and it&#x27;s only improved over time even when providing criticism of each other&#x27;s work. This has been a big deal given our time working with human subject data throughout a pandemic.<p>At this point I can&#x27;t think of anyone in my lab I don&#x27;t like working with.

It’s funny, I’m a lead in my team and there is this one co-developer on my team that is obviously looking to replace me or be my lead in some capacity. He’s even made jokes about it on multiple occasions. From time to time he compliments me on work I do, but it comes off as if I’m only finally approaching his level of expertise. It’s hard to describe. You could probably say I’m reading too deep into it, but I swear it’s true. I haven’t responded to it, because well, he’s pretty good anyway and he’s fun to work with. Just one of those things I guess.

The comments here really demonstrate how this is a culturally-nuanced topic.<p>FWIW, the author comes from a North-American background.

<p><pre><code> benefit of starting to give feedback if you&#x27;re not already: ============================== - a lot risk that giving feedback without asking that hurts the recipient: == - very small 0 ---------------------------- a lot &lt;-impact-&gt; </code></pre> If you are trying to follow this advice but are scared your feedback might &quot;backfire,&quot; see the infographic above. The risk is non-zero, but the takeaway here should be &quot;you should start giving feedback&quot; not &quot;feedback might backfire and hurt the person!&quot; The benefits of giving more praise to managers far far outstrips the risk of misplaced praise.<p>So: when in doubt, go for it! Asking can help, I usually send the person my feedback first if I&#x27;m unsure &amp; ask if they want to revise it in some way. If they want to refocus on something else, that&#x27;s fine. The point of it is to express gratitude &amp; help them out.

One thing I&#x27;d add to this: When your coworker does great work - tell them! It&#x27;s great when people notice you&#x27;ve done something good. Not everything has to be reported to a manager, sometimes just compliment their work or thank them for the effort.

Boggles my mind that for as long as I&#x27;ve worked, I rarely see this in practice. It costs almost nothing to do. I try to do it when I can.

I had this team where during the retrospective we would each list good and bad points of the sprint (yes, it was agile, and that part of the whole religious process was the only one that I found useful).<p>After a while, we would all start the sentences with &quot;I am happy because ...&quot; and &quot;I am not so happy because...&quot;, and it became customary to have some &quot;happy&quot; points to compensate for the complaints. And there we all started thanking colleagues of the team. &quot;I am happy because Alexia helped me doing this&quot;, or simply &quot;I am happy because Bernard is back from holiday&quot;. It was a post-it thing, so when coming back from holiday, you would usually get a post-it from everyone.<p>We were not collecting them, counting them or showing them to a manager, it was just internal to the team. We would quickly ignore them and move to the bad points (group them, vote for the 3 most important ones, and define actions to solve them). It just felt nice, and I think it was a nice (small but regular) team building moment.<p>I don&#x27;t believe in managers: I imagine that they would probably just start counting the reviews, creating some bullshit metrics and ranking the employees. I don&#x27;t want that. I thank my coworkers when I can to make them feel good, not to make them look good to the manager.

Compliments should be easy. Too much forethought will reduce volume and I would keep it simple to encourage volume. Yes, Quantity over quality.

Since I started in technology I&#x27;ve always kept my eyes open for chances to do this.<p>I&#x27;m a &quot;career-switcher&quot; who came from commercial aviation operations. In the airlines one of the big fears was to get a &#x27;write-up&#x27; in your file, either from a teammate, or manager, or customer.<p>But, on the flip side, there was nothing better than to get an &quot;atta-boy&quot; letter from any of those same people. (Within the company the same form could be used: ours was called an &quot;Unusual Occurrence Report&quot;, and it could be submitted for good outcomes&#x2F;performances as well as mishaps&#x2F;poor performances.<p>I brought this same idea with me when I started in technology. I probably should have sent more of these messages than I have, but still, it&#x27;s nice to know that you&#x27;re helping a colleague get some positive attention from their managers. We all know that in the corporate world praise is hard to come by, and it only takes a few minutes to write a email retelling how someone saved the day.

Rule #5: &quot;Credit floats up, and blame travels down on the corporate ladder&quot;<p>This is a universal fact with few exceptions<p>Be careful who you manage =)

As member of an underrepresented group I would say stop over thinking about how you can help us. Just treat us equally, not worse not better. I personally cringe at people trying to make me feel &quot;represented&quot;. I get it, you are trying to do something positive for me (and for yourself, let&#x27;s no pretend it is not about you also) but if you are not careful you may end up annoying me and even doing&#x2F;saying &quot;racist&quot; stuff, and 9&#x2F;10 times you will. Like this super nice dude at work invited me to eat spicy food because he thought all Latinos like spicy food like Mexicans, or these guys at a bike shop near my home giving me a discount for being brown so that I could afford biking, despite the fact that I have a little fortune in pro mountain bikes in my garage.

This is kind of exactly what various peer review processes are for. Managers usually solicit a report&#x27;s peers&#x27; feedback (team members + whoever the report suggests) so it&#x27;s really nice when there is an unsolicited feedback note. I try to give out at least a few every cycle.<p>I haven&#x27;t done this for very long or at director level before so I&#x27;d love to know if managers with lots of reports end up with certain &quot;frequent fliers&quot; who either get a positive reputation for the extra notes, or tank their reputation by complaining too much. :-)

Am not one of those people that likes getting noticed too much but have learned praise can be a very soft power when needed. Some people really do put a lot of value on what others think of them and that isn’t a weakness. It can be a great strength to them.<p>Additionally, it’s a soft power. Managers talk. When I’ve intervened in organizational resource actions, there was always one manager&#x2F;exec who would jump for me. One of those saves became a VP and another achieved the highest technical rank at a Fortune 200. I did it for them but I also did it for the company.

I always enjoy reading her posts. She must be an outstanding coworker.<p>I have also found that some people are experts at &quot;weaponized compliments.&quot;<p>They can give a compliment that is an insult, or an attack.<p><i>&quot;That&#x27;s great, how you roughened the edges.&quot;</i> when talking about a graphic asset with obvious mistakes.<p><i>&quot;I always told Bob how great you are, at that.&quot;</i> This is the &quot;stolen valor&quot; compliment. It insinuates that you could not have done it without their help.<p>etc.<p>In some cases, it&#x27;s completely accidental, so we need to think carefully about our compliment.

At $WORK we actually have a &quot;kudos&quot; column in our biweekly retrospectives specifically for shout-outs to coworkers who were particularly helpful. I think it&#x27;s a good idea.

Besides some more formal systems for praising&#x2F;thanking people that my company has, my department has a &#x27;Gratitude&#x27; chat on Teams dedicated to thanking people when someone goes out of their way, unblocks you, demonstrates extraordinary patience, gets back to you especially quickly, etc.<p>I think it&#x27;s awesome. It sets a public precedent for kind behavior and appreciative attitudes. It always makes me happy to see people thanking each other in that chat.

Asking is <i>CRITICAL</i>. Do <i>not</i> 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.<p>I may have helped you complete your task but my manager could interpret that as wasting time not delivering my own task.<p>In other words going over someone’s head (direct to their manager) is an aggressive and rude action. It is never kind or helpful, regardless of intent.

Yeah, tell their manager you did said work and demand a raise!

I do this a lot with various service-people… I&#x27;ve missed a few flights here or there, and then contacted the airline, &quot;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.<p>Or a cable installer, I&#x27;ll just ask for the name of their boss so I can put in a good word for them.<p>Quite sure this has been responsible for a few bonuses here and there, pay it forward, etc.

There&#x27;s an obvious political slant here and likely some white savior syndrome. Is racism the reason why managers overlook some high-performers? And why would empty praise from a co-worker help any? What if the manager is part of an &quot;underrepresented group&quot; themselves?<p>Smart people hate being treated like children so you run the risk of offending them. That actually could offend someone for real.

It is a fun exercise to think of all the interesting ways the 2nd order effects of these feedback hacks can be weaponized in office politicks.

I worked at a large bank that attempted to formalise this through a software application they purchased, which allowed you to recognise people on your team. The solution was over-engineered to hell with low engagement. A culture which fostered simple acknowledgements in a stand-up meeting would have been immeasurably more personal and effective.

This is good, but better yet is to then remind the manager again at the key point in the year&#x2F;cycle right before performance reviews are being filled in.<p>This has the most chance of having an impact plus it adds weight to the compliment (ie if you remembered how good they were perhaps five months later it&#x27;s not just a throw away comment)

My way is to write an internal Newsletter highlighting people’s interesting work, achievements, and highlight often-overlooked gotchas. People liked it, even the most introverted DevOps was happy that people started asked him more about his work, such as, his beautiful documentation.

I have always done this since way back in my early days of working. I have never understood people who follow &quot;Art of War&quot; tactics in the job world. I suspect those people feel they have no talent and assume they have to play dirty to succeed.

Discussed at the time:<p><i>When your coworker does great work, tell their manager</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23858662">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23858662</a> - July 2020 (367 comments)

I&#x27;ve also learned, when people that work for you do great, tell your manager.

I&#x27;ve never worked in a large organization, so perhaps this is a stupid question, by why wouldn&#x27;t the manager know that a person under him did a great job? Isn&#x27;t that a manager&#x27;s job?

Apologies for not commenting on the content of the article, but just wanted to say it&#x27;s great to see the use of a gender neutral pronoun at the top of HN this evening.

Pro tip for managers: Whenever someone on your team does something good, keep a record of it in a doc. This will make your performance reviews a breeze to write

at my job, it&#x27;s part of company culture to praise people publicly whenever they&#x27;re doing great work. it&#x27;s a great way of knowing you&#x27;re on the right path.

... and they will get promoted instead of you.<p>Unless your honesty is noticed.

this seems to me to be too much extra work (to prepare) to deliver a compliment.<p>I&#x27;d rather see a culture where compliments&#x2F;kudos are quick, easy, and often.

this is a good thing to do in a team.

Ah the manager game