Ask HN: How does it feel to never get praise at work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How does it feel to never get praise at work?

Is this just me? I'm never thanked for what I do but my peers are getting praise all of the time. It must be that I suck at my job. It is depressing.

View on HN

Unless you have sober, objective reasons to believe that your peers are well ahead of you in technical skills & productivity, this is 95% likely to be a failing of your workplace culture. (Whether it's members of the "right" social clique promoting their in-group, a racially biased manager, or something else.)

Best solution - do your professional best, while quietly looking for a new job elsewhere. (Which could just be on a different team at a larger org.)

Stretch Goal: Be able to "Dilbert speak", with a completely neutral face and tone, about how it was obvious to everyone that you were bottom-1% on your old team, but your new boss & peers think you're great stuff. Your moved helped everyone. And if your old team is really screwed, because you were far more valuable a worker than they credited - keep your face neutral, and very calmly talk about the must-have-been-true feedback they gave you. Month after month. Doubtless their current problems are unrelated to your departure, and blaming you is just venting their emotional stress.

Doing my professional best is what I diligently attempt over time. Nonetheless, the feeling that I cannot significantly improve myself is a constant weight.

You can significantly improve yourself.

And get rid of that constant weight.

By very professionally going somewhere else.

Toughen up. Why do you need the validation of someone who you know nothing about, never gonna see him again once you leave the premises, just happen to be working under the same roof? Critique that gives you insight about how you can become better has much more value.

You have to be aware of your own abilities. If you can't decide whether what you do is good or bad in terms of quality, then you are missing proper foundations.

It's like learning to ride a motorcycle. If you feel anxious while riding, even after you passed your test, it means that you have not yet mastered the art of riding, That's why your brain is in a state of constant fear. This means that you need more practice until this feeling disappears and it becomes natural to ride the bike without fear.

The real difficulty is in finding good critique. My current workplace uses rails and the amount of pedantry around supposed best practices is hard for me to wrap my head around. Given how hard it generally is for me to land new jobs, I am, over many years now, coming to the conclusion that I might be pretty bad at what I do which is a hard pill to swallow.

There are a lot of bullshit, layers and layers of utter bullshit in tech, that permeates the industry, and people regurgitate it like it is some sacred text that is sacrosanct. Every company has a certain amount of idiocies regarding best practices. Get used to it, or if you can't stomach it, and makes you uncomfortable leave the company. Extend your knowledge to other popular languages that gives you more leg to stand on.

You won't find good critique. People are pussied into this nonsense that is you shall not critique others' works. But you can ask for it, from people you trust, but then it's again up to you whether you can filter the input. Go into forums and start arguing on the topics you are puzzled about.

So attack the problem from different angles and once you have seen enough your brain will start to filter out the bullshit and you will know whether what you see is some nonsense or something good.

Ask HN: How does it feel to never get "paid" at work?

See how ridiculous that looks? You do work to get paid, not praised. Take it up with your therapist.

This is true. I am simply stating an observation about how I am treated in relation to those around me in the workplace. Not everyone can be truly good at the work they do. It makes me wonder if in fact I am one of these people.

In the immortal words of Don Draper (fictional character):

That's what the money's for!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com