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Comment by agloe_dreams | Hacker News Reader

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 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.

Compliment in public, correct in private.

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I actually think the tip about asking is really useful for one specific reason - and it totally might not apply to you. Engineers can be extremely unaware of social cues. I feel confident I can judge my time and place and phrase my compliments such that I don't feel like I need to ask first - or atleast that I'm a good enough judge of context to know when I need to ask first. I'm pretty good at getting to know people and I'm very good at coming across open and well intentioned. To use a wanky term - I'm good at building trusted relationships.

However some people really struggle with social interactions and judging situations. The advice about asking is really valuable for someone who isn't quite as good at judging complex situations. It's simple - just ask! It might not apply to everyone.

I think people are coming up with edge cases like "what if they helped you do something they weren't supposed to do, and complimenting them on it gets them fired?!", but that's an exception, and most people would use common sense and discretion in any reasonable scenario. As a rule, pass on a good word about people who help you, it's not that complicated.

Let's try a different scenario here:

My boss is great and part of that is being aware of everything that's going on. We're got some problem people who really love bypassing our support queue. And then some critical system goes down while their favorite developer is on vacation and we don't find out until they've escalated the problem to upper management.

If I got complimented by someone in another department for something he wasn't aware of, I will get asked for the context. If it's important, I need to create a support ticket to document it.

Personally, I'm fine with that but sometimes I really don't want to spend 15 minutes discussing and writing up what may have been a 30-second conversation.

Don’t do this. Ask for consent. It isn’t hard.

Not sure about this advice in general. I get quite uncomfortable if I receive praise or compliments in general, and in a group setting is even worse. I find it embarrassing and awkward.

Im not saying “never give praise in public”. But, you know, read the room. As always, especially with social interactions, context is key! Know the people you’re talking with!

Can you share more about what makes it awkward?

Sometimes it’s just that people don’t know the template for responding. Like, for example just saying “thank you” and smile, or heart reacji if on slack or something.

But I don’t want to assume in your case.

No good deed goes unpunished.

There are bizarre incentives in stratified hierarchical pseudo-authoritarian corporate social structures.

1000% agree with, "Compliment in public, correct in private." But I still ask a person if it's okay if I compliment them in front of large groups to make sure they are comfortable with it. I've embarrassed people before when I haven't asked. Different people have different reactions to compliments in groups.

I think this is more appropriate when talking to people that are on your level or below you.

The post is about compliments to managers and I think it's valid to ask in that case, especially in large companies where you might not know the people you work with very well.

I never understood the "correct in private" stance. How can others learn who did not do the mistake? The argument to have critique in private only is probably because of ego and honor culture where people feel personally attacked in topics where it's not about them at all but about the actions they have taken in a professional context with rules and expectations.

But I fully agree on not talking to the manager, but praising in the full team instead.

"Correct" is the key word, I think it is important to make sure that people feel not attacked and your take on it is mostly correct but this is mostly in context of opinions and nit-picking. Actual failures need to be owned publicly.

I think a missing element in what I said is that I also fully believe that if I fail at something, it is my responsibility to inform the team rather than wait for someone else to levy blame. ("My apologies, I realized I misread the ticket and wrote the logic expecting X when it should be expecting Y." or "I created the typo there, I'm sorry, will fix by XX AM.") If the team works in that context, then you don't need to correct in front of the team as the person who failed would inform others and use it as a learning moment for all. This also kills the ego problem a little.

I also think failures tend to be systematic in nature and are rarely owned by a single person once you get to the bottom of the 5 "whys". We use Github BATS in PRs now, this fully killed the whole rubber duck of shame culture in our engineering division. While someone breaking the build used to be a singular responsibility, now it is a shared responsibility of the reviewer and tooling and nobody else's build gets broken by bad code. It is easy to blame the person who wrote the code but that excuses those that create the systems and culture.

I think correcting in private makes sense if also paired with a no-blame oriented retro after the fact for everyone to know what happened and to brainstorm about preventative measure in the future.

How can a correction be private and blameless? In a 1:1 if you talk about what “we” did wrong you’re clearly talking about me.

Those are two separate discussions. Even if I do something dumb and am rightly blamed for it, we can still have a retro to discuss process improvements that would make it harder for that mistake to happen again in the future.

This is what I had in mind, thank you for putting it into better words that I could.

Taking responsibility for messing up is important and part of personal growth. Having the team be aware of an issue and then together develop a way to avoid that issue in the future is huge.

I had a boss who told me that when something like this happened, it was usually an issue with a system in place. Merged bad code that shouldn't have gone to production? We need to improve review processes and testing. Production server outage after system dependencies changed? We need a more accurate staging environment and testing process for our infra.

That mindset was so great to learn and I fully embrace it still.

Teams should introspect at a group level. That’s not controversial or relevant.

Unsolicited individual feedback has the potential to cause harm and an outside observer (you) can’t know the situation. So the safe and respectful move is to simply ask first. It costs nothing, your feedback is heard, and no harm is done.

Not everything is, or has to be, a learning opportunity for everyone else.

why not? Where is the benefit of not making it one?

> Compliment in public, correct in private.

Not for me, thanks.

I strongly disagree and have worked in multiple environments where your actions would have harmed me personally. Your manager is never your friend. All relationships with management are adversarial. It’s like talking to the police. Do not volunteer information. You don’t know where other people are, always obtain consent.

> Do not volunteer information.

Well, I guess where you worked was either stack ranked or a generally oppressive atmosphere smothered in politics. Work should be a collaborative effort, even from the greedy billionaire perspective you hire 2 people to do twice the work. If you end up being 25% efficient something is wrong.

And this is a sort of odd angle to begin with: your work isn't private to the manager stack. Some CEO ordered a product manager who ordered a director who ordered your manager to order you to make that stuff. the CEO probably doesn't care about you, but it would be easy to track you down if they did care. Likewise, I'm sure any reasonable company has a log history that other co-workers can access

That all sounds and feels nice but is divorced from reality. It is admirable to want to improve working conditions but you should consider the effect on your peers when you take that stand.

Divorced from the reality that you don't own the work corporations extract from you? From the reality that there are co-workers who aren't mutually planning your destruction?

Everyone's experience is different, I guess. But I assure you there are places where co-workers are fine focusing on work and not making specifically you miserable.

I'm not sure what conversation you are having or who you think you are having it with. The world you have described doesn't exist. The point here is that taking a stand is admirable but personal. You should never force others to join you. You may desire a world in which unsolicited feedback has no negative consequence but we don't live in that reality.

> You should never force others to join you

you were clearly never on the same wavelength as me to begin with if that's your conclusion. Remember your original comment compared "giving out information" that your boss already has to talking to the police (who at least need to subpeona the govt. to get more information).

I'm just saying that not every job has you living in fear. If you haven't experienced that environment yet, I wish you greener pastures.

Jeez, that sucks, sorry you had to endure such a toxic environment. I hope you're working in a more psychologically-safe workplace now. I've worked in the full spectrum from probably-legally-actionable toxicity to extremely welcoming/safe and productive environments and can definitely say I won't tolerate the toxic shit for a second anymore. It's easy for me to say that because I have a lot of experience, and I absolutely feel for ppl who are early in their career and don't feel they have the flexibility to flee a toxic work environment..

We have similar experiences and have learned similar lessons.

The point here is that you don’t know where other people are right now. Treat them like adults, talk to them, and don’t put them in compromising positions. Unsolicited feedback to management has the potential to do harm so don’t do it. Just ask first, it’s not difficult.

This has not been my experience at any of the places I've worked. All of my managers have been supportive, open with information, and collaborative, including in promotions and in negotiations with other teams for resources.

I would never knowingly take a job at a company where the culture requires this attitude towards management. I'd also try hard to avoid corporate cultures where praise can somehow hurt someone.

Sounds like you have a good job. That's great! But you still have no idea what your coworkers are going through. Maybe you have a good job, but your coworker has an awful one, and praising them makes them a target.

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.

I hope I never have to work with you

Please don't cross into personal attack.

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