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by roflc0ptic 3511 days ago
I'm moving towards a lead dev role, running a small group (3 other devs). I always try to thank people, and include enough specific detail that it's plausible. One dev, fresh to a problem, recently identified a place where if we used a multi-map instead of a map, it would solve problems that had plagued us for months. My response was "Fuck yeah, we've been trying to figure out how to work around that for months. Good catch." I praised another dev who just joined for getting a whole lot more done in her first two weeks than I expected. Entirely new language and tech stack on a sophisticated application. It's impressive. I said so.

Remuneration aside, they're humans who benefit from positive validation. It seems well recieved. Maybe an important point is I actually am grateful that they're good at their jobs. Man, working with competent people who aren't phoning it in is a pleasure.

And yeah, in the abstract, my position with my employer is basically "fuck you, pay me." But that's just a sine qua non. Whether or not I like being there is contingent on how I'm treated.

1 comments

My response was "Fuck yeah, we've been trying to figure out how to work around that for months. Good catch." I praised another dev who just joined for getting a whole lot more done in her first two weeks than I expected. Entirely new language and tech stack on a sophisticated application. It's impressive. I said so.

Your anecdotes are not about thanking people or expressing gratitude. I kind of agree with both you and the GP comment. I am a woman and my life taught me to do a lot of emotional labor. It mostly has not led to money.

I think discussions about stuff like this are probably overlooking something important. As best I can tell, being too touchy feely personal reads as "I love YOU" and is problematic. A better message is "I love your work, good job!" and that seems to be the note you are hitting.

So: Good job!

That is an interesting point. I had not made that distinction, and didn't really realize that was my MO. Maybe there's a rule to be conjectured there about praising actions instead of people.

Insightful. Good job :)