[Mz]

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!

[roflc0ptic]

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 :)