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Comment by sebastien_b | Hacker News Reader

We use Slack extensively at work (all remote company), and we have a dedicated channel for "Props", where we can call anyone out on doing a good job, being helpful, going above, etc. especially on stuff related to our Core Values.

This gives visibility to everyone in the company, and is also highlighted in our monthly email newsletter, as well as during our monthly all-hands.

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I always end up muting those channels. Works in offices less than 50, but anything beyond that..

Honestly I prefer companies that don't do any recognition at all rather than ones that play lipservice to the idea. It's just entirely too cringe and sort of weirdly reminds me of high school prep rallies.

In all likelihood your job just revolves around some meaningless CRUD application for some equally meaningless commerce application, zero of my self-worth is tied into my job and I'm constantly baffled by people on the other end of the spectrum.

Do you keep track of who is being recognised? Presumably the “props” aren’t evenly distributed, which is natural. I wonder whether certain people are under recognised.

Where I work there is a bot (that must be custom code) where you can leave these props in any channel. It sends out a summary email to whoever received the praise and their manager containing everything they got that week.

Yes it's kept track of (for that newsletter I mentioned, among other things); and yes it's naturally a bit unevenly distributed - I myself probably don't give as many 'props' as I should, and probably don't receive as many either (not that I mind, as I'm not "seeking" specific acknowledgement/recognition anyways, having been there over a decade now).

It's not the only way we do recognition of course (there's the normal management/review thing) - this is just one of the more open, visible ways to do it for us.

there's always people working behind the scenes that are under recognized by people in those types of channels, I think people who work at integration points between departments usually get the most props

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