The Praise Syndrome by ‘Asim Imtiaz’
Posted by عمار - aMmAr | Posted in General, Guest Writer, Weekend whining | Posted on 07-06-2008-05-2008
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Asim is a Fast graduate and a brilliant professional. He is a web developer, designer, teacher and a very dear friend. Over the time he has also developed the art of writing/blogging. Here’s his latest post for RONIN.
We easily fall for a fake picture that we start taking as the actual one. Two three praises from a couple of people and we start defying the truth that we are NOT the best ones out there.
When it comes to Computer Professionals; the severity of the matter is that every tom, dick and harry starts thinking he knows a lot just because he has developed 2-3 pieces of bull-crap software. We shouldn’t be that superficial! It’s ironic that most of the people you will come across with in our field thinks they are good. Either they think they have (eventually) become good or they think they were good since ever.
The problem roots from various factors but the lethal one is the series of fake praises and compliments mostly by your supervisors, boss or colleagues. They do that just so as to get work from you and nothing else. Inside they must be thinking: “What a loser” whilst uttering the praiseful words.
There are a couple of established rules and first of them is:
“Never EVER take your boss’s or your colleague’s praises and pats as your credibility measure.”
Your boss praises you not because he believes in your skills or intellects; nobody gives a damn to your skills and intellects; your boss praises you because he thinks that’s one of the ways to keep this idiot motivated. For majority of the supervisors out there in the industry - fake praises and compliments is a motivation trick. It’s only wise not to fall for it.
Your colleagues praise you because they want to be in the “good books”. People usually avoid being blunt and straight-forward simply because they want to be in your good books. Remember that!
Think out loud:
Come to think of it — why would someone (your boss or whoever) be incidentally and suddenly interested in your self-being? Your appraisal, your career uplifting, your skills? Why? Is it really “sincere” or is itsomething that has a hidden intention and motive behind itself? Youshould ask yourself. Sincerely.
You will be an idiot if you start believing that you’re extra-ordinary because the people you work with praise you. One wouldargue: ‘they know me “in-depth” because they are working with meand as a result they know how ‘talented’ I am. Therefore, their praises are legitimate.’ That is what a bull would refer to as “crap”.
Benchmark Yourself:
One should always judge themselves. There is no hard and fast rule. Just like 2 people are not the same, similarly two people can never be judged on the same criteria. You should work up a benchmark table exclusively for yourself. Don’t compare it to others. Don’t compare it with others. Compare yourself with and to yourself only; your previous records and see if you have improved overtime. For us, improvement is a continuous struggle. Knowing how much we have improved is a hidden treasure.
We should all keep track of how much we have improved from our previous state; that is one easy way to quick self-confidence building. The motivation you get from such can not be paralleled by other means.
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Asim Imtiaz,You don’t believe in healthy competition? If you don’t compare yourself with a more competent or successful person than you don’t you think you will be complacent and your growth will be hampered.
//but the lethal one is the series of fake praises and compliments mostly by your supervisors, boss or colleague//- this is where your judgement power comes into play.The boss would like to motivate only the promising and competent workers.It is not in his interest to motivate dead wood.You can discount a percentage of his compliments but all of it cannot be termed as “crap”. With colleagues it might be different due to the competition factor but the boss would retain, praise and waste his time praising only the person who does some value addition to his company.
//You don’t believe in healthy competition?//
I wonder where you got that from,heh! Healthy competition is always good and I am a strong believer.
You are idealistic, aren’t you? What you are putting up is what should be IDEALLY. But we don’t live in an ideal world where we all appreciate and have healthy competition and we all have honest bosses and supervisors that do not “trick” their employees or play politics around them.
The fact of the matter is everybody here believes in healthy competition but nobody wants to have one. It is observed generally that here at our side people usually compare themselves with the weak ones. Why? Because it makes them a ‘winner’ (atleast in their own head) and it feels good!! Most of us wouldnt even attempt to compare ourselves with the best ones out there. That’s exactly what I was referring to. One shouldn’t compare themselves with people who aren’t that good; in that case benchmarking themselves only would be a way better option.
Logically speaking, if a programmer spends numerous nights coding a certain piece of software and in the end it’s not exactly what you want — saying them “IT’S NOT WANT I WANT, DO IT AGAIN” is a serious let-down for him. To tackle that, it is my observation, that supervisors and team leads here do use “FAKE” and made-up praises as a motivation bait; and ironically it works! Nevertheless, he is not dead-wood.
I can give you tons and tons of examples following this pattern.
There are uncountable small software houses in Pakistan where your supervisor is the owner of the company as well. Hardly a handful of them follow proper performance appraisal and feedback policies. In such a circumstance, you can not rely on your supervisor’s praises.
I can tell you I know of employers who give “false” bonuses, promotions, hires and fires. It’s a whole big world of politics!
Asim,
what do you mean by “false” bonuses, promotions, hires and fires??
By false bonuses, promotions etc i meant i know of employers who use promotions, bonuses as baits.
“I see this guy’s morale to be down, but I want him not because he’s too good but because I am short of -manpower- let’s promote him to TEAM LEAD.”
It’s funny to call a person a team lead when there are just 2 people in the team — including him.
It’s stupid, but yeah it works. Team Lead, Vice President, Head of blah-blah, Vice Chairman, etc etc. There’s nothing to lose for a small 20-people firm to give different “hot-shot” titles to their employees knowing it wouldnt matter much to the company (for the time being atleast, but the same pose great problems when the company starts to grow). On the other hand, the person who get’s the title or the ‘post’ feels like he is one hell of a talented dude because he has just been promoted.
I also know of an employer who hired a fellow as “Software Engineer” and he knew he’s pathetic when it comes to coding. But the guy had links, PR and was son of an influential person — that’s exactly why he got hired.
Politics, dude. Office, work and business politics. Employees are generally humble and simple people who are not particularly aware of every trick in the book.
Talking about small business owners, they would do anything, any trick, any political stunt that would benefit the business. Employees and everything else is expendable when compared to the “BUSINESS”.
This article sounds like a lot of hooey to me. There are so many programmers out there that if an employer thinks a developer is not up to the mark they can dispense of them immediately. There are a lot more where they come from…