> between a Patagonia shirt and a plaque

If I wanted a shirt, I'd buy a shirt. If the plaque truly reflected some effort done by the team that accomplished something big and deserved proper recognition, I get why people would prefer it. You can't buy respect.

Now, of course the cynical me will argue that the whole thing is a trick question and that no one of the alternatives are good - downright offensive actually.

I agree. It reminds me a bit of an episode of The Office, where the top salesman (Dwight) is explaining how he was Salesman of the Month 13 out of 12 months the previous year. In lieu of a pay rise, management had given him two plaques for the month of February.

I remember reading a Harvard Business Review article which was literally "How to motivate your employees to work harder without paying them more."

And it was full of this kind of nonsense - plaques, award ceremonies, teeny-tiny presents as bonuses, and so on.

Cynicism and offence are perfectly reasonable and fair reactions.

For us, the choice is time-off award or cash award. To me it's a no-brainer because in terms of hourly pay, the time-off translates to significantly more money. But others struggle to find reasons to take time-off.

Good management knows what people want. Even better management recognizes that someone is burning out and gives the time-off even when they'd prefer cash.

There's a third minor option. Gift certificates for company swag. It's almost never used, because people find it insulting.

Time off or cash is definitely the best way to show appreciation. Otherwise the old saying is still valid “Words are cheap”

I want celebratory bonuses not "attaboy" emails for sure. I like to know on a regular basis what they think but don't ever take it too much to heart. Managers/CEOs are just people too. I think I know myself best, and try to be honest with myself.

> Another interesting thing was at the end of one of the last projects. There was a survey where we could choose between a Patagonia shirt and a plaque. Guess what? The majority voted for the plaque. That was astonishing to me but a good reminder that I seem to be different.

Holy shit. This is incredible. I’d be curious what management forced you to do during this period. Longer hours?

I wish there was some “fucked company” equivalent for tracking corporate charades like this.

Haha, I feel I fall on both groups. Like, tell me how awesome I did and also better give me a bonus or I'll take my awesome self somewhere else (⌐■_■)

Sorry, in lieu of individual bonuses, management has decided to reward employees with a company team building boat trip!

:-/ Nothing is worse than being stuck on a company boat trip. You can't arrive late, and you can't leave early! Also no where to hide or duck out for a bit. Literally stuck on the boat.

From past experience I would LOVE to see some managerial acknowledgement of their fuckups that lead to crunch time. Praise is temporary, but if no changes are introduced from the other end of the work pipeline people will get crushed.

I'm kind of in a weird in-between role. Usually when crunch time happens we were well aware that the deadlines were aggressive or the feature was going to be a major PITA to implement and brought that up but executives pull ranked and basically said I don't care figure it out. We're all kind of defenseless honestly, it's just some of us are lucky enough where we're not directly responsible for creating the actual product.

The executives might not care right now, but when the peons who do the actual crunch time leave, they'll end up with newcomers with no one to train them. Crunch time should be for real emergencies only.

When I learned that my all-weekender overtime was only to keep an internal deadline, I started look for a new position immediately.

What did the plaque say? This is amazing.

Redeemable for one free Patagonia shirt.

some demotivator like this https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/dedicat... ?

In general you can't trust/take seriously whatever the management says, except for 1. specific information reflected in the HR systems and 2. the specific tasks/deadlines/etc. assigned to you and the related progress/delivery/etc. discussions.

Specifically, when it comes to public praise, the manager publicly praising his team/dept/org is actually praising themselves while supposedly being publicly modest/coy by not explicitly praising themselves, and this is why management loves making those praises.