30 Little Thank-Yous

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that software engineering is, at its core, a people-oriented trade. Sure, the technology matters – it’s the medium we work in – but it’s not the real story. The tech is just the output of people agreeing on what to build together.

The real work of engineering lives in communication, trust, and relationships: negotiating trade-offs, mentoring, managing tension, finding the shared thread between product, design, and engineering. Code is the artifact of those conversations, not the other way around. And in the middle of all that human messiness, we meet some really good people – collaborators who make hard problems easier, who lift us up when we’re stuck, and who remind us that this whole field can be joyful.

Those folks often disappear quietly into our LinkedIn connection lists while we rush on to the next project. But they’re the reason our careers look the way they do. This November, I’m trying to slow down and say thanks. There are plenty of ways to do that: messages, coffees, quick DMs. One of the simplest and most lasting ways to show appreciation (especially in our industry) is to write someone a LinkedIn recommendation.

I know, I know, it sounds old-fashioned, like something from a corporate playbook – but hear me out. A good recommendation does three important things at once:

1. It publicly acknowledges someone’s impact. It’s like saying, “hey, this person mattered” – and it stays on their profile permanently.
2. It helps their career. Recruiters read those things. Hiring managers read those things. A thoughtful paragraph from a peer or former manager carries weight.
3. It feels good to write. Taking a few minutes to remember what someone did well and putting it into words is a surprisingly grounding exercise. It reconnects you to what’s best about this industry.

You don’t have to write anything elaborate. A few sentences are enough:

I worked with [name] on the infrastructure team for two years, and they were the calm eye of the storm when things got stressful. [Name] was the one who could see both the technical and human sides of an outage and make sure we fixed both. I’d work with them again in a heartbeat.

Or:

[Name] and I built a project launch plan together last year, and I learned more about clear communication in those six weeks than I had in the previous six months. They have that rare ability to make complex ideas easy to act on.

That’s it. Two or three sentences can mean a lot to somebody. You can make it more elaborate of course, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good: any recommendation is better than none. And sometimes, when you take the time to write a recommendation, the person you wrote it for turns around and writes one for you. That’s not the goal (and it shouldn’t be), but it’s a natural outcome of generosity. Gratitude tends to echo.

If you’re anything like me, you might be staring at the cursor wondering where to start, so here are a few prompts that can help. You don’t need to hit all of them – just pick one or two that really resonate with you:

• What did this person make easier for you? Think about moments when their work saved time, reduced stress, or made a project better.
• What do they do exceptionally well? Maybe they’re great at mentoring, designing APIs that make sense, or running blameless postmortems.
• What’s a specific example of their impact? A project they led, a problem they solved, or a process they improved.
• How do they make teams better? Do they foster calm in chaos? Translate between engineers and non-technical stakeholders? Set a healthy culture?
• What did you learn from them? A recommendation that says “I learned from this person” can carry a lot of weight.
• What’s something about them that you’d want their next team to know? This frames your note around what future collaborators would value most.
• Would you work with them again? If the answer is “absolutely”, that’s your closing line.

A couple of sentences on any of these themes is enough. The goal isn’t to write their autobiography. The goal is to leave a small, sincere record of their impact and contribution.

Start with the people who made your work better: the teammate who always jumped in to debug things with you, the senior engineer who reviewed your code and left comments that actually taught you something, the PM who shielded the team from chaos so you could focus, the designer who helped you see users differently.

Then look for people who could use the boost right now – people who you know are looking for jobs or who have the Open To Work banner on their profile picture. A public recommendation from someone they worked with can make a huge difference in their job search.

And if you’re not sure who to start with, just scroll your LinkedIn connections for a bit. You’ll know when you see someone whose name still makes you smile.

A challenge for November

I’m going to give one LinkedIn recommendation every day in November. That’s thirty little thank-yous for the humans who’ve made my career what it is.

If one a day feels like too much, that’s fine. Do one every few days. One a week. Or even just one, because in a world that has felt (at least to me) pretty dark lately, even a small act of appreciation adds a little light.

Writing one heartfelt recommendation for a colleague, mentor, or former teammate is a tangible way to say “you made an impact on me”. And who knows – maybe that one act helps them land their next job, or simply reminds them that what they do matters.

If software engineering is really about people – and I think it is – then this is one small way to take care of those people.

One recommendation won’t fix the world, but it might brighten someone’s week. And honestly, that’s a good enough reason to start.