I don't think that this means that we have to labor in the shadows. Typically people notice pretty well who is competent, who puts in effort and who actually ge

I don't think that this means that we have to labor in the shadows. Typically people notice pretty well who is competent, who puts in effort and who actually gets work done. In a healthy organization that also will get acknowledged organically in all kinds of ways. High performers will be asked for help by others, people insist that they will be invited to meetings or that their opinion will be asked on certain matters. We shouldn't be afraid of praise but of awkwardly praising a subset of people in a all hands meeting where we might miss people who did good work and now will feel that their work isn't acknowledged. This also easily gets political. You have one manager who judges their employees wrong and their reports who did questionable work get praised at the all hands. Maybe they were recommended for praise although there manager knew they didn't really deserve it but needed done if their reports to also be mentioned. It frequently also leads to a hero coder culture. Someone who stays up all night and implements a feature that management wants really badly in a hard to maintain and buggy fashion will get praised at all hands. People who end up fixing the mess won't. Very frustrating for people who fixed it. Obviously this will kick off a feedback cycle leading to more and more all nighters producing crappy code.