The importance of expressing gratitude

In the very first proper web developer job I had, no-one ever said thank you to me. No ‘thanks’, ‘ta’ and certainly no ‘thank you’ from anyone… not one single person. And what a disheartening job that was.

You perform a job to the best of your abilities because you get paid for it; money is your reward (as well as pride), but appreciation is a pretty decent currency too. Not long after starting my second job my new boss thanked me for my hard work that day. I nearly fell off my chair. Another time, in that same job, my bosses took me to one side to say ‘thank you’ for all the work I’d been doing (there was a big project on at the time and there had been quite a few late late nights). Once again, that simple act made me feel so much more appreciated than in my first job.

This blog used to be quite popular a few years ago, getting a few hundred visits a day, and due to some residual search engine traffic on old posts, I occasionally get emails from junior web developers asking me for advice – usually after they’ve read an article such as How to get that first web development job. More often than not, they email a question and I will email some advice back and that’s it, I never hear from them again. Every now and again, I get a response saying ‘thanks’ and it makes my day. I don’t respond with advice in order to receive gratitude and plaudits but it really is nice when a little feedback makes an appearance.

At the end of projects I always try my best – if they’ve gone well that is – to say as much to the agency and to says thanks for hiring me and to hopefully say something nice about how the project went swimmingly and how I thought they contributed to that success. You’d be surprised how many more people pay you on time and re-hire you when you’re nice about them and express a little gratitude (and you mean it).