When I was working, in the beginning it felt like I wasn't getting much if any feedback. My father then told me that (especially with absurdly busy people at a law firm) no feedback is good feedback because it means there's nothing wrong with what you're doing and you're not a source of problems they have to deal with. Later I did actually get feedback from my boss (I think I asked a leading question but I don't remember exactly) and he did indeed gush about my performance, and for a while after that he seemed to give me more positive feedback (I assume because he thought I was concerned in its absence).
In short, I wouldn't worry about absence of positive feedback at work (assuming this is the subtext of the post). As long as they are seeing some amount of your work so you know you're not just off in some wonderland doing wrong stuff no one knows about, you're probably fine.
Well, we don't really have a boss or anything close to one (advisers, or at least mine, seem to operate quite differently i.e. only critiquing technical points), so there's no source of feedback at all unless you mess up publicly and get skewered. It's just something some grad students were talking about here the other day so it got me thinking about what the situation is in real life...
As a Patent Examiner we have a production system which provides rewards (promotions, ect.) based on what we produce. Other than that my boss doesn't give too much positive feedback and rarely gives nevgative feedback unless she things particular details need to be changed in my work.
who are you and what kind of sweet patents do you examine? positive feedback is rare. as a boss, i don't really have time to give it very often - so i do it as much as possible so everybody knows i'm a better boss than everyone else. of course, it also means that when you give negative feedback, people mad listen. b/c they are like 'woah...even evan was like 'dude you suck' on that one'
the no news is good news thing holds everywhere, but positive feedback is generally around for me, if not that common.
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In short, I wouldn't worry about absence of positive feedback at work (assuming this is the subtext of the post). As long as they are seeing some amount of your work so you know you're not just off in some wonderland doing wrong stuff no one knows about, you're probably fine.
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Customers never have nice things to say.
The union always has nice thigns to say.
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the no news is good news thing holds everywhere, but positive feedback is generally around for me, if not that common.
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