Thank Them Without Making It the Norm

"Last night meant a lot. I know that's not the standard we want to set, but you showing up made us feel like we're not alone."

One of our engineers sent that a few weeks ago. I haven't stopped thinking about it.

Here's what happened. The night before a big conference, we had a launch that needed to be live by morning. Not a nice-to-have. The kind of date with a lot of other things stacked on top of it.

One of the newer PMs on our team stayed on past midnight with two engineers to get it there. They weren't writing the code. They were doing the other job: keeping the thread straight, answering the question before it got asked, making sure nobody sat stuck at 11:40pm waiting on someone else.

It went live. I found out the way leaders usually find out about these things. After.

The next morning, one of those engineers sent the PM a Mention through Ren. That sentence up top is the whole message.

The middle clause

Most of us would have written the first sentence and the last one.

"Last night meant a lot. You showing up made us feel like we're not alone."

Lovely. Done. Send.

The middle clause is what got me. I know that's not the standard we want to set.

That's the whole skill. In ten words, the engineer did two things at once: honored what the PM gave, and refused to turn it into the price of admission.

What I used to do

I want to be honest about this one, because I was bad at it for a long time.

When someone on my team pulled a late night, I was the first one in the channel. "Huge thanks to Sam for staying late to get this over the line!!" Two exclamation points. Maybe a fire emoji. And I meant every bit of it. I was grateful.

Now think about who reads that message. The person who logged off at six to put their kid to bed reads it. The new hire still figuring out what gets noticed around here reads it. The engineer who's already running on fumes reads it.

And every one of them learns the same lesson: this is what gets you a shout-out from the boss.

I was paying people in praise for burning out. Then I'd wonder, a few months later, why the same three people were exhausted and everyone else had quietly learned that the real work happened after hours.

Appreciation is a signal. Whatever you thank people for in public, you're telling everyone that's the job.

Two true things

The reason that middle clause is hard to write is that it asks you to hold two true things in one breath.

It's true that they showed up when it mattered, and that it meant something. It's also true that we don't want a team that runs on midnights.

Say only the first, and you reward the sacrifice. Say only the second, and you sound like a compliance memo, and they walk away feeling scolded for helping. You need both, together, or one of them gets lost.

And look at what the engineer actually thanked them for. Not the hours. Not "staying late." It was for showing up, for making two people feel like they weren't alone in it. The midnight was just where it happened.

I wish I'd understood that twenty years ago. Thank the thing you want more of. Name the cost you don't.

The follow-up nobody sends

There's one more piece, and it belongs to the leader, not the teammate.

If a launch needed three people up past midnight, something upstream went sideways. A scope that grew. A date set before anyone looked at the work. A risk somebody flagged in a thread two weeks ago that nobody answered.

The midnight is information. Thanking people without looking at it is a polite way of not looking.

So the real follow-through is two conversations. One is the thank-you. The other comes a few days later, once everyone has slept, and it's a question:

"What would have had to be true for this to ship at 5pm?"

Ask it with curiosity, not blame. And go first. Odds are some of the answer has your name on it. Mine usually did.

If you only ever have the first conversation, you'll have a lot more midnights to be grateful for.

A small practice

The next time you go to thank someone for going above and beyond, read your message back before you hit send. Ask one question:

If someone new to the team read this, what would they think the job is?

If the answer is "stay late," rewrite it. Keep the gratitude. Move it off the hours and onto the human thing they did. And if it fits, borrow that engineer's middle clause. This isn't the standard. It still mattered.

A little awkward. Completely true.

Who on your team deserves that message this week?

Jonathan