Yo devs, particularly senior/mids without much experience on the soft side of group/team management - never underestimate the impact of informal positive feedback on a junior, career-changer or someone new to the stack. Often people just need to know they're on the right road ->

It can be difficult as someone very experienced or naturally extremely technically inclined to remember the days of *working stuff out sometimes feeling impossible* - made harder in an industry that sometimes feels like an arbitrary, performative intellectual competition

You don't need a system/metric/plan, you can literally just occasionally say:

"That's a tough thing you worked on - probably felt like a real pain - but you did a great job and you can be extremely pleased with it. Well done - let me know if you need help with the next one!'

"I didn't think of doing it that way - nice work! You could also do it by doing { x, y, z thing } too, which might be worth knowing. Nicely done, keep it up."

Better yet, specifics:

"This commit is good - well structured code, good comments, easily testable. We can use this as an example of the way we contribute to this repo if we ever need to explain that to someone new. Great stuff."

Just be a human. Being authentic and empathetic with the people you work with over time changes the shape of teams that eventually learn how to become self-supporting. Shared empathy is key to healthy relationships of any kind - not just professional ones

For someone who wants to do well, cares about doing a good job, this sort of soft influence is a circular confidence building exercise. Next time they have a similar task they'll remember that it's not out of reach. They'll feel safe in the knowledge they *can* do hard things

Confidence and tenacity are extremely important characteristics when continually navigating work that sometimes feels a bit like unpredictable magic until you understand how it's pieced together

I spent 7/8 years in hands-off management roles, managing devs until I career-changed back into development. It has been a humbling thing to go through the struggle > learn > succeed cycle repeatedly but kind words and *time* from seniors has made a world of difference

Struggling with a huge commit by which I had to rewrite a *lot* of interconnected stuff - the lead said, paraphrased:

"Remember - I've been doing this a lot longer than you - it's just experience. This is great and you're gonna get there. Lets finish it together"

Weight lifted

Anyway yeah. Make a coffee and go encourage someone. You might just about make their day and when they're in the hotseat themselves they'll remember what kept them at it and how to build that in others