A sincere shout-out takes ten minutes and can spark years of extra drive.

Not an AI post.

Let's talk recognition in engineering. I'm seeing it fade, and that worries me.

Story time: early in my career, leadership asked me to revive a dormant account. The client's challenge? Orchestrate four virtual-agent stacks — IBM Watson, Microsoft Bot Framework, Google Dialogflow, and ServiceNow — through one multi-domain NLU & SOE layer. My Lithuanian team and I pulled an all-weekender: demo, slides, proposal. Monday morning the client said "where do I sign."

Thirty minutes later an IBM Partner — already juggling ten other deals — fired off an email to every exec, praising our tech lift, presentation, and the trust we'd sparked. He never mentioned himself. Zero credit-snatching.

That two-paragraph note landed hard. We had plenty of JIRA tickets; the weekend grind was optional. But feeling seen made us eager to do it again.

Fast-forward to today's RA-heavy, cut-throat market, and I see two patterns:

- Leaders taking bows for work they didn't do. - Teams told that "above and beyond" is just "the job."

Neither flies. A sincere shout-out takes ten minutes and can spark years of extra drive.

Do I need recognition to perform? Nope — intrinsic motivation runs the show. Will it make me push even harder? You bet.

Take ten minutes. Tag the do-ers. Send the note by email so it lives on in performance reviews. Watch what happens.