Novices seek praise. Recognizing strengths builds confidence to keep going.
Experts crave criticism. Seeing shortcomings reveals avenues to keep growing.
Preferring corrections to compliments is a sign of skill. The better you get, the more determined you become to get better.
Not sure if anything changed my approach to work and engineering in the past five years more than this passage from @Lethain, written in the context of staff engineering but much more broadly applicable. Show more
you actually don't need everyone to understand you or what you do and you're probably working on something too safe if they all easily do. your knowing you don’t need them to understand is also exactly what makes them want to