I don't want to congratulate a colleague for a poorly done final year project

Question

One of my colleagues told everyone at work that her final year project, an Android mobile app, has been approved. I don't think highly of this project as it is a copy of another app already published in the Play Store. I have seen the code because she asked for my help several times, and I noticed that the code doesn't follow good coding and UI practices. I advised her to look at some best practices and UI books, but unfortunately, I was ignored.

I think her project advisor should not have even approved the project, but it has been approved with a score of 7/10. All the other colleagues are complimenting her for it. This has put me in a awkward situation, and I am faced with this question: Is it advised to congratulate a colleague for an achievement that I don't think is worth it?

My point of view is almost the same as Professor Fletcher, from the Whiplash movie:

There are no two words in the English language more harmful than "good job".

It is even worse when the job is actually not good. If I congratulate her for it, there's a high chance she will do that again. She would also be less receptive to feedback when someone points out other (better!) ways to do things.

Update:

On the same day I posted this question, we had a team lunch, and I had the opportunity to congratulate her for finally completing such a long task. To all those who contributed without expressing any of those feelings against my way of thinking, I'm really thankful, since this was a lesson I'll remember for my entire career. To those who didn't, I apologize for impacting your day.

Answer 1

Finishing a degree is an accomplishment that comprises far more than just the final project or thesis. Couldn't you find it within yourself to congratulate her for her overall accomplishment? "Congratulations!" doesn't imply approval of the work. It's just something nice to say to someone who has accomplished a big goal.

A lot of student projects would never pass muster in a business setting. The reason is there is no accountability for the work beyond the assignment. They have no real users to tell you they can't figure out how it works, and they don't have to be responsible for their poor designs and code at 2am because a bug has to be fixed before the next morning. But don't worry, most new grads learn quickly once they begin to be held to a higher degree of accountability for their (and others') work.

Also, there are much more harmful things you could say to a person (in any language) than "good job." If you want, you can reserve that accolade for those who you feel deserve it. But don't hold back when it is deserved. For those whose work doesn't meet your criteria for a "good job," a simple "congratulations" or "I am happy for you" can suffice.

Answer 2

is it advised to congratulate a colleague that has obtained a BSc in Computer Science even if i think that her thesis is just (sorry for the words) stupid and useless?

Yes, that is advisable.

In my part of the world, this would just be a common courtesy.

Saying a simple "Congratulations!" doesn't take much effort on your part. It doesn't imply that her thesis lives up to your lofty standards. It doesn't mean her code or UI meet your approval. It recognizes that she achieved a milestone that was important to her - nothing more.

It just means you are a decent person who understands some of the social niceties in the workplace.

The same day i posted this question, we had a company's lunch and i had the opportunity to congratulate her for finally concluding such a long task.

Nice! A good solution for your problem.

Answer 3

If this is really the first time in your entire life you've encountered someone who is very proud and happy about something you think is unworthy, you have led an unusual life so far. It's a useful life skill to learn how to acknowledge people's emotions (in a friendly and positive way) without endorsing their beliefs. They could have completed some work that you think is awful (but that paid professional evaluators gave 7/10 to), or be having a baby when you think they're too young/poor/stupid, or be getting married to someone you think is a loser, or taking a job you think they won't be good at.

Saying "wow! great news!" or "congratulations!" or "that's wonderful for you!" is not the same as saying "I loved that work and I think it actually deserved 10/10" or "you'll be the best mother ever!" or "I knew you guys should be married and I'm sure it will last 60 years!" It's basic human politeness to at least say some obligatory words, and it will make your life much happier if you learn to go a little beyond that.

The key is not to lie, and to focus on the part that really matters in the interaction, which is the emotions of the person you're congratulating. They actually don't want to hear "your project was terrific and you totally deserved 7/10." They have that validation from the university already. They want to hear "completing your degree is a big deal and you are right to be happy about it. I share your joy because we're part of a team." I mean you don't say that, you would sound like a robot, but you choose sentences that are about their feelings, not the facts of the situation or your assessment of whether the feelings are justified or not.

Try these:

• great news!
• I bet you're thrilled!
• how are you celebrating?
• have you told everyone yet?
• this is so exciting!
• congratulations!

You don't need to say "well done", "good job", "a totally well deserved honour for you" or "I'm so proud of you" and nobody will notice whether you do or not. Save those phrases for the times you mean them.

Answer 4

I want to give some of my personal experience on this.

The final product doesn't necessarily reflect the work/time/energy required to get that piece of paper. For some people, simply getting there involves fighting bureaucracy, poor advising/leadership from faculty, time sacrifices, or otherwise.

I feel very similar to my thesis as you describe your colleagues. It's not great. It's not revolutionary. It's probably not even unique anymore since it's taking years for reasons outside my control.

But you know what? When I graduate with that degree, I am going to be incredibly happy that I am DONE with that saga of my life. It has been hell trying to deal with my adviser over the past years (who as of yet hasn't gotten back to me in less than three months anytime I have needed feedback/guidance). That is far more meaningful to me than the quality of my work in the finished product. I have spent hours on this stupid project, knowing it is essentially meaningless to me, and still haven't had any "luck" in finishing. And have had to fight the system the entire way.

When I finish, it won't be a triumphant conquering of an easy task. It'll be limping across a finish line at best. But you know what? I'm going to finish, dammit.

If a coworker basically thumbs their nose at me for not having a "quality thesis" it will be something that bothers me. Not because you dislike my work, but because the quality work was not the important part in my mind. The completed work is going to be the result of hours of frustration and dealing with a terribly annoying situation. While for you the distinction is clear it won't be for her or anyone else.

Some people may not care if you ignore them, but others definitely will. If your coworker took 9 years to finish I suspect her situation is more similar to mine than "normal."

In light of this, I would strongly suggest simply acknowledging future successes towards the work and time aspect that went into it. "Wow! That must have been a lot of work - congratulations! Must be nice to be finished!"

Answer 5

The other answers don't address some issues about the thesis I'd like to mention.

At a lot of schools a senior/final year thesis/seminar/project/whatever name they assign it is something that must be done to graduate. However, for many students (myself included) it is just one more annoyance on the way to graduation. When and where I did my undergraduate work, you only got one credit toward graduation for your project (while most semester long classes got you three credits), even though you were expected to work on the project for most of both semesters of your final year, while putting in much more work than you would for most three credit courses. Futhermore, prior to my final year, no one completing a degree in my department had ever received an A (top grade) on their senior project. So, my strategy was to pick a simple project of interest to me and do the minimum to get a passing grade and get my diploma. I was fortunate enough to get a B (and others in my graduating class actually did get A's), but I knew the project was nothing great. However, I had my diploma and that's what mattered. It's quite possible your colleague had a similar point of view and might even acknowledge that if asked; not that I recommend asking about it.

As others have said here, you can congratulate your co-worker without directly discussing her final project. If she brings it up, I'd think it's likely she'd be expressing gratitude for your help, in which case all you need to do is say something like "You're welcome".

At this point, it might have been noticed that you didn't offer congratulations. I'd recommend going to her and saying something like "Congratulations on finishing your degree. I'm sorry I didn't say so earlier, my mind was elsewhere."

Answer 6

Life is short, pick your battles.

Spend a couple of minutes to congratulate her, have some smalltalk (optional), and forget about it. Her thesis, whether great or rubbish, is not of any importance to you. Don't waste your time being upset about it.

Remember there are people forming perceptions about you every moment. Even though you may be completely correct in your criticism, if you do anything other than following common social norms, you will be perceived as an obnoxious person. I wouldn't advise ruining your reputation over such an unimportant issue.

Answer 7

Since this forum is about professional conduct in the workplace, I feel it's appropriate to comment on your language and perspective and how it would reflect upon you in the workplace.

You repeatedly use language that is dismissive and subjective about another's work as if it were objective.

You call your colleague's work

• stupid
• useless
• horrible
• actually not good

You refer to your colleague's work as a "thesis", and that they don't deserve it.

None of this represents a professional way to refer to a colleague's work. It's destructive criticism. It also completely fails to take into account that, according to an accredited certifying body (the university), your colleague satisfied the examiners that they deserved to be awarded a BSc. It would be quite arrogant for you to believe that you know better.

You're basically asking how to get away with not congratulating someone on completing their degree.

My answer is this: reassess the problem and treat your colleagues with respect and don't denigrate their work is such a callous way.

Answer 8

It is of critical importance in the workplace to learn to get along with everyone even people you personally don't like or disapprove of. This is a job skill you clearly need to develop or people will stop wanting to work with you no matter how good your technical skills are.

Technical skills are only about 10%-20% of what you need to be successful in the workplace. Persistence and doing what needs to be done even when it isn't fun are about 40-50% of what you need and people skills are the rest. People skills includes basic politeness to every single person in the the workplace including the janitor, the admin assistant, bosses, older or younger people, people of other genders, races, religions or sexual orientations, people who you think are not as good as you, etc. People skills also include having an attitude that is helpful not harmful, taking actions that make people want to help you and work with you such as helping others (not just being critical of them), being friendly, learning to sell your ideas, playing office politics, etc.

To fail to congratulate her is petty, it generates bad feelings and it makes you look like a jerk. It makes it harder to work with the person in the future. The only thing is accomplishes is to reinforce your feelings of superiority. That is a negative accomplishment because feeling superior and acting that way makes other people avoid you over time. People won't want to talk to you, so you won't get told information that would help you. People won't want to be on a team with you, so you will get assigned gradually to less and less important projects.

Consider if you were the person who just graduated, would you want people to congratulate you? Then follow the Golden Rule and do the same for her. Being nice to people doen't mean you approve of everything they do.

Answer 9

Having written software for my own BSc dissertation in Computer Systems Engineering, I can offer an insight into the other side of this.

You seem to be under the impression that because the software was low-quality, she doesn't deserve praise. This implies that you also don't think she deserves 7/10, or possibly her BSc.

For my dissertation, I wrote an application knowing at the time that I was guilty of all the criticisms you have of her code:

• very similar software existed
• my code was terrible
• I'd had help and advice (from my supervisor)

None of those impinged on the reason I wrote it. The dissertation was not to produce quality software, or to do something novel in the application; it was to explore a hypothesis. I needed something that I could use freely, modify if necessary, and inspect the internal workings. Self-built software fit the bill, so I based it on what was already out there to save time.

The software was pretty terrible. The code was messy, it was badly architected, it was full of horrible SOLID violations despite being written in between lectures on how to write SOLID code. This isn't because I'm a bad programmer (I got 1st-class honours in the programming module of the course). This isn't because I wasn't trying (I worked harder than I had at any point in my previous 5 years of uni - or have since, in some regards, working all day and late into the night, every day). This wasn't because I didn't care (this was my second shot at a degree, and I had a lot riding on it, including a career and a partner to support). The poor quality was because it was something I'd never tried before, I was learning how to do it as I went, and I was pressed for time, so once I found a way that worked there was no time to go back and make it cleaner because I had more code to write, experiments to run, and a target of at least 70 pages to write on the whole thing. Every time I look back at that code, I find more ways that I could improve it. I knew it was bad while writing it; now that I've graduated and have been working in the industry for a little while, it's almost painful to read. But that doesn't matter. In the end, it got me the answers I needed, and I got a decent grade on the strength of those answers and how I analysed them.

You say that she got 70%, as assessed by professors who are experienced and educated in a relevant field. At both of the universities I attended, and as far as I know, most universities in my country, 70% and above is 1st-class honours, which very few students achieve.

She's worked hard, for a long time, she achieved what she set out to do, and she's been judged by very qualified people to have done well at it.

To me, that sounds like she deserves to be congratulated.

Answer 10

[ Edit: The OP has explained that they have in fact read the thesis. See this revision of the question for the revision I was responding to. ]

A mobile app is not a thesis, and nothing you wrote indicates you actually understand what her thesis is about (or what a thesis even is!) So not only should you congratulate her on her achievement, you should probably show her the courtesy of being interested and asking her what her thesis was about.

If the app is uninteresting, the UI dull, and the code messy that is all evidence that her thesis probably does not involve any of those things! Without knowing any details, here are some guesses for what it could involve instead:

• the app publishing process (how long does it take, the steps involved, does common advice found on the internet actually help getting apps approved etc)
• applying and evaluating some CS pattern or anti-pattern
• reverse engineering an existing app in order to clone it
• testing the performance of some alternative algorithms
• the ease of learning and using some framework based solely on its official documentation vs external resources
• the social factors involved in working in her industry

Answer 11

is it advised to congratulate a colleague that has obtained a BSc in Computer Science even if i think that her thesis is just (sorry for the words) stupid and useless?

Yes, and as someone who also wrote an Android app (two, infact) as part of my degree, I would also advise you to swallow your pride.

So what if existing apps exist on the Play Store? She still had to write her own code, test it and make it functional. That is hard work for a single student to do. Many of these competing apps have entire teams behind them.

So what if it doesn't strictly follow good code or UI practices? It was clearly usable and stable enough to pass muster, and that is what is important for her degree. Besides, for all we know, your colleague may have been starting from zero or near-zero Android programming knowledge. To go from zero to a fully functioning app is not to be sniffed at.