And thank you for the interesting article Lokajit! The topic has been on my mind after a CTO told me recently during an interview that they “train out” the practice of giving “shit sandwiches.” He meant he doesn’t want managers to use the compliment sandwich model of praise / criticism / praise because it “dilutes the message.”

I had turned in take-home assignment (code review) that was a “giant shit sandwich,” in his exact words. We discussed that the code was so bad it may have been better to fire the employee than provide mentoring.

After hearing him out and reflecting for a few weeks, I realized that I could never work at an organization like that. Furthermore, I don’t think I’m the only one — even a typical code review is fraught with potential rejection and conflict, as other authors have written about.