--- type: "article" title: "How to WOW your engineers without budget" newsletter: "manager.dev" newsletter_handle: "managerdev" newsletter_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/managerdev" author: "Anton Zaides (@antonz23)" published: "2025-02-25T07:02:17.000Z" canonical_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/managerdev/a/how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget" markdown_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/managerdev/a/how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget.md" chat_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/managerdev/a/how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget/chat" source_url: "https://newsletter.manager.dev/p/how-to-wow-your-engineers-without" body_source: "imported" likes: 0 replies: 0 body_words: 971 --- # How to WOW your engineers without budget *The article is a guest post by**[Lakshmi Narasimhan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lan1983/?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget)**, whom I’ll introduce after his intro.* *** Every few months, 2-3 newly graduated engineers arrive at our company. Their manager asks them to write a few sentences about themselves and then email them to everyone, saying something like ‘X, Y, and Z joined today, please welcome them’. One day, I got sick of those boring emails. So, I decided to do something special for the next batch of engineers: give them a welcome they would remember for years. I spent a few minutes on Canva, and created a “newsletter” with the info they shared, and their photo. The result was something like this: ![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/025a6815-a015-4360-9237-031611fd29cc/d7d6a924-2c81-442b-8169-60c9fc27542f_289x338.jpg?t=1773825847) I then sent those ‘newsletter excerpts’ instead of the regular welcome email. The responses were amazing! Instead of the usual 1-2 ‘Welcome!’ replies, there were more than 100(!) replies to that email. People actually read the ‘newsletters’. Even more important, I remember one of the engineers telling me how much he appreciated it, that this gesture **made him feel seen.** Of course the next time people arrived for my team, the expectations were even higher - and in the years since I enjoyed coming up with more and more original ideas. A few months ago, I decided to share them with other managers, and compiled them into the book ‘[19 Tech Tips to "WoW" Your Team](https://www.amazon.com/Tech-Tips-WoW-your-team-ebook/dp/B0DDGHHJ29?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget)’ (sold for $1). Today, I’m excited to share with you **5 ideas to wow your team with zero budget!** *** *Today’s article is a guest post by**[Lakshmi Narasimhan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lan1983/?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget)**.**Lakshmi is a Senior Engineering Manager at****Flipkart****. We met on LinkedIn and exchanged some messages, and he agreed to share his ideas in the newsletter (not sponsored/affiliated).* *** ## 1. Welcoming new members For you, the first day of a new employee might be a little exciting. For them, it’s SUPER exciting, and also scary and overwhelming (especially if they are just starting their career). With just a few minutes of your time, you can make their day. I already mentioned the fake newsletter idea, here are a few more: - Create a **temporary website** just for them. With ChatGPT it’s super easy: “Hey create a sample UI code using HTML and CSS react to welcome a new team member”. Paste their photo and text and host it somewhere free. - Use what is **currently happening** in the world as a context to welcome someone. For example, when India won the world cup T20, I wrote the subject line “T20 Champions are back and a Champion Joins us”. - Do another **poster in Canva**, in a different format for each team member. It can be a ‘wanted’ poster (saying ‘finally found our backend ninja’), or anything else that comes to your mind. ## 2. Promotion HR sent out an email that a promotion that I had put up is now confirmed. I thought to myself, how can I etch this moment in her memory? I came up with the idea of displaying a placard to her. I scheduled a call for the next day, and went to the local stationery shop to buy placards and sketch pens. I wrote with a nice design “Pavithra - SD II, Congratulations!” (name changed ). During the meeting the next day, I asked her for any guesses on what this meeting was about. She thought it was a regular 1:1, and then I showed this Placard over the video. Instead of a boring email, or just saying “Congrats! You got the promotion”, I put in a bit of effort, and I saw in her eyes how important it was for her. Another simple idea is to **create a ‘promotion timeline’** for the email announcing the promotion. Here’s an example (name changed): ![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/0529bb10-b6cf-41f7-9def-266fed8185c5/17ec2bee-2f94-4f0d-b683-224bd67fdeeb_508x776.jpg?t=1773825848) For you, it’s a regular day. For them, it might be an event they waited years for. ## 3. Anniversary/birthdays greetings Usually on birthdays/anniversaries the HR just sends a ‘congrats X’, and some people respond. I decided to make it a bit more interesting and fun. In our company, we use Dashboards very heavily, specifically Grafana (but it can work with any tool). I modified one of the Widgets to display Anniversary and Birthday Wishes. Our engineers open them daily, so seeing the greeting in a usually professional context brings an instant smile to their faces. ## 4. Surprise catch up For the 3/5/10 years anniversary, I like to set up a catch-up meeting with very senior leaders. The interactions were always very good and left a long-lasting impression on the engineers. ## 5. Books This one is the only action requiring a (small) budget. For my engineers, I used to send the “Startup of You” book and to my peers, I have sent “Radical Candor” as a token of appreciation for their contributions. On a few occasions, I have also given newsletter subscriptions as a token of appreciation. *Anton here: when I left my last company, I bought books for the 7 people closest to me (my direct reports and manager). I bought each one a****different****book, that was based on our conversations and what I felt they would enjoy. People really appreciated both the book and the thought I put into it!* ## Final words Thank you Lakshmi for the article and the great ideas! I believe that those few minutes you will spend to make your employees’ special days a bit better will be the minutes with the highest ROI of your day. *For some reason, those ideas reminded me of the thought process 🙃* ### What I enjoyed reading this week: 1. [How to push back on bad ideas (without killing your career)](https://tahahussain.substack.com/p/how-to-push-back-on-bad-ideas-without?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget) by 2. [5 Engineering Management Misconceptions I Wish I Knew Earlier](https://adlerhsieh.com/p/5-engineering-management-misconceptions?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget) by 3. [10 Tips for Turning Around a Platform Team](https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-341-10-tips-for-turning-around?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget) by 4. [Why you](https://blog.staysaasy.com/p/judge-your-coworkers?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget)**[should](https://blog.staysaasy.com/p/judge-your-coworkers?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget)**[judge your coworkers](https://blog.staysaasy.com/p/judge-your-coworkers?utm_source=newsletter.manager.dev&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=how-to-wow-your-engineers-without-budget) by *** [Powered by beehiiv](https://www.beehiiv.com/?utm_campaign=e6b7b8ae-49e5-4a65-b27d-0a5e6fdce64a&utm_medium=post_rss&utm_source=manager_dev) *** ## Discussion No replies yet.