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I want to tell you a story about @mekkaokereke and micro-sponsorship.
I only recently started following @mekkaokereke on here even though I've been a fan of his for a couple of years after I saw a talk he gave on building inclusive teams. I didn't think I had ever personally interacted with him until I came across an old email.
I was digging through some old emails at work (it's perf season) and I saw an email from 2015 from Mekka. I didn't remember getting this email at all and I had no idea who he even was in 2015.
Someone on his team had filed a bug against my project. I looked into the bug, submitted a fix, and pushed the fix to production within the same day. It was a pretty easy fix, but they were stoked that it had been fixed so quickly.
The email from 2015 was sent to me and my manager. It said:
"Hi Kevin, Check the timestamps on the bug filed, bug fixed, and fix deployed by Elizabeth. :) Thanks from the Play Team and have a great weekend! Mekka"
"Hi Kevin, Check the timestamps on the bug filed, bug fixed, and fix deployed by Elizabeth. :) Thanks from the Play Team and have a great weekend! Mekka"
Mekka isn't the one who filed the bug. He had little investment in the bug being fixed and no investment in my career. My name wasn't in the email thread he saw. He took the time to look at the bug report, see who fixed it (me!), and make my work visible to my manager.
"Look how fast I fixed this bug" is the type of thing I never would have bragged about to my manager. My manager never would have known about the impact of my work on this other team if not for Mekka and his act of micro-sponsorship.
So, be like Mekka. If you see that someone has done good work, no matter how small, highlight it to the people that matter.
P.S. If you don't follow @mekkaokereke on here, you should - he's the real deal!
