Depends on what they are complaining about and how they are doing it. In general, I would ask them how they would fix the problems they're complaining about. The first two steps to fixing any problem are to identify any analyze it. This might be their (unideal) way of doing that.
Not everything needs to be done yesterday. I've "executed" plans where leadership basically flips flops on their position. The team started putting all these hare brained ideas behind feature flags.
Unproductive complaints are... frustrating if you're on the receiving end of them, because they are basically (and unproductively) asking for help / solutions. But if it's just complaints, they also have the impression that the problem is not in their "sphere of influence"; coffee, for example, is usually handled by a facilities department. It's easy to complain about coffee to your boss, but it's confrontational if you actually pull the issue into your sphere of influence and go to the facilities department to complain.
It opens you up to vulnerability. You speak to people you don't usually speak to; you get confronted with the realities of that particular issue; office coffee for example is often a factor of budget vs cost, long-term supply and support contracts with coffee machine companies, and of course personal taste. Are you going to take on some responsibility for all that?
Of course, the other part is that you get hired for one job, stepping outside of that role to pursue something not directly impacting said job is often frowned upon. I say often because it's a bit of both, the best people will take on more and different things than what they were hired for.
Anyway. Complainers can / should get a training about "circle of influence/control", also because I doubt that work stuff is the only thing going on in their life, it can help them outside of work too. Knowing what you can change and what is outside of your control is great for your peace of mind and general attitude.
> Example: A team member repeatedly complains about timelines. Each time, the manager extends them. Soon, complaining becomes the default negotiation strategy.
Well, are the timelines too short? Is the team member complaining, or are they pointing out actual problems with the proposed timeline? And if the complaining gets the timeline extended to something reasonable, is there a problem with it being a negotiation tactic if it works?
> Learned helplessness: complaint as despair
> Leadership move: Restore agency through small wins.
This feels like when we'd let our five year old pick out what clothes she wanted to wear. Shouldn't the leadership move here be to try to solve the source of the despair?
This article focuses on dealing with the team member, and not the sources of the complaints. Sure, some people are just negative downers. But the first three examples on the page seem like actual external problems that the complainers are noticing and voicing concern about.
(And if you think it's bad to have complainers, wait until the complainers realize that no change is forthcoming, and either stop engaging at all, or go find work somewhere better.)
>The project plan is flawed. The deadlines are unrealistic. Leadership is out of touch.
Fascinating examples. I have never in my professional career heard anybody refer to these as "complaining". "Complaints", yes, but in English that has does not have the same connotation.
Most of the time, complainers are a exhibiting a personality trait (or learned behavior as the article says); let's call those "unserious complainers". Some of the time (maybe 10% IME), the person complaining knows how to fix a problem, and is confused why no one is taking them or their suggestion seriously. It could be that the problem has existed for so long that the team has a cognitive blindness, or the team is swamped and has no capacity to think strategically.
A good way to partition the complainers into serious and unserious groups is to ask for a written plan. Unserious complainers backoff quickly, while serious complainers will be glad someone is taking their suggestion seriously.
> Some of the time (maybe 10% IME), the person complaining knows how to fix a problem,
Knowing how to fix the problem shouldn't be a hard prerequisite to raising an issue. I've seen situations where everyone on the team is aware of a problem, but the only people with authority to solve it are sitting around waiting for it to work itself out without their intervention.
Of course the natural thought is "raising an issue constructively isn't complaining", but there's a kind of viewpoint bias on both sides of this. Sometimes people who are too wedded to some idea or way of doing things view any criticism at all in a reflexively negative light, just as some people tend to air grievances as a hobby without a constructive outcome in mind.
Complaint: tickets created by the QA team for developers, even seemingly trivial ones, stagnate in Jira for months and sometimes years without anyone looking.
Written plan: Hire somebody who will be actually responsible for planning and prioritization. Hire more developers, so that the existing ones are not overloaded.
Reality: "This is not a realistic plan. There is a budget, and you are not the one who makes hiring decisions, so shut up and stop creating tickets unless there is something really serious".
How does this font achieve the awful "shifting baseline" effect?
I assume that it is using a ton of ligatures, because consecutive letters always look different, but is that the only thing going on or is there something even more pernicious happening?
Am I the only one who doesn’t care if the team has one individual with such traits? Like, if it slows down execution, well, I’m not into squeezing the last drop of speed of everyone. Also, people like that always give you the chance to show how good you are (supposedly): you can support them with potential fixes, you can support the team by saying perhaps that the complaint is not a big deal because data says so, whatever.
It’s like those people who are racist: they always make me feel better with myself because I don’t hold such beliefs. If everyone would be a saint, I would feel a bit down (because I’m not one).
The one time I visited Google for a round of interviews, they assigned the complainer to take interviewees to lunch. It was enough to keep any interest I had in Google at bay forever.
The article really does a great job of setting up Survivorship Bias and then completely drops the ball.
Of course chronic complainers complain about stuff out of their control. They've fixed (at least in thier eyes) the items within their control. Asking them "what would they do" is but itself entirely ineffective unless anybody is going to act on it.
I scanned the article to see if "check whether any of their compaints are valid" but didn't see it anywhere. Sometimes maybe the person complaining might be right..
In my experience, people complain because they don't feel heard or they feel ignored (different feelings). Some people are also wired to complain; it's therapeutic to them. Both are coachable.
I once worked for a small consultancy which did business by fishing for contracts, then doing the absolute to-the-letter minimum to fulfill them, irrespective of damage to the customer’s business or the company reputation. We would deliver working software that was absolutely awful to actually use for anything.
Often, clients would literally tell us to f*ck off when they realized we would not do anything that wasn’t in the contract verbatim, no matter how trivial.
To me, it was insanity. I would have preferred actually solving customer issues in a partnership fashion, and day-to-day work was nightmarish due to the constant conflict of values. Raising an issue about this got me branded a complainer.
The company slowly gathered enough references to attract some bigger clients (realistically: via backroom deals and kickbacks) and was eventually acquired, and some time later the executives were politely told to pack their things and get out.
They got what they wanted: a hefty paycheck and a load of shares from the acquiring company. The entire company was an acquisition scam from the get-go.
26 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 70.8 ms ] threadNot everything needs to be done yesterday. I've "executed" plans where leadership basically flips flops on their position. The team started putting all these hare brained ideas behind feature flags.
Wish we had this complaining guy.
(Not complaining, just observing. I shipped a top selling title that used Comic Sans exclusively!)
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11466122
It opens you up to vulnerability. You speak to people you don't usually speak to; you get confronted with the realities of that particular issue; office coffee for example is often a factor of budget vs cost, long-term supply and support contracts with coffee machine companies, and of course personal taste. Are you going to take on some responsibility for all that?
Of course, the other part is that you get hired for one job, stepping outside of that role to pursue something not directly impacting said job is often frowned upon. I say often because it's a bit of both, the best people will take on more and different things than what they were hired for.
Anyway. Complainers can / should get a training about "circle of influence/control", also because I doubt that work stuff is the only thing going on in their life, it can help them outside of work too. Knowing what you can change and what is outside of your control is great for your peace of mind and general attitude.
Well, are the timelines too short? Is the team member complaining, or are they pointing out actual problems with the proposed timeline? And if the complaining gets the timeline extended to something reasonable, is there a problem with it being a negotiation tactic if it works?
> Learned helplessness: complaint as despair
> Leadership move: Restore agency through small wins.
This feels like when we'd let our five year old pick out what clothes she wanted to wear. Shouldn't the leadership move here be to try to solve the source of the despair?
This article focuses on dealing with the team member, and not the sources of the complaints. Sure, some people are just negative downers. But the first three examples on the page seem like actual external problems that the complainers are noticing and voicing concern about.
(And if you think it's bad to have complainers, wait until the complainers realize that no change is forthcoming, and either stop engaging at all, or go find work somewhere better.)
Fascinating examples. I have never in my professional career heard anybody refer to these as "complaining". "Complaints", yes, but in English that has does not have the same connotation.
A good way to partition the complainers into serious and unserious groups is to ask for a written plan. Unserious complainers backoff quickly, while serious complainers will be glad someone is taking their suggestion seriously.
Knowing how to fix the problem shouldn't be a hard prerequisite to raising an issue. I've seen situations where everyone on the team is aware of a problem, but the only people with authority to solve it are sitting around waiting for it to work itself out without their intervention.
Of course the natural thought is "raising an issue constructively isn't complaining", but there's a kind of viewpoint bias on both sides of this. Sometimes people who are too wedded to some idea or way of doing things view any criticism at all in a reflexively negative light, just as some people tend to air grievances as a hobby without a constructive outcome in mind.
Complaint: tickets created by the QA team for developers, even seemingly trivial ones, stagnate in Jira for months and sometimes years without anyone looking.
Written plan: Hire somebody who will be actually responsible for planning and prioritization. Hire more developers, so that the existing ones are not overloaded.
Reality: "This is not a realistic plan. There is a budget, and you are not the one who makes hiring decisions, so shut up and stop creating tickets unless there is something really serious".
So - is the complainer above serious, or not?
(all of the above is pure fiction)
I assume that it is using a ton of ligatures, because consecutive letters always look different, but is that the only thing going on or is there something even more pernicious happening?
It’s like those people who are racist: they always make me feel better with myself because I don’t hold such beliefs. If everyone would be a saint, I would feel a bit down (because I’m not one).
Of course chronic complainers complain about stuff out of their control. They've fixed (at least in thier eyes) the items within their control. Asking them "what would they do" is but itself entirely ineffective unless anybody is going to act on it.
They left off one critical reason:
The person is a problem solver and is correct
So when a proposal is tabled, they will point out non obvious shortcomings and unintended concequences.
This is not 'complaining'.
Neither does this mean you immediatly have to keel over and ditch the plan. Plenty of times something can succeed against all odds.
But smart management will take into account the information provided, rather tjan labeling it as something to ignore without furter thought.
Often, clients would literally tell us to f*ck off when they realized we would not do anything that wasn’t in the contract verbatim, no matter how trivial.
To me, it was insanity. I would have preferred actually solving customer issues in a partnership fashion, and day-to-day work was nightmarish due to the constant conflict of values. Raising an issue about this got me branded a complainer.
The company slowly gathered enough references to attract some bigger clients (realistically: via backroom deals and kickbacks) and was eventually acquired, and some time later the executives were politely told to pack their things and get out.
They got what they wanted: a hefty paycheck and a load of shares from the acquiring company. The entire company was an acquisition scam from the get-go.