How Can I Deal with a Team Member Who Is Always Complaining?

(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

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.)

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.

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).

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.

They left off one critical reason:

The person is a problem solver and is correct

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wish we had this complaining guy.

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.