The moment I complained and vented in a single line to an old friend, I can feel the pressure leaving immediately
And further more emotionally spacious made me think of another alternative despite me brooding for more than 3 months.
Who knew?
I think it was the interaction across multiple factors: this exact friend, how I think of him, the nature of the issue, our relationship that magically produce an emotional spaciousness.
Weird and most likely hard to reproduce for other issues with same friend or same issue but different friends
This is great. And my main thought about "complaining = taking on the obligation to fix it" is that a culture like that is a really good way for a workplace culture to avoid the concerns of women and minorities, because very often the things that make it a bad workplace for us will be things it's not directly in our power to fix, or where appropriate behaviour and attitudes need to be modelled by people with more institutional power than us (showing good allyship, though there's more to it than that) to get the "soft" parts of the problem (i.e. those that aren't crisply described by rules or procedures or budgets which might be changed) to shift over time.
I read this post and come with the feeling that is written with implicit assumptions that doesn't hold in any place i ever know, and they sort of stated, but not really. and also totally miss, or unaware,to the Different World from which they came.
I never in my life was in such depressing place as the Google culture you describe.
I'm leaving now my working place, that was startup then was brought by big corporate, and now become more and more corporate-y and maze-y.
we complain. it's normal. it's also doesn't change the bad things - sometimes it highlight them. for example, there is public knowledge about the uselessness of IT and about This One Guy that put roadblocks on the work of a lot of people. it actually help! it prevent me from feeling that i am the crazy one, and know that the problems i encounter are universal and real. that the problem is with IT and ThisGuy and not with me.
and it make me think - maybe what you describe is Goodheart Law example? a lot of complaints are symptom of problems - of corporate dysfunctionality that decide to decimate IT and managerial dysfunctionality that make the boss of my boss to say the he can't do anything to prevent ThisGuy from create problems. so someone optimized toward "less complains" and was Goodhearted to the result you described.
***
my mother like to complain about her work. i dislike it, and it's one of the reasons i don't like to talk to her. she will have a story about why some colleague or other suck. she almost never doesn't have other stories.
this negativity is draining. and i heard some stories about places when complaining and negativity become the norm, and being positive or enjoying yourself become frowned-upon and low status.
there are also people and situations when complaining helps, and situations when it make things worse.
so from my point of view, the question is - in what situations complaining helps, and in what it harms. and this post look to me like example of locally-valid claim that fail to specify where it's valid and so over-generalize.
> Complaining Might Mitigate Burnout
Yes this literally happened yesterday.
The moment I complained and vented in a single line to an old friend, I can feel the pressure leaving immediately
And further more emotionally spacious made me think of another alternative despite me brooding for more than 3 months.
Who knew?
I think it was the interaction across multiple factors: this exact friend, how I think of him, the nature of the issue, our relationship that magically produce an emotional spaciousness.
Weird and most likely hard to reproduce for other issues with same friend or same issue but different friends
🤷🏻♂️
This is great. And my main thought about "complaining = taking on the obligation to fix it" is that a culture like that is a really good way for a workplace culture to avoid the concerns of women and minorities, because very often the things that make it a bad workplace for us will be things it's not directly in our power to fix, or where appropriate behaviour and attitudes need to be modelled by people with more institutional power than us (showing good allyship, though there's more to it than that) to get the "soft" parts of the problem (i.e. those that aren't crisply described by rules or procedures or budgets which might be changed) to shift over time.
Yes, absolutely! Thanks. I was aware of this problem, but hadn't quite made that connection with the issue of the culture of complaining more broadly.
I read this post and come with the feeling that is written with implicit assumptions that doesn't hold in any place i ever know, and they sort of stated, but not really. and also totally miss, or unaware,to the Different World from which they came.
I never in my life was in such depressing place as the Google culture you describe.
I'm leaving now my working place, that was startup then was brought by big corporate, and now become more and more corporate-y and maze-y.
we complain. it's normal. it's also doesn't change the bad things - sometimes it highlight them. for example, there is public knowledge about the uselessness of IT and about This One Guy that put roadblocks on the work of a lot of people. it actually help! it prevent me from feeling that i am the crazy one, and know that the problems i encounter are universal and real. that the problem is with IT and ThisGuy and not with me.
and it make me think - maybe what you describe is Goodheart Law example? a lot of complaints are symptom of problems - of corporate dysfunctionality that decide to decimate IT and managerial dysfunctionality that make the boss of my boss to say the he can't do anything to prevent ThisGuy from create problems. so someone optimized toward "less complains" and was Goodhearted to the result you described.
***
my mother like to complain about her work. i dislike it, and it's one of the reasons i don't like to talk to her. she will have a story about why some colleague or other suck. she almost never doesn't have other stories.
this negativity is draining. and i heard some stories about places when complaining and negativity become the norm, and being positive or enjoying yourself become frowned-upon and low status.
there are also people and situations when complaining helps, and situations when it make things worse.
so from my point of view, the question is - in what situations complaining helps, and in what it harms. and this post look to me like example of locally-valid claim that fail to specify where it's valid and so over-generalize.
https://hadoveretharishona.wordpress.com/2023/02/11/%d7%a9%d7%99%d7%98%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9e%d7%95%d7%a6%d7%9c%d7%97%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9e%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%9e%d7%99%d7%aa-%d7%a6%d7%a8%d7%99%d7%9b%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%9b%d7%9c%d7%95%d7%9c-%d7%aa%d7%a0%d7%90/