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I think this is bad advice personally. Imagine if you complained about sexual harassment and were told to “bring solutions, not complaints.” A complaint is use

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

I think this is bad advice personally. Imagine if you complained about sexual harassment and were told to “bring solutions, not complaints.” A complaint is useful feedback that can alert you to a coming problem or an unintentional pain point or a previously invisible suffering group of people. It’s exactly attitudes that try to undermine the purpose of a complaint by trying to implicitly shift the burden of a solution onto the complainer that create an air of fear or timidity that mere feedback is not acceptable, and will be treated like it is the same as whining, preventing people from using the complaint as a mechanism to alert a wider group of problem solvers to the issue. It doesn’t matter if it’s complaining to the police about a loud neighbor, complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered, complaining to HR about sexual harassment or complaining to the waiter that your food was brought to you cold. It should be seen as a perfectly polite, reasonable, and useful thing to complain and leave the solution up to someone else. In cases when it’s appropriate for you to also propose a solution, because you have relevant skills or experiences or something, even better. But you should never make someone feel like their complaint doesn’t deserve to be heard unless they also have a ready made solution in hand too.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
In the context of trying of get things done at work, which this question is apparently framed as, where the issue is not sexual harassment, I have found it to be a very effective rule of thumb. I think you are reading in meaning that isn't there. It is a rule of thumb for precisely this type of goal. It is not a rule of thumb for how to deal with situations where you are clearly being wronged and it is clearly someone else's responsibility to right it. But it works really, really well for trying to insert your agenda where doing so may not be all that welcome and where you are potentially stepping on toes politically, toes that could potentially cost you your job if they find you offensive enough. If you have a better way rather than just a criticism, it tends to be much, much better received.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I disagree even in that case. When my colleague complains that a certain software module is overly complex, say, that’s really useful feedback even if they don’t have time to itemize the specific reasons why or propose alternatives. In terms of delegating and scheduling, it might just fall on someone else to take the complaint and look into whether the code can be simplified. Raising a complaint long before having a full alternative is really useful in matters of team conventions, design principles, adoption of different tooling, workflow policies, etc. I would always want to foster an environment where teammates could feel free and empowered to speak up about a topic that doesn’t sit right with them, and never feel implicit pressure to be quiet or keep to themselves if they cannot already propose an alternative. I like to say that it’s all about empathy, but people often think about empathy completely backwards, from their own point of view, just “not wanting to hear it” or getting annoyed with a particular colleague who is often vocal just because they irrationally wish the person would be quiet and not introduce extra work via some complaint that needs looking into. This is backwards because you should be happy and welcoming for people to tell you all this stuff. Part of being a professional is increasing your capacity to absorb complaints to make other people happy by solving their problem when they alert you to it, and not getting upset or annoyed (or at least not letting it affect you), and thinking they should be holding back for your sake. It’s a natural extension of a lot of the advice in, “How to win friends and influence people,” applied to the workplace.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I think you are seriously reading in a huge amount that isn't there. There is no edict here to keep silent or something. There are lots of circumstances where it's fine to voice criticisms. But where you have a clear agenda to oppose specific things at work and you want to insist on change happening, how you bring that up matters and just loudly complaining and insisting it is someone else's job to fix it isn't a best practice.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      I don’t agree. I was responding to the parent comment that said this: > “Something I heard at my corporate job: "Bring solutions, not complaints." It's a great rule of thumb to follow.” It’s clearly talking about a general office culture, and not restricted to long-running agendas or anything, but rather having good “corporate citizenship” by not complaining or something, an institutionalized mantra to equivocate complaining with whining— I don’t think it involves reading anything extra into it in order to see that in the parent comment.
mmt 8y ago
> complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered Even in that case, at least in the US, one must do the equivalent of bringing the solution. Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both [1]. They can't merely be a complaint that open-endedly asks the court to decide the solution. The exception is for criminal cases, and those are brought by the government, not individuals. > But you should never "Never" is an extremely high standard, superlative, even, which makes it difficult to agree with. > make someone feel like their complaint doesn’t deserve to be heard unless they also have a ready made solution in hand too. This strikes me as a strawman, because the discussion isn't really about people's feelings, whether they deserve to be heard, nor if a particular solution is ready made (as opposed to merely a proposed, initial version). Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends. In that context, the advice is to provide an alternative solution, in addition to criticisms of that trend. Since that advice is based on the giver's personal experience with the relative receptivity to such challenges, at least in a particular company, that makes it valid advice. You may well feel that it is somehow morally or ethically wrong for the people in that company to have been less receptive to a challenge in the absence of an alternate solution, but they still were. Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice. [1] Also declarative relief, but that's rarely in response to something that can easily be likened to a complaint, as we're discussing in this context.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  > “Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both” I’m only trying to talk about how we perceive people bringing complaints. I think you misunderstood and it’s my fault for choosing a needlessly complicated example to include. I’m saying it should not matter whether a complaint is big, small, formal, or informal (that’s why I listed a range of possible situations when someone might have to bring a complaint). Across all those cases, the social norm of treating the person as if their complaint deserves to be considered should not be predicated on whether they offer a solution at the same time. (Which is different than any legal requirement or other non-norm aspect.) In other words, your point about asking for specific types of relief in a legal complaint is not addressing whether people believe the party bringing the complaint is just being a whiner or something, which is all I ever wrote about. Granted though, maybe I should have chosen a non-legal example, like complaining to a referee in a sports competition, to get the point across about the variety of situations without dragging in possible confusion over red herring legal specifics. Or maybe an example with an arbiter determining the relief, if any, in an employment dispute or something. > “Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends.” I was never responding to the OP, only the parent comment above mine that talked about using a rule of thumb of not bringing complaints, only solutions, and specifically mentioned it was heard in a corporate context. That combination of details seems appropriate for counterpoints that if a corporate environment codifies a culture that dissuades complaints by pressuring people to first have solutions in hand, it’s a very bad thing that will hurt marginalized people (and in a corporate setting that might even be the intended effect). Whether a local rule of thumb making the shy person feel unwelcome to point out a deficiency in some work artifact during a team meeting, or making someone feel they can’t talk about rude behavior of their desk neighbor because they don’t have a seating change proposal or they really like their seat already. The situations where people need to feel free to complain without proposing a solution are constant, pervasive, all around us, and often involve people we don’t consider or see because of biases or other blind spots. > “Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice.” I believe that is actually does explicitly invalidate the advice. Obviously, others are free to agree or disagree with the moral point of view behind my comment (e.g. that policies which might discourage suffering people from expressing their suffering are wrong), and then choose for themselves which part of the advice they prefer. That’s why we’re discussing it in comments. But that doesn’t invalidate my original disagreement of the parent comment, nor have any affect on the usefulness of me writing up counterpoint comments that express dissent to that proposed rule of thumb.
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
Why was the [flagged] status for this comment or any below it applied or acted upon? It’s an unequivocally civil thread of discussion about a valid interpretation of the parent comment. To flag and hide this subtree of comments seems like unquestionable misuse of the flagging system for HN. Particularly for this first comment above.
- mmt 8y ago
  Although I agree that flagging (at least your top-level comment) seems a clear abuse of that system (which appears only to have been "acted upon" in a purely automated fashion), commenting on it in-thread (especially without a link to the original, for interested parties ;)) tends not to help. I believe the encouraged best practice is to e-mail hn@ycombinator.com to call the situation to the attention of the moderators. Even if they don't completely agree with your position, I suspect they will at least have a user or two's suspicious flagging behavior to keep under observation and/or revoke.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

In the context of trying of get things done at work, which this question is apparently framed as, where the issue is not sexual harassment, I have found it to be a very effective rule of thumb. I think you are reading in meaning that isn't there. It is a rule of thumb for precisely this type of goal. It is not a rule of thumb for how to deal with situations where you are clearly being wronged and it is clearly someone else's responsibility to right it. But it works really, really well for trying to insert your agenda where doing so may not be all that welcome and where you are potentially stepping on toes politically, toes that could potentially cost you your job if they find you offensive enough. If you have a better way rather than just a criticism, it tends to be much, much better received.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I disagree even in that case. When my colleague complains that a certain software module is overly complex, say, that’s really useful feedback even if they don’t have time to itemize the specific reasons why or propose alternatives. In terms of delegating and scheduling, it might just fall on someone else to take the complaint and look into whether the code can be simplified. Raising a complaint long before having a full alternative is really useful in matters of team conventions, design principles, adoption of different tooling, workflow policies, etc. I would always want to foster an environment where teammates could feel free and empowered to speak up about a topic that doesn’t sit right with them, and never feel implicit pressure to be quiet or keep to themselves if they cannot already propose an alternative. I like to say that it’s all about empathy, but people often think about empathy completely backwards, from their own point of view, just “not wanting to hear it” or getting annoyed with a particular colleague who is often vocal just because they irrationally wish the person would be quiet and not introduce extra work via some complaint that needs looking into. This is backwards because you should be happy and welcoming for people to tell you all this stuff. Part of being a professional is increasing your capacity to absorb complaints to make other people happy by solving their problem when they alert you to it, and not getting upset or annoyed (or at least not letting it affect you), and thinking they should be holding back for your sake. It’s a natural extension of a lot of the advice in, “How to win friends and influence people,” applied to the workplace.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I think you are seriously reading in a huge amount that isn't there. There is no edict here to keep silent or something. There are lots of circumstances where it's fine to voice criticisms. But where you have a clear agenda to oppose specific things at work and you want to insist on change happening, how you bring that up matters and just loudly complaining and insisting it is someone else's job to fix it isn't a best practice.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    I don’t agree. I was responding to the parent comment that said this: > “Something I heard at my corporate job: "Bring solutions, not complaints." It's a great rule of thumb to follow.” It’s clearly talking about a general office culture, and not restricted to long-running agendas or anything, but rather having good “corporate citizenship” by not complaining or something, an institutionalized mantra to equivocate complaining with whining— I don’t think it involves reading anything extra into it in order to see that in the parent comment.

mmt 8y ago

> complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered Even in that case, at least in the US, one must do the equivalent of bringing the solution. Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both [1]. They can't merely be a complaint that open-endedly asks the court to decide the solution. The exception is for criminal cases, and those are brought by the government, not individuals. > But you should never "Never" is an extremely high standard, superlative, even, which makes it difficult to agree with. > make someone feel like their complaint doesn’t deserve to be heard unless they also have a ready made solution in hand too. This strikes me as a strawman, because the discussion isn't really about people's feelings, whether they deserve to be heard, nor if a particular solution is ready made (as opposed to merely a proposed, initial version). Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends. In that context, the advice is to provide an alternative solution, in addition to criticisms of that trend. Since that advice is based on the giver's personal experience with the relative receptivity to such challenges, at least in a particular company, that makes it valid advice. You may well feel that it is somehow morally or ethically wrong for the people in that company to have been less receptive to a challenge in the absence of an alternate solution, but they still were. Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice. [1] Also declarative relief, but that's rarely in response to something that can easily be likened to a complaint, as we're discussing in this context.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> “Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both” I’m only trying to talk about how we perceive people bringing complaints. I think you misunderstood and it’s my fault for choosing a needlessly complicated example to include. I’m saying it should not matter whether a complaint is big, small, formal, or informal (that’s why I listed a range of possible situations when someone might have to bring a complaint). Across all those cases, the social norm of treating the person as if their complaint deserves to be considered should not be predicated on whether they offer a solution at the same time. (Which is different than any legal requirement or other non-norm aspect.) In other words, your point about asking for specific types of relief in a legal complaint is not addressing whether people believe the party bringing the complaint is just being a whiner or something, which is all I ever wrote about. Granted though, maybe I should have chosen a non-legal example, like complaining to a referee in a sports competition, to get the point across about the variety of situations without dragging in possible confusion over red herring legal specifics. Or maybe an example with an arbiter determining the relief, if any, in an employment dispute or something. > “Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends.” I was never responding to the OP, only the parent comment above mine that talked about using a rule of thumb of not bringing complaints, only solutions, and specifically mentioned it was heard in a corporate context. That combination of details seems appropriate for counterpoints that if a corporate environment codifies a culture that dissuades complaints by pressuring people to first have solutions in hand, it’s a very bad thing that will hurt marginalized people (and in a corporate setting that might even be the intended effect). Whether a local rule of thumb making the shy person feel unwelcome to point out a deficiency in some work artifact during a team meeting, or making someone feel they can’t talk about rude behavior of their desk neighbor because they don’t have a seating change proposal or they really like their seat already. The situations where people need to feel free to complain without proposing a solution are constant, pervasive, all around us, and often involve people we don’t consider or see because of biases or other blind spots. > “Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice.” I believe that is actually does explicitly invalidate the advice. Obviously, others are free to agree or disagree with the moral point of view behind my comment (e.g. that policies which might discourage suffering people from expressing their suffering are wrong), and then choose for themselves which part of the advice they prefer. That’s why we’re discussing it in comments. But that doesn’t invalidate my original disagreement of the parent comment, nor have any affect on the usefulness of me writing up counterpoint comments that express dissent to that proposed rule of thumb.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

Why was the [flagged] status for this comment or any below it applied or acted upon? It’s an unequivocally civil thread of discussion about a valid interpretation of the parent comment. To flag and hide this subtree of comments seems like unquestionable misuse of the flagging system for HN. Particularly for this first comment above.

mmt 8y ago
Although I agree that flagging (at least your top-level comment) seems a clear abuse of that system (which appears only to have been "acted upon" in a purely automated fashion), commenting on it in-thread (especially without a link to the original, for interested parties ;)) tends not to help. I believe the encouraged best practice is to e-mail hn@ycombinator.com to call the situation to the attention of the moderators. Even if they don't completely agree with your position, I suspect they will at least have a user or two's suspicious flagging behavior to keep under observation and/or revoke.