It's sort of related, but too often other people's problems end up forced into being my problem. Other people's problems are fun to solve when you're like "hey

It's sort of related, but too often other people's problems end up forced into being my problem. Other people's problems are fun to solve when you're like "hey, I've seen that before / I know something about your problem", and I think I can advance you in your pursuit of a solution. Fun, win/win for everybody. But too often you try to use some product or service, either of another company, or of another team at your company, and it doesn't work. And the other team is just "but I don't waaaaannnna" about figuring out why their shit is broken. And so it becomes your problem, because you're probably trying to do something that isn't shaving this teams yak, but here you are, blocked on them. So it's either "do their job for them" or be blocked by them. And managerial chains are just, IME, utterly ineffective at dealing with this. My current boss does not want to handle these, ever. He wants me to fix the problem. Problem is I have no authority over others teams, so I can't get them to act, and so … now it's my problem! And soon I'm doing the work of 3 teams, it feels like, and shaving yaks all day. Google, internally — at least way back in the day; I've got no idea if this is still a thing — had a philosophy at several levels of "it's our problem", and in internal team-to-team stuff, that meant if a customer of your team's junk was having a bad time, that was your problem. Not your "customers'", internal or external. One of the many things I think that led them to being a FAANG.