Count how many times
you have said the same sentence about it.
The build is slow.
That test is flaky.
Nobody knows who owns that service.
You have said it in standups,
in the corridor,
and to two different new starters
who nodded and filed it
under things that are normal here.
That is not a problem you have.
It is a price you are paying,
and you have paid it long enough
that it has become
a feature of the place.
Here is the part worth sitting with.
Complaining is cheap,
and it is not neutral.
Each time you name it,
you get a small amount of relief,
somebody agrees with you,
and the pressure that might have built
into somebody acting
is quietly let out instead.
The complaint is the valve
on the boiler
that would otherwise
have made someone move.
It costs other people too.
It spends a minute of their attention
on something the two of you
have already agreed not to fix,
and it teaches the newest person
that this is simply what we live with.
Notice who that lands on.
The person who arrived on Monday
has no history with it.
They would have asked
why nobody had fixed it,
which is the most useful question
anyone in the building could ask,
and you got to them first
with the version
where it cannot be fixed.
So make it a choice, out loud.
Fix it, which is almost always smaller
than the story you have built around it.
Or say the other sentence.
We have looked at this.
It costs us about a day a month.
We are choosing to carry it
until something changes.
That sentence is calm.
It has a number in it.
Anybody is free to argue with it,
which means it can be reopened
when the number moves.
And then stop bringing it up.
Something strange happens
in the days afterwards.
A grievance you have formally retired
takes up no room at all,
and you had been carrying it
as though it were work.
Keep your complaints
for the things you intend to change.
Everything else is either
something you have settled
or something you are avoiding
by talking about it.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
