The toxicity of asking for announcements
Every now and then, someone will reach out to complain about a company-wide change and their first question is “Was it announced?” For example, changes that impact engineer workflows often create this kind of situation – this is pretty toxic behavior in my opinion.
This is toxic behavior because:
- People start the discussion as a confrontation – they aren’t trying to understand the change and improve the situation but more about trying to find blame.
- Whether the change was announced or not has nothing to do whether it is a good one or not – yes maybe the process can be improved, but shouldn’t be the focus/start of the discussion. It’s nit picking on details to make the author look bad
- Most of the time, they haven’t checked if the change was announced – and they often are in my experience. From there, the perception is even worse because the person didn’t even do the bare minimum to figure out the situation before going straight to blame someone.
- Very often the person complaining is more senior than the author – you have to be aware of your position and shouldn’t use it to force people to rollback if it’s not the right solution
I personally think it’s fair to complain, but you should first ask about the rationale of the change, read about it and explain your pain point to the author – all of this can be done without creating tension. It’s perfectly possible that your use case regressed and that a fix should be implemented (or even a rollback in the meantime), but this should be a rational decision.
If you feel very strongly and don’t have time to look into things, you should at least ask “Did I miss the announcement” rather than “Was it announced?” – at least that way you start the discussion with the blame being on you rather than the author.