I had a couple of conversations recently that made this pretty real for me.
me: people struggle with X, it doesn't really work.
he: I haven't heard any problems.
We all know that people don't want to talk to people who make them feel stupid. Either by claiming the problem is all them, or by claiming everything is amazing and there's nothing to worry about.
Meanwhile, I will call BS on stuff (even, much of the time, when it is mine) and generally be sympathetic. So I hear about way more (although it's still amazing sometimes the stuff I don't hear about until much later).
I have a friend (let’s say Peter) who is pretty bad about this and I’ve long found it to be pretty damn annoying. Watched recently as they started doing exactly what you described to a mutual friend (let’s say Paul) who was just wanting to vent about work over some beers and food while we played Uno.
Peter and Paul work together but in quite different roles. Additionally Paul has a considerable amount more experience both at their company and in their industry, Peter got his job from a bit of good old fashioned nepotism and never before this one had ever held a corporate job.
Well one day Peter tries shutting down Paul venting one day with the types of refrains you mentioned “It’s not that bad I haven’t had to deal with that my manager does it differently why don’t you just move teams” and Paul I guess had enough of it too and goes “never mind I don’t want to talk about this with you right now” in a friendly bit very noticeably annoyed tone.
me: people struggle with X, it doesn't really work.
he: I haven't heard any problems.
We all know that people don't want to talk to people who make them feel stupid. Either by claiming the problem is all them, or by claiming everything is amazing and there's nothing to worry about.
Meanwhile, I will call BS on stuff (even, much of the time, when it is mine) and generally be sympathetic. So I hear about way more (although it's still amazing sometimes the stuff I don't hear about until much later).