This is true in some cases…but there are other people who just complain because they want attention.

Good managers listen and try to understand the difference between a person complaining because they’re closer to the problem and a person complaining because they are the problem.

> there are other people who just complain because they want attention.

I would say that people who complain generally do it because they are not happy. Nobody purposely do it as a way to get attention. Nobody says "I will make sure to bother everybody so that they hate me, because I love it".

Doesn't mean they are not the problem: sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. So I join you on:

> Good managers listen and try to understand the difference between a person complaining because they’re closer to the problem and a person complaining because they are the problem.

I have seen people complain because they somehow hated their coworkers (they had a very different view of what "good code" meant). A good manager would look for a solution, like moving them in different teams. A bad manager doesn't act (it's useless to listen if you don't act on it).

Also individual contributors often fail to grasp the big picture, what seems like an insurmountable issue to them is irrelevant or not a priority in the grand scheme of things. Or it's a pain point for them - but dealing with it will hurt the project overall. Can't even count the number of development/design/product bike shedding discussions, wasted effort on covering edge cases, etc. on features/products that get scrapped once they get tested by users.

This is why I hate managing people - I hate having to deal with all the egos and trying to empathize with everyone to try to get a sense of where they are coming from just to judge what's important or not, and weighing political impact of different calls. Code is simple by comparison.