>No one knows how to make him stop. Everyone is politely tapping on his fishbowl and it hasn't worked yet for like months.

I was this employee once, but in a slightly different situation. I had a bad habit of responding to things I didn't understand in a way that almost always put people on the defensive. People didn't want to work or interact with me and politely and subtly trying to get me to stop didn't work. This was a problem across jobs, and was a huge blind spot for me.

It took a very direct and blunt conversation from my new manager where he flat out told me when I behave this way, I come off like a complete prick and no one wants to work with me for me to even realize what I was doing. It crushed me for a few days, but after some reflection, I realized I was crushed because it was true. This was nearly 7 years ago, and I'll always love and appreciate my manager for having that hard conversation with me. His having the courage to be blunt with me has made me an immeasurably better person.

My advice is find someone who is blunt or has the courage to have that hard conversation (my boss was English, and I think being blunt and direct was very natural for him, but he's also very courageous) and tell this person that their behavior is wasting a lot of people's time, and people are starting to get annoyed. Remind them that it's not a big deal now but it can become a big deal, and that in the end, people will remember the improvement and value that, not the original problem. I don't remember the pain of being crushed, I remember my appreciation for my manager who had this hard conversation with me when no one else in the past 3 years would.

I'm confused. What exactly were you doing?

The real power play is to confidently and assertively state “I don’t know, I’ll get back to you in X hours with an answer” and be on point with the timing. Someone that promises and delivers on time causes people to melt and program managers to fall in love.

What do you say to the person who won't do that?

I'm not sure I understanding you but I'm curious to hear more. What is an NNP? And are you saying that a colleague following the advice in part 1 of the article is slowing down your entire team? If yes, how so?

NNP = net negative producer. by "he does #1 in the article" I mean he responds to questions in an authoritative and confident tone which we take to mean the words he is saying are true, but they are not. He absolutely will not say, "I don't know. "

He sits between the business people who tell him what they want us to build. So we build it exactly to the spec and the end user sits down to verify what we did is correct and immediately says, "this isn't what I asked for at all."

We've had to rebuild things 2, 3, 4 times, maybe more I've lost count. Without him we would have been on time and budget, instead we are WAY behind.

Imagine user stories with one sentence like: System should search like Google does.

He'll say it's easy just do it like it's already been done. Are you saying you aren't a Google level developer? that's a 3 point story, right? It's simple.