People are more than happy to talk about their successes, but if you ask them about their failures, they can be much more hesitant to share. Failure is a subject that, interestingly enough, is entangled with the emotion of shame. Yet it’s integral to achieving anything novel, and the learnings that come from failure are unparalleled. So, let’s find ways to get more comfortable with failing, and figure out why people fear it.
It’s 2 AM and you’re paged when you’re still awake – how well can you find what you need to fix the latest mistake? When the incident begins it might only be impacting a single service, but as time progresses, your brain boots, the coffee is poured, the docs are read, and all the while as the incident is escalating to other services and teams that you might not see the alerts for if they’re not in your scope of ownership.
