Don't be a Hero
The Price of Constant Vigilance
Picture this: it's 3 am on a quiet Sunday. As a DevOps Engineer SRE, you're engrossed in the cool glow of your terminal, which has been your only companion for the last couple of hours. East Coast customers are starting to wake up and notice the site is down. After combing through release notes and logs, you discover a recently activated code path that bypasses pooled connections. A simple mistake, yet costly. With quick thinking, you deactivate the problematic feature flag, pacify the database, and breathe a sigh of relief as graphs return to normal.
Job done, you update the incident log and signal to your team that you'll be in late to catch up on much-needed sleep. Come morning, your peers applaud you. "Fantastic work, Alex! When do you even sleep?!"
You're the hero, right? With a vigilant eye on your Grafana dashboards and a readiness to jump in at odd hours, you've become the company's silent guardian. And while it may seem like you're doing all the heavy lifting, the seed of resentment begins to take root. You start to believe you're undervalued and overworked.
The Blind Spots
In our tale, the protagonist perceives their nocturnal interventions as proof of their indispensability. But let’s reframe the narrative and pose some critical questions:
Alerts and Accountability: Why didn’t the alerts reach anyone else? Reliable alerting systems are a foundational aspect of sound technical infrastructure. If only one person is noticing and reacting, there's a flaw in the system that needs addressing.
Team Dynamics: Why were you the lone ranger? Tech is a team sport, and working in isolation, especially under stress, can be counterproductive.
Processes and Protocols: Who altered the feature flag, and was it documented? Unplanned changes can lead to chaos. Proper change management protocols are essential.
Learning Opportunities: After each incident, what did the team and company learn? Postmortems aren’t about blame but growth. Without understanding and addressing root causes, history is bound to repeat itself.
Work-Life Balance: Is such a demanding relationship sustainable or even equitable? Burnout is real. By always being "on" you're setting yourself up for fatigue and potential health issues.
Building Sustainable Habits
To ensure you don’t fall into the hero trap:
Delegate and Trust: Share responsibilities. Trust that your teammates can and should handle issues too.
Prioritize Self-care: Recognize the importance of downtime. There's a diminishing return on effort, especially when tired.
Open Communication: Foster a culture where concerns are raised. If you're consistently noticing issues others aren't, discuss it.
Document Everything: Whether it's a minor fix or a major overhaul, ensure changes are documented for team visibility.
Revisit and Revise: Regularly review and update protocols, ensuring they reflect the current needs and challenges of the team.
Being proactive is commendable. However, when it morphs into a hero complex, it can strain both the individual and the team. The key is balance, ensuring you're an asset without sidelining the broader team or undermining processes.
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