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by parpfish 1097 days ago
not everybody gets sucked into firefighting to 'save the company'.

if the fire started due to something you helped create and you have even a smidgen of impostor syndrome, fighting fires is about about saving yourself and cleaning up the messes you've made. the only way to prevent this is to build a team with a strong sense of collective ownership/responsibility and a healthy attitude towards mistakes.

3 comments

And to realize that mistakes are a normal part of the pro drive work you do. In fact the most productive engineers also make the most mistakes
Professional engineers are incentivized to make mistakes because sprinting is more important than quality, and quality is not measured by the management. They care about check boxes of features.

If quality mattered, the best engineers would be making the fewest mistakes because mistakes are way more expensive than getting it right

One of the biggest "fire fighters" I ever worked with was a serial arsonist.

She created these cluster fcks and then would throw out her shoulder patting herself on the back for putting it out.

She was in a constant state of panic. It was exhausting to watch her work.

I have more a 'do not want to be fired' mentality than a 'save the company' mentality when it comes to technical emergencies.