[akg_67]

> Time-sensitive critical decisions as a career sounds like guaranteed burnout.

More than burnout, it was the boredom of "lulls" in between time-sensitive critical decisions that got me.

In my pre-sales/post sales system engineering roles, I was routinely approached by leadership and teammates to "put out the fire" as they used to say. I enjoyed those kind of challenges but such instances were not that frequent, may be once a month, and I found the time in between such cases incredibly boring. But the high of solving a pressing problem and then relaxing for a while was very addictive and rewarding.

I expect that I might have burnout if I was dealing with such cases everyday but a few cases a month might not be that bad.

[gtirloni]

I've worked at many companies as a SRE/DevOps where I was putting out fires every other day. It's fun to save the day and be the hero, especially if it wasn't you that created the problem in the first place

But unless there's a plan to put a stop to constant fires, you start to resent your boss, your coworkers, other teams, etc. I've been burned out many times and I've learned to recognize when it's happening but I wouldn't advise a career as an IT firefighter. Maybe for a couple of years if you're getting paid really well but work on a escape plan.

[akg_67]

A good boss and collaborative team members makes all the difference.

In my case, as these were external customers with revenue implications, I had the backing of sales and executive management most of the time to push through lot of internal BS.

Yeah, internal customers treat as cost center, and are much more difficult to manage. I generally turned down requests from external customers when invited me to come onboard into their orgs.