A lot of tech company workers dread incidents. They are a high-pressure and often high-stakes ordeal that requires urgent attention. I’ve witnessed some incidents that lasted for months.
I’ve come to like incidents because I see them as moments of progress. At a minimum, the team just learned how something works (or doesn’t work). At its best, the incident process guarantees that improvements are made which prevent systems from failing the same way twice.
So while I have that same feeling of dread whenever an incident is called, I remind myself that we are going to learn something important and this is the price of entry.