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Comment by kylen | Hacker News Reader

I hear that you're suggesting that those involved shouldnt feel bad because its a systemic / just a job / etc. But the reality is that incidents like this can be very traumatic for those involved and thats not something they can control. If it was that simple to manage, depression and anxiety would not be a thing.

Think its best to show a large amount of support and empathy for the individuals having a really bad day today, and how awful they may feel. Some will probably end up reading this thread (I know I would).

And of course, still hold Fastly the business accountable for their response (but objectively, once we understand what the root cause was, and the long term solution).

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I don't see how it's so traumatic for the engineers involved, unless the company culture in Fastly is really awful and there are punitive repercussions, or attempts to pin responsbility on individuals rather than systems, which I doubt.

Many here have been responsible for web service outages albeit on much smaller scales, and in my experience it feels awful while it's happening but you quickly forget about it because so does everyone else.

> on much smaller scales

> you quickly forget about it because so does everyone else

This is definitely not the case here, and the experiences are bound to be very different.

When CNN is reporting on the bug you deployed it might have some psychological impact

I guess it very much depends on your personality. I screwed up a a not very important project for a client 4 years ago while working at a different company, and I still feel bad when I think about it, despite the fact that my company had my back through the entire process and literally everybody involved has moved on and probably forgotten about it.

I wanted to show support to the engineers in the sense that I don't think you should encourage a working culture where you have "massive post-mortems" and expect people to feel bad for extended periods of time over simple mistakes. By not making a big deal out of it, you can also support your staff.

But I think our disagreement mainly stems from how we interpreted the parent comment. I thought it was very double, at one hand claiming to show support, at the other hand emphasizing how big of a catastrophy this was.

I just wanted to say that I think it most likely was a completely natural mistake, only exerbarated by the scale of the company, and that while you should take some action to prevent it in the future, you should not spend so much time dwelling on it. Shit happens, it's fine.

I agree, and I think I picked on your comment a bit because it was the top one.

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