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Comment by jghn | Hacker News Reader

This was an eye opening moment when it happened to me. Almost nothing has the impact it purports to have. Percentage-wise, very few things are the emergency/fire that people make them out to be, at least in the grand scheme of things.

I think part of it is that people get too wrapped up in their local world and don't see the big picture. For instance "If we don't get this widget added to the thingamabob in the next 3 days the company will go under!" when the thingamabob is just a minor piece of the puzzle for the larger company. Part of it though is driven from the top.

The one downside to having had this realization is it goes both ways. It also means that very few things you do have impact in a positive way as well. For some people this can be motivation killing.

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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.

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.

I'm in this stage right now. I'm being moved from an engineering to being trained for an "architect" role, and it sucks. I look at my todo list and most of it involves emailing somebody about something, or preparing a presentation for some council. It feels like I can't actually do anything.

Like when I was an engineer, boom move get things done produce actual results, something would be deployed and value would be delivered, now, if I want to get something done, engage with two or three other teams to do something, talk with their team leads, then the actual engineers, then have a meeting to actually discuss requirements, and what should be a simple program that takes 3 api calls, turns into a 3 month long project.

You should think about doing something else then.

I don't know your team, so I don't know the skills/views/dynamics, but is there a way to cut through red tape?

Do all of the meetings/emails have to happen serially and in that order? If so, why?

Maybe look up what Amazon does with its 2-pagers and 6-pagers. See if you can do something similar where you are.

If it's really such a simple solution and that's obvious early, can you propose the obvious solution when you see it and get reactions?

If you're the only architect, you may have to define some of this stuff and make your changes part of the corporate culture.

If you have any PM buddies (whichever type of P), ask them for advice. A lot of this is their bread and butter, and if they already know your org, they'll have special insights.

All burned out? Just wait....

Until you've been through another 30 years.

You haven't even reached mid-burn yet...

Don’t compare suffering. Everyone is entitled to suffer.

This isn't burnout, this kept me from burning out. I was wound up pretty tight and now am more sanguine about work things in general.

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