So I’ve been in this job now for nearly 7 months. Almost 8 now, in fact. I think i’m now fairly accustomed to the rigors of the job, what it entails, and where my ‘talents’, such as they are, come into the most use.

Interestingly, the most effectual part of the job is not a technical one. Yes, sure … you have to have your technical merit badge and know your shit. Yes, you need to have a good sense for how all this whacky technology bolts together. But thats not where the rubber hits the road for this job. Instead, its for being able to manage a crisis.

So you may think thats a very vaguely defined task. That so many different things can be applied to that definition that its almost useless. Let me fill in the blanks for you. You work for a technology company. They house vast resources of servers, data, databases and general technology love in several data centers. One of those data centers goes dark for a short time, and suddenly you have 40 databases trying to failover, site functions impaired, thousands of dollars being lost every minute.

So did I login to a single machine and configure a single resource during the restoral efforts? Nope. What was I doing instead? I was coordinating the efforts of 20 or so people who WERE fixing things. Making sure they stayed focused, solved the most critical problems in the order of most importance, made sure communication to the community, executive management, and our vendors was engaged properly. Documented the problems we encountered along the way (problem management team can address these in a post mortem). Engaged additional resources as they were needed and let others go when they weren’t anymore. Kept the fire going under the people that needed it. Etc.

To me, this was sort of an acid test for whether I could really do this job or not. Up to now, yeah, we’ve had issues, and even some serious ones. But this was the first BIG one. Even if I already had other’s confidence in my management and other management teams surrounding our group, I maybe was still lacking the final confidence of having proven myself on the field of battle. This, I do believe, was the proof I needed in my own mind to feel like I had earned my chops.

I suppose, like with anything, you have to earn respect.

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