Summary
No outage is pleasant, but when you get a group of responders together, in a high-pressure, high-stress situation, tempers will be tested. I suggest working with both your product and technology to ensure you build a response that allows those with the best abilities to remediate issues, even if that’s a prior agreement to have a more senior engineer take the reins on demand for issues.
When we work with others in these situations, we must try to remain calm, focused, and objective. Assigning tasks can be both powerful in resolution and can offer a much-needed outside focus for those who are less likely to provide direct value in the technical response.
A final word on communication: having over-communicated and under-communicated at different times in my SRE career, finding the middle ground can be difficult. Listen to the buzz of the company and discuss this communication cadence and thresholds with everyone from product to engineering.
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