There are multiple types of debt in an organization. In IT alone, you can have technical, ops and (my favorite) attitude.
We work in a high-stress field with a lot of moving parts and an enterprise depending upon us to keep things running. Even if you are in the product development org at a software company, you literally make the product; people are more dependent on you doing it right most of the time and being super proactive when things go wrong.
All of this creates stress that we tend to either internalize or leave to find a new place to get our stress.
Internalizing makes for jaded IT folks. Or worse, cynical ones. Vacations are part of the salve to relieve that stress, and we just got a couple of weeks off. Or at least most of us did, some of you all are about to, and others will in February. But it is all the same.
To continue improving, we need to leave the baggage behind. “Blameless IT” improved how others judge devs and operators that make mistakes, but we’ve done little to improve when devs and operators see problems that they cannot fix and it festers.
When you return to work, take a deep breath, consider what you can do something about versus what you cannot. Then, take action on the things you can and ignore the things you cannot. Improvement is what matters; improving a specific broken process isn’t. Of course, it will eat at you if you pay a ton of attention to something you cannot change. I have always taught those working for me (and my kids, for that matter) to change what you can and not dwell on what you can’t—precisely because you can’t.
If the thing you can’t change is a show-stopper and makes your life miserable, then the thing you can change is your job. Start looking.
Between Agile, DevOps and new deployment methods, we have come a long way in technology, but we also have created a ton of work for ourselves. This stuff doesn’t implement itself. Focus on that work and on how you can make things better – for the org, for IT, for fellow developers or operators. And do that. Always improving and not dwelling will make life happier for you and generally more productive for your team.
I’m excited for a ton of things that 2024 is bringing, and a couple of things that aren’t necessarily ‘2024 new,’ but that I’m still figuring out. Let’s do new stuff with a smile, because we know we’re making things better/faster/more reliable. And implement that feature your users all want and your team hasn’t done yet, while you’re at it. Users are the reason we do this, in the end, be they internal or external.
We made it through 2023 with some great improvements—no doubt you did, too. Now, it’s off to 2024 to do more. Keep rolling out features, protecting the systems, deploying to new targets, etc. And forget about that stupid annoyance. (Until you can change it—then crush it like a bug). Meanwhile, thank you from all those that don’t realize they add to your stress every day.