u/makeevolution

How to emotionally be content with outages or issues

I have about 3 years of experience, and now joining a new team. In my team we are responsible for client facing features, and we have superhero duties e.g. rotation of who first responds at outages/issues. But I am always afraid of it. It distracts me from what I am currently doing, I'm not sure whether I can figure out what's wrong, especially since I'm the only few backenders in the team so I feel I need to be able to solve it. I feel pressured somehow I don't know why. Perhaps since the impact is huge and the time pressure is high?

I now obsessive compulsively check our superhero duty channels for new messages, even if it is not my current duty. It is tiring to be honest. I am also gaining seniority so I feel like I am expected to respond and pick up these issues even before the person on duty does. I think this is also because in my team there's another person who is super proactive and does this, and he gains a lot of visibility; he is on track to becoming a staff engineer due to this. I feel now I need to be at that level to be able to progress in this place. That level of proactiveness and self-confidence, it's something I fear yet need and lack.

How can I handle this emotionally? I do like the job, the people are kind and friendly, and tech stack is very modern. I am learning new things everyday, especially AI related stuff. It's just this ad hoc aspect of the job that I can't seem to be at peace with. But I mean, whatever software dev job I do, this kind of issues will always be there right, especially as you gain seniority and expected to be more proactive? So whereever I go this will always be there and thus I need to grow up. Any advice would be appreciated.

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u/makeevolution — 21 hours ago