> At New Relic, we describe it internally as “someone who is constantly analyzing every change for its risk and what its impact could be down the road, not just

> At New Relic, we describe it internally as “someone who is constantly analyzing every change for its risk and what its impact could be down the road, not just today. And what does that mean for the larger infrastructure?” In many orgs, this is regarded as nay-saying and ignored. > There’s little upside in a siloed approach that throws a change over the wall with no concern for how it might affect the person sitting on the other side. Often, any change that impacts another person _at all_ is considered to be too much of an impact, regardless of the benefits. Developer workflows are usually prioritized. > You embrace every opportunity to automate My experience has been that automation is not prioritized if it blocks anything else. Running the business takes priority. The signal missed here is that this usually means there isn't enough staff to handle the daily run-the-business tasks and the necessary automation. > “You need to be able to dig in and say ‘stop’ and ‘no, we really need to to do this thing now,’ which can be difficult to do in some engineering organizations,” Asking your engineers to sell stability rather than backing them up with institutional support is an organizational smell.