4 ms·

> Could I run my terminals in there? Yes. Did I? Yes, for a while. Was I effective? Not really. I missed my desk, my normal chair, my big Thunderbolt monitor, m

by belval 2y ago

> Could I run my terminals in there? Yes. Did I? Yes, for a while. Was I effective? Not really. I missed my desk, my normal chair, my big Thunderbolt monitor, my full-size (and yet entirely boring) keyboard, and a relatively odor-free environment. Not Meta but at Amazon I always felt like war rooms are a place for some leader to scream at you and not much else. The reality is that debugging some retry storm, resource exhaustion or whatever won't happen in a room with 18 people talking over one another. Give me a meeting link, I'll join and provide info as I find it, but this type of sweaty hackathon-style all-hands-on-deck was never productive for me.

nine_zeros 2y ago
>Not Meta but at Amazon I always felt like war rooms are a place for some leader to scream at you and not much else. It is for the some "leader". The vast large tech industry is filled with phony leaders who don't understand how the job is done and what makes the doers tick. But they occupy the place of "leadership". They must be seen as doing something. So they are doing the something that they can - scream at people in a locked room. If they could actually solve technical problems or talk to their bosses like a real engineering leader, they would. But they literally are incapable of doing so. So war rooms and BS performative art it is.
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  The role of a leader is an age old role. When someone is thrown into leadership, I do believe a lot of adrenaline kicks in. You begin acting as if you are a leader similar to how a parent has parent senses and will run into a street to save any kid from a car (poor example, any human should, but hopefully you get my point). I think what you get in a war room is that primal "phenomena" of "oh shit I'm the leader now". You have to weather the primal emotions, and get a cool head back on to fulfill the leadership role. If it's your first time, then yeah, you will probably handle it like a dick (or twat). You gotta take on an ancient role with humility.
- varelse 2y ago
  [dead]
- teeray 2y ago
  > It is for the some "leader". Exactly. It’s so the leader can ask “do we have an update?” every 10 minutes when nothing has changed.
Hasu 2y ago
> I always felt like war rooms are a place for some leader to scream at you and not much else. The reality is that debugging some retry storm, resource exhaustion or whatever won't happen in a room with 18 people talking over one another. I once walked out of a war room (at a much smaller company that I wouldn't be at for much longer) that had devolved into finger-pointing and blame games. Half an hour later, my boss came out to find out what I was doing and I pointed at my screen and said, "This. This is what's wrong. Ship my fix and we're done here." The entire war room came to my desk to see and discuss the fix, which we shipped, which solved the issue. At my next job, I had to hold back laughter when the VP of Engineering, who was pushing mob programming, said, "Think about it. When we have an incident, when something is really important, what do we do? We all get in a room together. No one leaves the war room to go solve the incident on their own."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  "This. This is what's wrong. Ship my fix and we're done here." Lol. This is not hyperbole. Just about everyone has several stories like this, and they are quite hilarious in their utter absurdity. It's like these people get possessed by the spirit of Gordon Gekko in that exact moment and must absolutely play out the role to the tee. Then they become unpossessed and go Skiing on weekends.
  - aledalgrande 2y ago
    In my experience it's only (and exactly) leaders without tech nor people skills that do this. Have experienced both good and bad. A world of difference.
alabastervlog 2y ago
Leaders are really into playing pretend and it seems to just get worse the higher they are on the ladder. Like, literally, an effective way to sell to them is to make them feel like they’re in a movie doing Super Important Things. LOL. Executive Disneyland.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Much of a leader's job is to visibly perform leadership. It seems silly until the first time you need something big from a team whose managers do it poorly, and you realize that they're incapable of making commitments or setting priorities. The expectation that leaders will play pretend about a "war" and call everyone into a "war room" is just a part of what it means for an organization to commit that consistent high uptime is a top priority.
  - fn-mote 2y ago
    > commit that consistent high uptime is a top priority I’m hoping you find SOME leaders who can find a more effective way to convey this priority! Theoretically in our “data driven” leadership you could think of some metrics that would demonstrate the war room is / is not really working. At least after the fact, to save you from the next one. Who feels like a powerful leader in those circumstances, though? On the other hand, it feels good to me to be able to tell people I’m not involved at that level of detail, and they should just talk to X on the team.
    - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
      You can indeed think of such metrics. The most common one is average time to resolution (often abbreviated TTR or MTTR), and war rooms are common precisely because they produce massive benefits in this metric. I know of at least one organization that began outright mandating war rooms after running the numbers and discovering how many incidents would have benefitted from having one. If you can invent a strategy that produces even better MTTR than war rooms, I'm sure a lot of managers would love to hear it. I've never seen one and I'm skeptical whether it's possible.
kenz0r 2y ago
My tenure at Amazon was during the meeting link era, rather than putting everyone in a room - I agree, way better. Get your secondary oncall to give updates to the room, while you dig in and figure out what is actually happening in relative peace

by belval 2y ago

nine_zeros 2y ago

>Not Meta but at Amazon I always felt like war rooms are a place for some leader to scream at you and not much else. It is for the some "leader". The vast large tech industry is filled with phony leaders who don't understand how the job is done and what makes the doers tick. But they occupy the place of "leadership". They must be seen as doing something. So they are doing the something that they can - scream at people in a locked room. If they could actually solve technical problems or talk to their bosses like a real engineering leader, they would. But they literally are incapable of doing so. So war rooms and BS performative art it is.

bloomingkales 2y ago
The role of a leader is an age old role. When someone is thrown into leadership, I do believe a lot of adrenaline kicks in. You begin acting as if you are a leader similar to how a parent has parent senses and will run into a street to save any kid from a car (poor example, any human should, but hopefully you get my point). I think what you get in a war room is that primal "phenomena" of "oh shit I'm the leader now". You have to weather the primal emotions, and get a cool head back on to fulfill the leadership role. If it's your first time, then yeah, you will probably handle it like a dick (or twat). You gotta take on an ancient role with humility.
varelse 2y ago
[dead]
teeray 2y ago
> It is for the some "leader". Exactly. It’s so the leader can ask “do we have an update?” every 10 minutes when nothing has changed.

Hasu 2y ago

> I always felt like war rooms are a place for some leader to scream at you and not much else. The reality is that debugging some retry storm, resource exhaustion or whatever won't happen in a room with 18 people talking over one another. I once walked out of a war room (at a much smaller company that I wouldn't be at for much longer) that had devolved into finger-pointing and blame games. Half an hour later, my boss came out to find out what I was doing and I pointed at my screen and said, "This. This is what's wrong. Ship my fix and we're done here." The entire war room came to my desk to see and discuss the fix, which we shipped, which solved the issue. At my next job, I had to hold back laughter when the VP of Engineering, who was pushing mob programming, said, "Think about it. When we have an incident, when something is really important, what do we do? We all get in a room together. No one leaves the war room to go solve the incident on their own."

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bloomingkales 2y ago
"This. This is what's wrong. Ship my fix and we're done here." Lol. This is not hyperbole. Just about everyone has several stories like this, and they are quite hilarious in their utter absurdity. It's like these people get possessed by the spirit of Gordon Gekko in that exact moment and must absolutely play out the role to the tee. Then they become unpossessed and go Skiing on weekends.
- aledalgrande 2y ago
  In my experience it's only (and exactly) leaders without tech nor people skills that do this. Have experienced both good and bad. A world of difference.

alabastervlog 2y ago

Leaders are really into playing pretend and it seems to just get worse the higher they are on the ladder. Like, literally, an effective way to sell to them is to make them feel like they’re in a movie doing Super Important Things. LOL. Executive Disneyland.

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
Much of a leader's job is to visibly perform leadership. It seems silly until the first time you need something big from a team whose managers do it poorly, and you realize that they're incapable of making commitments or setting priorities. The expectation that leaders will play pretend about a "war" and call everyone into a "war room" is just a part of what it means for an organization to commit that consistent high uptime is a top priority.
- fn-mote 2y ago
  > commit that consistent high uptime is a top priority I’m hoping you find SOME leaders who can find a more effective way to convey this priority! Theoretically in our “data driven” leadership you could think of some metrics that would demonstrate the war room is / is not really working. At least after the fact, to save you from the next one. Who feels like a powerful leader in those circumstances, though? On the other hand, it feels good to me to be able to tell people I’m not involved at that level of detail, and they should just talk to X on the team.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    You can indeed think of such metrics. The most common one is average time to resolution (often abbreviated TTR or MTTR), and war rooms are common precisely because they produce massive benefits in this metric. I know of at least one organization that began outright mandating war rooms after running the numbers and discovering how many incidents would have benefitted from having one. If you can invent a strategy that produces even better MTTR than war rooms, I'm sure a lot of managers would love to hear it. I've never seen one and I'm skeptical whether it's possible.

kenz0r 2y ago

My tenure at Amazon was during the meeting link era, rather than putting everyone in a room - I agree, way better. Get your secondary oncall to give updates to the room, while you dig in and figure out what is actually happening in relative peace