I saw this writing prompt days ago and wanted to share a clever story about how I failed miserably at something, and then it turned out to be okay. However, I couldn’t come up with a good enough story, or even any story. No matter how I twisted it, it sounds like the things that lead to anything remotely positive after a failure were related to:
- My response to it
- Having a contingency plan that worked
Regarding the planning part, I pretty much try to make sure that I know the revert command and when I need to run it (or the real-life alternative of revert if it exists). It’s not impossible to fail and not know you did, especially in engineering. A user may report a critical bug weeks after the introduction of it. Bug reports are like cockroaches. By the time you see one, you may already have an infestation.
Regarding the response, I’ve had more chances to develop a strategy. Respond with dignity, take ownership of the failure, and deal with the consequences. Don’t blame others. Try to be objective even if that means putting yourself in a very bad light. When the failure was caused by someone else but it is me under the spotlight, I try to not blame the person but depersonalize the mistake. We can blame a commit for a critical bug, for example, rather than the person who deployed it.
And a couple of sayings:
- Fall down seven times, get up eight.
- This, too, shall pass.
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