Ask HN: How do you deal with production issue PTSD?

12 points by 321yawaworht 8 years ago | 8 comments

I work in a small team, in a large company, with big responsibilities. Downtime can be fatal for our company.

I've had a few experiences waking up at 5 AM (in our time it's when the US has peak traffic and most issues arise) checking alarms and having to fix large systems on my own. This has left some non-negligible PTSD. I often wake up in semi-panic in the wee hours and check my phone for system status. It gets quite exhausting.

How do you deal with this?

tomohawk 8 years ago |

There's an old saying: You can't care about the problem more than the customer.

In this case, since you are an employee, the customer is your company. You are providing a service for them.

If downtime can be fatal, and your company is large, they should actually hire some people to cover that time. You've taken too much responsibility upon yourself. You're caring about it more than they are.

You need to put your health before the health of your company. What do you think will happen to this company if you are unable to continue at work? They'll have to find someone else. Tell your boss that your boss needs to mitigate this risk by hiring additional staff to share the load or cover nights. You will help train.

If you don't think you can have this conversation, it's time to find a different job.

danieka 8 years ago | |

I see many of my friends falling is this trap, that they care way more about the company cares about them. They seem to believe that if they dedicate their lives to a company that will be rewarded. It might be, but they might as well be made redundant.

They keep giving but the company rarely gives back and this hurts their mental health.

So care just the right amount. And put yourself above your job. If you can't do that you need to find another job or rethink how you are doing your current job.

alltakendamned 8 years ago | |

Not OP, but thanks for saying this. I think I care too much too often.

anderspetersson 8 years ago |

Afghan veteran here.. The only thing that's worked for me for dealing with PTSD was talking about it with people who share similar experiences.

So this post is a great first step to fix it for you.

godot 8 years ago |

This isn't advice you can take now while you still have this job, but may help you in the future.

I was an early employee in one of the companies in the late 00s/early 10s that became a unicorn. Early on there were frequently times that required one of us (early engineers) to wake up in the wee hours to deal with problems. After this period of time I developed symptoms where I subconsciously always expect phone alerts to ring or things to happen in the middle of the night and have trouble going back to sleep if I wake up (which I do a lot even before; am a bad sleeper).

After I no longer had that job the way I slowly recovered from that is to sleep with my phone completely turned off or outside of the room -- letting my mind rest at ease that I'm not going to be waken up by a call or alert. I had to do this for a long time for that sleep paranoia to go away for the most part. I've also held less stressful jobs for a long time for my mind to recover gradually.

bjourne 8 years ago |

Seek out Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It is very effective for treatment of PTSD.

jackgolding 8 years ago | |

I have developed anxiety which I believe is work based, seeing a psychologist for CBT next week. If anyone is interested in how it goes my first name at my username dot com

simplecomplex 8 years ago |

Stop caring about the company and find a new job.