Dealing with Failures and Setbacks in the Workplace?

madvenu asks: "How do the other geeks and managers(!) over here handle failures and depression? Especially with the current troubled climate... this question seems very relevant and apt. We are, after all, only human." This is the real, human side of this business. When you suffer a setback, you have to psych yourself up to tackle the next one, no matter what. How do YOU pick yourself up after a particularly bad day/week/month at the high-stress office?

"Recently, a friend and fellow Unix Sys Admin called up and told me she was feeling low and useless as she had not been able to successfully setup a Volume Manager on Solaris / Fiber GBIC /A5200 / Vertias via remote install !! She has 3 years of experience on various Unix systems and is good with sendmail, backups and the usual admin stuff, but this is the first time with Veritas & remote solaris installs for her. She has been trying for a couple of weeks and some snag or the other, together with all the incompatible 'patches' which crash the machine are making her tensed and sleepless. The typical late into the nights and early morning 2am installs and crashes and reinstalls and patching are also affecting her health and joy of life. Now, she is loosing confidence in herself and is beginning to doubt her own capabilities.
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This is the same experience I have gone through before, but it was installations of OpenBSD or getting that particular hardware to work with Linux or trying to understand Emacs... that I would tire of late into the nights and start getting depressed as I would not find solutions and would wonder if I was good enough to do anything at all if I could not solve such "simple" things.I have found this syndrome occurs to me once in a while and I have not found any one solution. Usually I take time off and take things easy and tell myself that failing is not so bad after all....

So how do the slashdotters feel about this? Any tips from those great sysadmins and programmers who have built Linux and other opensource projects? What makes them keep going inspite of failures and depression? How do you do it?"

Comments

Blame Windows

[codexus]

Use Windows instead of Unix. Then you can blame all your failures on Microsoft like everyone else does.

You didn't check that the backup procedure was actualy running and now it's too late? It's Windows fault.
You haven't patched it in months and it's infected by a Code Red derivative? It's Windows fault.
Your server isn't working as fast as it should and keeps crashing? It's Windows fault. (might be true this time)

Blame it all on Windows and you'll feel much better. Ignorance is bliss :)

Alcohol

[sydb]

I go home, get drunk and beat up the wife / dog, though I don't recommend it.

But seriously. What does a failure at work mean? At the end of the day, the responsibility is yours, and the only reasonable course of action is to change whatever caused the failure and reap the rewards. Be it changing working practices, learning something new, or getting a new job, whatever is necessary.

Short term pick-me-up? Do something you are good at that's fun - play a round of quake, go for a fast cycle run, go watch a feel good film (Amelie was good).

Getting depressed about software glitches is crazy

[duffbeer703]

...and totally not worth it.

Just go take a break, or do something else for a day or two to clear your mind. If some fascist management type is breathing down your neck, tell him to go away.

Getting angry and upset over a computer is very childish. Don't even go there.

Warning, philosophy alert

[dmorin]

Of course, there are different scales of failure. Some of them will get you fired, and there's not a whole lot you can do to fix it. Some will just get you a beating.

As for the philosophy bit, I have one of those "classic wisdom" posters on my wall that says: Those who are victorious plan effectively and change decisively. They are like a great river that maintains its course but adjusts its flow...they have form but are formless. They are skilled in both planning and adapting and need not fear the result of a thousand battles; for they win in advance, defeating those that have already lost. - Sun Tzu." How I read that? If you have your long range vision and confidence in it, then you shouldn't fear temporary setbacks, but rather work through and around them.

I think that the best managers won't beat you up too bad for failure -- they will instead focus on "What needs to be done to prevent this from happening again?" and that's where you need to be able to jump in and offer constructive ideas (not criticism of your teammates). After all, if your site was down for 8 hours last night, then yelling about it for 8 hours will not make that outage not have happened. Odds are that they are getting yelled at by their bosses, too, so they know that after they vent their anger at you, they have to have something to bring back to the boss as an answer.