Particularly if youre a sysadmin, even the mention of failure probably leaves a rather bitter taste in your mouth. After all, its your job to ensure that things dont fail – to keep everything up and running through thick and thin. If youre not even able to accomplish that, then what good are you?
Heres the thing, though. If we lived in a world without failure, then we wouldnt learn. Not really.
And like it or not, learning is vital in todays complex technological landscape. We live in a world where vast swathes of computing hardware can be rendered obsolete with a single invention, where businesses that are unable to pivot on a dime are left in the dust by small, agile startups. In short, we live in a world that demands that we either learn or make way for those who do.
Today our livelihoods and our very lives depend on software, writes author Dave Zwieback. With all the benefits of a software-rich world comes unprecedented complexity. Our ability to reason about the systems that were working with (and are part of) diminishes as their scale and interdependence increases. We can no longer rely solely on past experience, and instead have to continuously discover how systems are functioning or failing, and adapt accordingly.
This continuous adaptation requires an ability to learn deeply, he continues. Learning is not optional; it is the lifeblood of complex systems, including modern companies. And yet, we often default to the comfortable but shallow learning that is undermined by blame and biases.
This shallow learning is what leads many to take failure at face value. A security flaw is addressed in isolation from the rest of a system, an ignorant employee who unintentionally causes a breach is harshly punished; you get the idea. This lets us stick with a rather easy narrative, that once a problems been solved and the parties responsible promised, it can be completely put to rest.
Heres the problem with that – people involved in security failures or data breaches dont operate in a vacuum. Insiders wouldnt be able to offer up information on their business if there werent shortcomings in said businesss security. Employees wouldnt be able to cheat if there werent a failure in oversight.
And systems wouldnt fail if it werent for an error on the part of either a vendor or an administrator. So…what should you take from all of this as a sysadmin? Whats the lesson here?
Only this: dont shy away from failure – yours or someone elses – as some sort of horrendous taboo. Instead, look at it as yet another new challenge; a new system for you to deconstruct or a new problem for you to solve. By reframing failure in such a fashion, youll be better-equipped to handle anything your organizations infrastructure throws your way.
