DEV Community

Pragyan Tripathi
Pragyan Tripathi

Posted on

I deleted our database after 72 hours of no sleep.

Early in my career I was tasked with migrating a database from MySQL to MongoDB.

I ran the migration, shifted the API to read data from MongoDB, unfortunately even after lots of testing, it didn't go as planned.

๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜‚๐—น๐˜?

Worked continuously for 72 hours to get things resolved and created a bigger blunder.

At the end of it, I was terrified.

But instead of getting fired, something shocking happened:

My team lead called a "blameless post-mortem."

We gathered to learn, not to point fingers.

This was my introduction to blameless culture. It changed everything.

๐—›๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ'๐˜€ ๐˜„๐—ต๐˜† ๐—ถ๐˜ ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐˜๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐˜€ ๐—ณ๐—ผ๐—ฟ ๐˜€๐—ผ๐—ณ๐˜๐˜„๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐—บ๐˜€:

  1. Innovation thrives When devs aren't scared to fail, they take risks. That's where breakthroughs happen.

  2. Real accountability emerges. No more finger-pointing. Just owning mistakes and fixing them.

  3. Collaboration skyrockets. Problem-solving beats blame-gaming every time.

  4. Morale goes through the roof. Mistakes become growth fuel, not career-killers.

๐—”๐˜€ ๐—ฎ ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฐ๐—ต ๐—น๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐—ฑ, ๐—ต๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ'๐˜€ ๐—ต๐—ผ๐˜„ ๐—œ ๐—ฏ๐˜‚๐—ถ๐—น๐—ฑ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ถ๐˜€ ๐—ฐ๐˜‚๐—น๐˜๐˜‚๐—ฟ๐—ฒ:

  1. I air my dirty laundry. I talk openly about my screw-ups. It sets the tone.

  2. We throw "failure parties". We celebrate what we learn from face-plants.

  3. Post-mortems are sacred. Regular, blame-free incident analysis. Focus on systems, not scapegoats.

  4. We hunt root causes relentlessly. Band-aids are for paper cuts. We fix the core issues.

The result?

A team that moves fast, innovates fearlessly and actually enjoys coming to work.

Shocking, I know. ๐Ÿ™„

What about your company?

Is failure a firing offense or a learning opportunity?

I'd love to hear your stories. Drop them in the comments.

Image of Datadog

Create and maintain end-to-end frontend tests

Learn best practices on creating frontend tests, testing on-premise apps, integrating tests into your CI/CD pipeline, and using Datadogโ€™s testing tunnel.

Download The Guide

Top comments (0)

Postmark Image

Speedy emails, satisfied customers

Are delayed transactional emails costing you user satisfaction? Postmark delivers your emails almost instantly, keeping your customers happy and connected.

Sign up