Thanks for sharing! I agree that ops can be demanding - although I’m able to switch to “emergency mode” pretty well, it still leaves me feeling drained and exhausted.
I think it’s more than just deadlines or missed calls that makes ops challenging, here are just a few:
Constant task switching because you have to check emails and messages to respond quickly to time sensitive things, or chase people on your team for information you need
Not always feeling like you’ve accomplished a lot because you worked on 5 different small things in the day, and made incremental progress on each (many ops projects naturally span 1-3 weeks and there isnt’ a good way to speed them up)
Things that help make this better for me
Good work culture—I feel appreciated and valued by my team
Learning—I’m learning a lot of skills that will be useful in any future project I try to do
Autonomy: I enjoy having ownership and autonomy over my domains.
Thanks for sharing! I agree that ops can be demanding - although I’m able to switch to “emergency mode” pretty well, it still leaves me feeling drained and exhausted.
I think it’s more than just deadlines or missed calls that makes ops challenging, here are just a few:
Constant task switching because you have to check emails and messages to respond quickly to time sensitive things, or chase people on your team for information you need
Not always feeling like you’ve accomplished a lot because you worked on 5 different small things in the day, and made incremental progress on each (many ops projects naturally span 1-3 weeks and there isnt’ a good way to speed them up)
Things that help make this better for me
Good work culture—I feel appreciated and valued by my team
Learning—I’m learning a lot of skills that will be useful in any future project I try to do
Autonomy: I enjoy having ownership and autonomy over my domains.
Yes, the context/task switching! Very under-explored in my post and can make things difficult.
Great to hear you have things that off-set the stress.