Most SREs, if they’re being truly honest, will admit that being involved in an incident, either as a responder or incident commander, is inherently stressful. But why is that? What makes incidents “stressful?”

J. Paul Reed, Senior Applied Resilience Engineer at Netflix, discusses some of the underlying reasons why we experience stress when engaged in incidents. He also offers some techniques—beyond “remember to breathe!”— that both individuals and teams can use to combat stress, before the pager goes off and in the middle of the charge.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand why incident management is inherently stressful
• Find out best practices to combat stress when responding to incidents