Heroes

As kids, we grew up with heroes all around us. From fictional superheroes like Superman, Spiderman, and Wonder Woman, to real life heroes like firefighters, we saw them saving lives, defeating evil, and telling us not to do drugs. As a Cub Scout my father, a firefighter, would take us all to the local firehouse and let us sit in the trucks, turn on the lights, honk the horn. He was a hero, to all us seven year olds. And it was an absolute mystery, a flat-out betrayal, when he said one day that he never wanted his sons to follow in his footsteps.

Why can’t I be a hero, too?

Heroes like firefighters are only heroic when things are going really wrong. They put their lives on the line because someone screwed up, set a building on fire, and now people are in danger. We see news stories of dramatic rescues, big ladders, and see all the attention from the media when a soot-covered guy is standing there with a kid. What we don’t see is the firefighters, themselves, in the hospital, from smoke inhalation, having shrapnel from explosions removed, going deaf from the sirens, getting cancer from the toxic fumes. Even more so, we also don’t see all the behind-the-scenes work between emergencies to try to prevent these dangerous situations. The daily drudgery of building inspections and drills and equipment maintenance and training gets no attention from the public. It isn’t sexy.

The thing is, all that unsexy work saves way more lives than the heroism, including the firefighter’s own.

I think it’s safe to say that a career in information technology is certainly not as dangerous as firefighting. But we do have some things in common, like bureaucracy and hero syndrome. Heroes are worshiped at IT conferences as they tell war stories about how they’re indispensable because of their acts of heroism. They saved the payroll system at 4 AM with five lines of Perl, or rolled out thousands of desktops by themselves, or whatever. People gather around, beer in hand, to listen and cheer, and give these guys sysadmin of the year awards, publicity, and iPads.

Nobody ever seems to ask why they were required to be a hero in the first place. Why did that particular fire start and spread? How was it that you were there to put it out?

Perhaps it’s because process, procedure, and planning aren’t sexy. People who do these things get no attention in the press, they don’t get sysadmin of the year awards, and they don’t have crazy stories to tell over beer at conferences. These admins go home and get a full night’s sleep. They return to a working infrastructure, predictable, getting things done. And they don’t describe their days as “firefighting.” They’re busy working on new things, moving their organization forward.

While it may crop up from time to time, personal heroism has no place in IT. Managers should work to squelch hero syndrome in their staff, replacing it with planning and thought. “Great job last night, you’re a rock star,” should be replaced with “great job last night, let’s never have it happen again.” And staff, when they you find themselves saving the payroll system at 4 AM, should ask where the figurative smoke detectors were. The life that an ounce of organizational prevention saves might just be their own personal one.

Besides, most IT people don’t look good in superhero tights.