Every on-call engineer knows the hunt: a late-night incident where you chase down a mysterious failure, clue by clue, until you finally pin down the culprit. There’s real craft in that work: staying calm, forming hypotheses, ruling things out, communicating clearly, and bringing customers back to safety. When it’s over, the afterglow is real: a mix of pride, relief, and the feeling of being useful when it mattered.
And yet, the same incident that becomes a great story is rarely a great night. It costs sleep, weekends, and family plans. Most people don’t love the disruption. They love the moment when a hard problem finally makes sense. The trap is subtle: because the story is vivid and the relief is rewarding, the reactive hunt can end up feeling more visible than the quieter work that would have prevented the incident in the first place.
However, this feel-good “hunt” for issues and glory hides a dangerous trap. If we’re honest, constantly reacting to incidents is easier to celebrate than the boring work of preventing them. Organizations unintentionally reinforce this: they reward the dramatic saves more than the quiet maintenance that averts crises. The result? We choose to be the hero first, rather than do what’s needed to be the guide. We prioritize heroic fixes over steady improvements. The incident-hunt feels good, for both engineers and businesses, and that dynamic can quietly skew incentives away from long-term reliability. Preventing incidents must become just as valued as resolving them.