Got Fired And I Deserved It
Got Fired And I Deserved It
Introduction
The title “Got Fired And I Deserved It” might seem like an unusual starting point for a DevOps blog post, but it represents a critical moment of professional reckoning that many engineers face. This story isn’t about technical failures or infrastructure meltdowns—it’s about the human element in DevOps that often gets overlooked in our pursuit of automation, scalability, and system reliability.
When I joined my previous company three years ago, I was excited about the opportunity. The team was talented, the projects were challenging, and I was learning something new every day. I envisioned a long-term career there, contributing to meaningful infrastructure improvements and growing alongside my colleagues. The first two years were exactly what I had hoped for—I was shipping code, optimizing deployments, and helping to build systems that actually made a difference.
Then life happened. The birth of our second child should have been a joyous occasion, but tragedy struck when he passed away from SIDS. The grief was overwhelming, and I spiraled into a depression that I couldn’t escape. I took the necessary time off, but when I returned, I wasn’t the same person. The technical skills were still there, but the passion, the attention to detail, the drive to innovate—all of it had been replaced by a fog of grief and trauma.
What followed was a slow decline in my professional performance. I missed deadlines, made careless mistakes in configuration files, and became increasingly withdrawn from the team. I was physically present but mentally absent. The incident that finally led to my termination wasn’t a single catastrophic failure—it was the accumulation of months of subpar work, poor communication, and declining reliability.
This experience taught me a hard lesson about the intersection of personal well-being and professional responsibility. In DevOps, we often talk about system reliability, uptime guarantees, and performance metrics, but we rarely discuss how personal circumstances affect our ability to maintain those standards. The reality is that our mental and emotional state directly impacts the quality of our work, and when we’re struggling, the systems we’re responsible for suffer too.
The firing wasn’t a surprise—it was the inevitable consequence of neglecting both my personal health and my professional duties. I deserved it because I had become a liability to the team and a risk to the infrastructure I was supposed to protect. This post is about what I learned from that experience and how I rebuilt my career with a better understanding of the balance between personal well-being and professional excellence.
Understanding the Human Element in DevOps
DevOps isn’t just about tools, automation, and infrastructure—it’s fundamentally about people working together to build and maintain complex systems. The human element in DevOps is often underestimated, but it’s arguably the most critical factor in determining success or failure.
The DevOps philosophy emphasizes collaboration, continuous improvement, and shared responsibility. These principles only work when team members are functioning at their best, both technically and personally. When one person struggles, the entire system can become compromised, not just because of missed deadlines or bugs, but because the collaborative nature of DevOps means that everyone’s performance affects everyone else.
Mental health in tech has historically been a taboo subject. We glorify the “hustle culture” of working long hours, pushing through burnout, and sacrificing personal well-being for professional success. This mindset is particularly dangerous in DevOps, where the consequences of mistakes can be severe—from data breaches to system outages that affect thousands of users.
The reality is that DevOps engineers often work in high-stress environments. We’re responsible for systems that need to be available 24/7, and the pressure to maintain uptime can be immense. Add to that the complexity of modern infrastructure, the rapid pace of technological change, and the expectation to be on-call, and you have a recipe for chronic stress and burnout.
When personal trauma compounds professional stress, the results can be catastrophic. In my case, the grief from losing my child made it impossible to maintain the level of focus and attention to detail required for DevOps work. I was making configuration errors that I would have caught immediately in my previous state of mind. I was missing critical alerts because I was emotionally overwhelmed. I was failing to communicate effectively with my team because I had withdrawn into myself.
The irony is that DevOps practices are designed to create resilient systems, but we often forget to build resilience into our people. We implement redundancy, failover mechanisms, and disaster recovery plans for our infrastructure, but we rarely have similar safeguards for our team members’ well-being. When one person goes down, there’s often no backup, and the entire system suffers.
Understanding this human element is crucial for anyone in DevOps. It means recognizing that your mental and emotional state directly impacts your technical work. It means understanding that taking care of yourself isn’t selfish—it’s necessary for maintaining the high standards required in this field. It means building support systems, both personally and professionally, that can help you through difficult times without compromising your work.
The Cost of Neglecting Personal Well-being
The cost of neglecting personal well-being in DevOps extends far beyond individual suffering. When engineers are struggling, the entire infrastructure becomes vulnerable. Mistakes that might seem minor in isolation can cascade into major outages when they occur in critical systems.
In my case, the cost manifested in several ways. First, there were the direct technical errors—misconfigured load balancers, incorrect security group settings, and missed deployment steps. These errors weren’t just inconvenient; they created security vulnerabilities and potential points of failure in production systems. The team had to spend valuable time fixing my mistakes instead of working on new features or improvements.
Second, there was the impact on team dynamics. DevOps relies heavily on collaboration and knowledge sharing. When I became withdrawn and uncommunicative, I stopped contributing to team discussions, stopped reviewing colleagues’ code, and stopped sharing the insights I had gained from my experience. This created knowledge gaps and reduced the team’s overall effectiveness.
Third, there was the opportunity cost. While I was struggling, I wasn’t learning new technologies or improving my skills. The DevOps field moves incredibly fast, and falling behind even for a few months can make it difficult to catch up. I missed out on learning about new tools and practices that could have made me more effective in my role.
The financial cost was also significant. My employer had invested considerable resources in training me, and my declining performance meant that investment wasn’t paying off. When they finally decided to let me go, they had to invest in finding and training a replacement, which is always more expensive than retaining existing talent.
Perhaps most importantly, there was the cost to my professional reputation. In a field as interconnected as DevOps, word travels fast. My performance issues likely affected how colleagues and industry contacts viewed my capabilities, which could impact future job prospects and professional relationships.
These costs aren’t unique to my situation. They’re the predictable outcome whenever personal struggles are allowed to interfere with professional responsibilities. The difference is that in DevOps, the consequences are often more immediate and more severe than in other fields because we’re dealing with critical infrastructure that people depend on.
Understanding these costs is essential for preventing similar situations. It means recognizing the early warning signs of burnout or personal struggle and taking action before the damage becomes irreversible. It means building support systems that can help team members through difficult times without compromising system reliability. It means creating a culture where it’s acceptable to ask for help and where mental health is treated with the same importance as physical health.
Rebuilding Professional Excellence
After being fired, I had to rebuild not just my career but my entire approach to professional life. This process taught me valuable lessons about resilience, self-awareness, and the importance of maintaining personal well-being as a foundation for professional excellence.
The first step was acknowledging what had happened and taking responsibility for my role in it. This wasn’t about self-blame or dwelling on past mistakes—it was about understanding the factors that led to my decline and recognizing that I had the power to change those factors. I had to accept that my grief and trauma were valid, but they couldn’t be allowed to compromise my professional responsibilities.
Next, I focused on rebuilding my technical skills. The DevOps field had moved on during my period of struggle, and I needed to catch up. This meant dedicating time to learning new tools and technologies, contributing to open-source projects, and rebuilding my confidence through small successes. I approached this process with the same discipline and attention to detail that I had previously applied to my work, but now with a better understanding of my own limitations and needs.
I also had to rebuild my professional network. This meant reaching out to former colleagues, attending industry events, and being honest about what had happened without dwelling on it. I found that most people were understanding and supportive, and many had their own stories of struggling through difficult personal times.
Perhaps most importantly, I had to develop better self-awareness and self-care practices. This meant learning to recognize the early signs of stress and burnout, setting boundaries around work hours and on-call responsibilities, and building a support system that could help me through difficult times. I started practicing mindfulness and meditation, which helped me manage stress and maintain focus. I also made sure to maintain a healthy work-life balance, something I had completely neglected in my previous role.
When I started applying for new positions, I was honest about my past struggles but focused on what I had learned from them. I emphasized my renewed commitment to excellence, my improved self-awareness, and my understanding of the importance of personal well-being in maintaining professional performance. This honesty, combined with my renewed technical skills and positive attitude, helped me find a new position where I could thrive.
In my new role, I’ve been able to apply these lessons in several ways. I’m more proactive about communicating with my team when I’m struggling. I’m more disciplined about maintaining my skills and staying current with new technologies. I’m more aware of the importance of work-life balance and the need to take breaks when necessary. And I’m more committed than ever to maintaining the high standards of excellence that DevOps requires.
This rebuilding process wasn’t easy, and it’s ongoing. There are still days when I struggle with grief or stress, but now I have better tools and support systems to manage those challenges. The key is that I’ve learned to prioritize my personal well-being not as an alternative to professional excellence, but as a necessary foundation for it.
Building Resilient DevOps Practices
One of the most important lessons from my experience is the need for resilient DevOps practices that can withstand individual team members’ struggles. This means building systems and processes that don’t rely too heavily on any single person and that can maintain reliability even when someone is struggling.
The first principle of resilient DevOps is redundancy—not just in infrastructure, but in knowledge and responsibilities. This means ensuring that critical knowledge isn’t concentrated in one person, that important processes are documented and accessible, and that team members can cover for each other when necessary. It means implementing proper on-call rotations, clear escalation procedures, and automated monitoring that can catch issues before they become critical.
Documentation is another crucial element of resilience. When I was struggling, I couldn’t rely on my memory or intuition to guide my work. Having clear, up-to-date documentation of processes, configurations, and procedures made it possible for others to step in and help when I couldn’t perform at my best. This documentation needs to be more than just a reference—it needs to be a living resource that’s regularly updated and tested.
Automated testing and continuous integration are also essential for resilient DevOps. When human attention to detail suffers, automated systems can catch many errors before they reach production. This means implementing comprehensive test suites, automated code reviews, and deployment pipelines that include multiple checkpoints and validations. It means building in safety nets that can catch mistakes even when the person making them is distracted or overwhelmed.
Communication practices are another critical element of resilience. This means establishing clear channels for reporting issues, regular team check-ins that go beyond just project status, and a culture where it’s acceptable to ask for help or admit when you’re struggling. It means creating an environment where team members feel comfortable taking time off when needed and where workload is distributed fairly.
Mental health support should be built into DevOps practices just like any other critical system component. This means providing access to counseling services, offering flexible work arrangements, and creating a culture that values well-being as much as productivity. It means recognizing that taking care of team members’ mental health isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s essential for maintaining system reliability.
Post-incident reviews and continuous improvement processes should also include consideration of human factors. When something goes wrong, it’s important to examine not just the technical causes but also the human factors that may have contributed. This isn’t about assigning blame—it’s about understanding how personal circumstances, workload, and stress levels can affect performance and finding ways to mitigate those factors in the future.
Building these resilient practices isn’t just about preparing for worst-case scenarios—it’s about creating an environment where team members can thrive even when they’re struggling personally. It’s about recognizing that DevOps is a human endeavor and that the best systems are built by people who are supported, valued, and cared for.
The Path Forward
My experience of being fired and deserving it was a painful but ultimately valuable lesson in the importance of balancing personal well-being with professional responsibility. It taught me that in DevOps, as in any field, our personal struggles don’t exist in isolation—they affect our work, our colleagues, and the systems we’re responsible for maintaining.
The path forward involves several key principles. First, it means taking personal responsibility for maintaining both our technical skills and our personal well-being. This isn’t about being perfect—it’s about being aware of our limitations and taking proactive steps to manage them. It means recognizing when we’re struggling and taking action before our performance suffers.
Second, it means building resilient systems and practices that can withstand individual struggles. This includes everything from proper documentation and automated testing to mental health support and clear communication channels. It means creating an environment where it’s acceptable to ask for help and where team members can support each other through difficult times.
Third, it means being honest with ourselves and others about our capabilities and limitations. This means having the courage to admit when we’re struggling and the wisdom to take steps to address those struggles before they affect our work. It means building trust with our colleagues by being reliable and communicative, even when we’re facing personal challenges.
Finally, it means recognizing that personal well-being and professional excellence aren’t opposing forces—they’re complementary aspects of the same goal. When we take care of ourselves, we’re better able to take care of the systems we’re responsible for. When we maintain our skills and stay current with new technologies, we’re more confident and capable in our work. When we build supportive relationships with our colleagues, we create a stronger, more resilient team.
The DevOps field offers incredible opportunities for learning, growth, and impact. But it also comes with significant responsibilities and pressures. Success in this field requires not just technical expertise, but also emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and the ability to maintain balance in the face of challenges.
My journey from being fired to rebuilding my career has taught me that these qualities are just as important as technical skills. They’re what allow us to maintain excellence even when we’re struggling personally. They’re what enable us to build systems that are not just technically sound, but also resilient and sustainable. And they’re what make it possible to have a long, successful career in DevOps without sacrificing our personal well-being in the process.
If you’re struggling with similar challenges, know that you’re not alone and that there is a path forward. It starts with acknowledging where you are, taking responsibility for your situation, and making the commitment to rebuild—both your technical skills and your personal resilience. With the right support, the right practices, and the right mindset, it’s possible to not just recover from setbacks, but to emerge stronger and more capable than before.
The key is to remember that in DevOps, as in life, the most important systems to maintain are often the ones within ourselves. When we take care of those systems, everything else becomes possible.