Tameem Hourani, an engineering leader known for his work in operations and resilience, discusses the importance of a blameless culture in engineering. He shares lessons from a major outage that taught him to prioritize system resilience over blame. Tameem emphasizes the role of radical transparency in building trust and high-performing teams. He also talks about nudging cultural change from any level and highlights the impact of hackathons on team dynamics and community engagement, demonstrating how technology can drive social good.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Weekend Data Center Crisis
Early in his career Tameem Hourani faced a major weekend data center outage that felt catastrophic at the time.
A VP calmly told him "this too shall pass," teaching him to stay calm and focus on fixes rather than panic.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Blame Versus System Focus
Tameem contrasted a public shaming of an operator with Wayfair's blameless approach after a customer-impacting outage.
He learned that blaming individuals damages culture while focusing on system resilience produces better outcomes.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Lead Without Blame
Resist the instinct to find a person to blame when incidents happen and instead ask what system change could prevent recurrence.
Leaders must model calm, objective investigation to build trust and faster delivery.
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This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences.
In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Tameem Hourani about building a blameless engineering culture through radical transparency, focusing on system resilience over individual blame, and creating high-performing teams that can embrace change and learn from failures.
Read a transcript of this interview: http://bit.ly/42rq1yv
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