Service with an Angry Smile: Passive-Aggressive Behavior in SRE
summary
Argues that covert hostility in teams produces real SRE failures: an ignored alert that predicted an outage and a hoarded password causing a multi-hour outage are named as concrete examples. Cites DSM‑IV criteria and WWII origins for the label, shows remedies that are used and tested — blameless post‑mortems and one‑on‑one mind maps, empathy training, clear definition of done, inviting HR/legal to incident reviews — and reports these practices reduce incidents and improve on‑call reliability.
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chapters (25)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:40About Zalando
- 4:34DSM description
- 5:52Criteria
- 7:35Workplace manifestations
- 9:22It's not being quiet
- 13:08It's the customer's fault
- 13:27The Ketchup "Sorry"
- 15:39Quick History: "Passive-aggressive"
- 16:331950-1990s: expansion
- 18:431990s-present
- 20:13What "adequate" means to us
- 21:14Expectation misalignment as cause
- 24:45SRE-related costs
- 28:15Troubleshooting emotions
- 28:31Setting example/leading
- 30:08Empathy as a skill
- 31:17For SREs: Looks like patience
- 32:56Try Socratic method
- 35:53Honesty as your shield
- 36:28Admitting failure = strength Kitty is strong
- 36:41Agile as autonomy framework
- 37:31Focus on the team
- 38:23Role of companies: values
- 39:01Takeaways
