In 2018, I mentioned the dangers of “war rooms” for thoughtful analysis work. A prime example is the infamous outage on August 1, 2014, when Facebook crashed. The chaotic scene included engineers squished in a sweaty room with bad ventilation, trying to solve the mystery of why the servers failed. I eventually discovered a rogue process called “fbagent” was the culprit, but the source code had been fixed, unbeknownst to the production servers. The stressful investigation highlighted the importance of a comfortable work environment for problem-solving. Despite the chaos, war rooms can be effective for crisis coordination but might not be suitable for in-depth analysis.
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2025/02/22/war/