Image: Chaos to Control

I was thrilled to land a Program Manager role at FAANG company, expecting to lead big projects, shape product decisions, and be part of cutting-edge innovation. But reality hit differently. Most of my nights are spent firefighting incidents, juggling stakeholders across multiple time zones, and attending endless post-mortems. Sometimes, it feels like I am stuck on a treadmill that just doesn’t stop.

Let me take you through a typical night as a Program Manager handling incident management on the night shift — while the rest of India is asleep.

My phone buzzes at 9:45 p.m. with a cheerful ringtone that feels more like a wake-up slap because it usually means the first Sev-1 alert of the night. Even before properly waking up, I check emails and Slack. There’s always some incident pinged just as the day shift logged off, with call leader burnt out, and various stakeholders—from the US, Europe, Asia—are demanding updates. We call it “asynchronous collaboration,” but it basically means working bleary-eyed, wondering if peace will ever return.

By 10:00 p.m., I log into my system with a fresh cup of chai or black coffee. Nighttime is quietly deceptive; outside it’s calm, but the blinking incident alerts on my screen feel like a storm. This is my war zone—where users from around the globe don’t wait for convenient hours and outages impact millions.

By 11:30 p.m., my calendar fills up: “Daily Stand Up Calls,” “Postmortem Reviews,” “Escalation Coordination.” Opening the SL dashboard is like staring at a cricket scoreboard during a tense match—what’s broken, who’s panicking, what’s the next wicket (incident) coming up.

Around 1:00 a.m., I’m deep in triage mode for a Sev-2 outage impacting thousands of users. I fire off messages to engineers, product managers, customer support, and sometimes even legal or security teams. Coordinating war-room calls, condensing updates, and trying to keep a calm head in the chaos is the norm. Every incident feels like a complicated jigsaw puzzle being reshuffled in real time.

Once an incident settles around 3:00 a.m., the marathon meetings start—root cause analysis sessions, preparing crisp exec updates. Management calls this “continuous improvement.” Being honest, it often feels like banging your head against the same wall, hoping it will crack eventually.

Dinner—well, more like a late-night snack—is mostly a quick bite at my desk while reviewing the latest incident retrospectives. Sometimes overhearing colleagues debate whether the new monitoring tools will actually cut the alert noise makes me smile quietly. Spoiler: we know they won’t.

By 4:30 a.m., after numerous escalations and endless Slack threads, I sometimes hit a slump. Thoughts creep in: Am I just putting Band-Aids on deep-rooted problems? Are the constant incidents signs that the whole strategy needs a reboot? Am I just a traffic cop managing chaos without real power to fix it? The ugly combo of imposter syndrome and burnout is something many of us night-shift warriors know too well.

The shift nears its end at 6:30 a.m., and I spend the last hour clearing action items, updating trackers, and sending out a “Thank You” email—a hope that next time, someone else gets to lead the firefight. Logging off, with the first light sneaking in through the window, I watch the city wake up while I wrap up.

By 7:00 a.m., the laptop finally clicks shut and commute back home. Before sleeping, around 9:00 a.m., I skim the incident backlog once more. I note recurring patterns, sketch ideas for smoother escalations, and dream of quieter nights with fewer fires to fight and more strategic work to do.

Why do I stay in this grind? Because, despite the pain, there’s satisfaction in wrangling chaos to keep millions of users happy. The pay supports my family’s needs, the role’s prestige matters, and there are moments when a system finally stabilizes that remind me why I do what I do. But deep down, I know that unless I find ways to innovate and step away from just firefighting, risk of burnout is real.

So, to all the night-shift Program Managers handling Sev-1s and endless calls while most of India sleeps: I see you, and you’re not alone. It’s okay to vent, look for other opportunities, or carve out peace pockets in your hectic schedule. Remember, our job isn’t just to survive incidents, but to help create a future with fewer of them — and a bit more peace of mind.

—Your fellow incident juggler, burning the midnight oil with you