There was a software B2B SaaS company called Acme Inc. The engineering team had two senior engineers, let's call them Alex and Morgan.

One night at 1 AM, Acme Inc.'s website went down. The on-call person was stumped and unable to figure out the issue. Alex, who was online, quickly jumped on the problem. Alex's team had missed a critical corner case in a recent migration. With the context and experience, Alex swiftly rolled out a fix, bringing the site back up.

The next day, leadership was impressed by Alex’s quick response and publicly applauded their efforts. Alex received recognition and praise. Meanwhile, the team led by Morgan shipped their feature a week late. Leadership was unhappy. Morgan explained they had discovered a potential data consistency issue, worked on the fix, and added tests to the automated suite to ensure quality. However, leadership remained focused on the fact that the release was delayed.

Alex continued fixing multiple incidents for the next three months, each receiving praise. During appraisal time, Alex was promoted and rewarded for prompt incident resolutions. On the other hand, Morgan received only a marginal raise. Morgan decided to move on and quit the company, and their team was handed over to Alex.

Six months later, Acme Inc. faced a wave of customer churn due to ongoing outages. The leadership decided to hire a new leader to address the problem.

It’s evident in this story that Acme Inc. made a hero out of Alex for solving incidents that could have been prevented. Instead of promoting diligent problem-preventive work, quick fixes were celebrated. This turned Alex into a hero who swooped in to resolve incidents but didn’t help the team avoid them in the first place. This happens because incident fixes are critical, visible, and provide immediate impact. However, it’s challenging to appreciate actions that create long-term impact. Just like maintaining a workout routine, the benefits are not immediate.

Whenever you hear, “Only X has the context for this component” or “X is the only one you need approval from,” you know you're in a hero culture.

How to Address Hero Culture:

1. Acknowledge its existence and create awareness.
2. Build a documentation culture and celebrate well-curated documents.
3. Focus on outcomes, not just output.