We had a discussion about this at my last job. The War rooms were a three ring circus that my team stayed out of 4 times out of 5, substantially by actually planning ahead. Though as time went on we started doing a lot more to protect the services behind us instead of just ourselves, and then the total war room count dropped like a rock.

Someone hit on the notion that it’s Stockholm Syndrome. You bond with people you go through shit with. You don’t bond with people who prevent the shit. That was a super awkward conversation. The asshole in charge quit shortly after it, but 2 years later we still occasionally called each other out for making plans that accounted for a toxic chain of command that was no longer toxic.

> Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened.

Exactly why the general public thinks Y2K was a "hoax" or "overblown".

[flagged]

That feels like Amazon's entire management philosophy. Always drop the most important thing to work on at a moment's notice because we need to put out the fires caused by not prioritizing the most important things to work on.