Saw some pelicans the other day, just gliding, super calm, doing their thing. Then, out of nowhere, a huge clap of thunder. Really shook things up. Made me think, you know?
It’s funny how nature just slaps you with a metaphor sometimes. This whole pelicans and thunder business, it took me right back to a job I had a few years ago. Not in a good way, mostly.
The “Pelican” System We Had
So, we had this system, let’s call it ‘Old Faithful.’ It wasn’t flashy, kinda like those pelicans just methodically doing their fishing. It just did its job, day in, day out. It processed all the important stuff, kept the lights on for a big part of our operations. Sure, it was old, had its quirks, like any system that’s been around the block, but it was predictable. You knew what you were getting with it. Me and the team, we understood its guts. We were the keepers of this quiet, steady pelican, making sure it kept flying.
- It handled all the core transaction data, millions of records.
- We knew every single workaround for its little hiccups.
- Management mostly left it alone because, well, it just plain worked and didn’t cause them headaches.
Then Came the “Thunder” – Oh Boy
Then, new leadership waltzed in. You know the type. Full of big ideas, always chasing the next shiny new tech. They took one look at our ‘Old Faithful’ and basically declared, “This thing is ancient! We need something cutting-edge, something that screams ‘innovation!’” That, my friends, was the thunder. A sudden, loud, and incredibly disruptive force that nobody really asked for, at least not us on the ground.
They decided they wanted to rip out our dependable pelican and replace it with… well, they promised us a supersonic jet. What we got felt more like trying to fly a kite in a hurricane. There was no real plan, just a mandate: ‘Make it new, make it fast, and do it yesterday!’
The whole transition was a complete disaster. I’m not even exaggerating.
- The new system they were pushing was barely out of alpha, full of bugs.
- They totally underestimated how much our ‘Old Faithful’ actually did behind the scenes, all the little things that kept business running smoothly.
- We ended up working insane hours, like 12-14 hour days for months, trying to build this new monstrosity while also desperately trying to keep the old system from completely falling apart because, of course, the business still needed to run.
It was pure, unadulterated chaos. Lots of shouting in meetings, blame being thrown around like confetti. That calm, predictable work environment we had? Poof. Gone. Replaced by constant firefighting and the loud noise of panic.
Trying to Weather That Storm
I remember trying to explain, more than once, that you can’t just toss out a system that’s the backbone of your operations without a solid, tested replacement. That our ‘pelican,’ even if it wasn’t trendy, had immense value. It was reliable. But it was like talking to a brick wall. New brooms, right? They think they need to sweep everything away, even the good stuff. They mostly just kicked up a whole lot of dust and made a bigger mess for us to clean up.
I got seriously burnt out. We all did. It felt like we weren’t engineers anymore; we were just duct-taping a sinking ship in the middle of a Category 5. The ‘thunder’ wasn’t just the new, unstable project; it was the whole top-down attitude. A complete disregard for what was already working, and for the people who’d spent years making it work.
Eventually, things kind of, sort of, stabilized. The new system got… marginally less terrible. But here’s the kicker: it cost an absolute fortune, took three times longer than they originally “planned,” and honestly, I’m still not convinced it was much of an improvement over what we had. It was just different, shinier, and way more complicated and expensive to keep running. A lot of us from the original team ended up leaving. I was one of them. I just couldn’t take that constant ’emergency mode’ that had become the new normal there.
What I Actually Learned From That Mess
So, yeah, pelicans and thunder. It’s a pretty solid reminder for me now. Sometimes, the quiet, consistent things, the ‘pelicans’ of our work lives, are way more valuable than the loud, flashy ‘thunder’ that comes in promising the world but mostly just disrupts everything and everyone for questionable gain. I really learned how to look past all the noise and buzzwords. And I learned a lot about how some people in charge mistake massive disruption for actual progress.
It’s why now, whenever I’m looking at a new project, or when some big change is proposed, I find myself asking: are we trying to be a pelican here – steady, reliable, effective? Or are we just making a whole lot of thunder because someone likes the sound of it? It’s a simple little mental check, but it helps me cut through a lot of the corporate nonsense. That’s a practice I picked up the hard way, from wading through that whole mess. Just figured I’d share that little bit of my journey, in case you find yourself watching the pelicans and then suddenly hear the thunder roll in.
