Can't we just reset AWS!?

There was this one time at a bank when I was brought in to help a senior dev and his sysadmin buddy solve a massive AWS migration issue. It was a porting exercise from our internal AWS setup to the bank’s heavily locked-down account. I’d never met these guys before, but technically, I was their boss.

I walked in at 9 PM to find two highly flustered individuals wrestling with debugging, compiling, redoing, and checking logs in a state of sheer panic. They weren’t used to such a restricted AWS environment where they had little direct control. Meanwhile, the bank’s AWS-certified coordinator, who boasted a shiny “level 2” certification, was frantically “finding help” and acting as if he were the hero of the hour. Spoiler: he wasn’t.

The first thing I noticed was a guitar. Specifically, a Stratocaster. The senior dev had brought it along, planning to hit a jam session after work. Instead, here he was, stuck at the client site, drowning in a sea of AWS policies and IAM roles.

The thing that drew my attention to the Stratocaster was this thought I’ve been trying to validate for some time.

It seemed that a ton of programmers were also musicians!

There was my boss at the time, Francois, who was the head of engineering and had every 80's synthesizer in his possession - that I can only ogle over. There was the CTO who was a DJ on the side (I had been a DJ for 10 years in my younger days) And now, I meet this Dev who owns a strat - just like mine only in a different color!

And so naturally, I couldn't resist! "Hey! Is that a Strat? Wow! Can I play?"

The dev and sysadmin looked at me like I had just sprouted a second head. Their expressions screamed, “Are you serious right now!?” But he said, “Sure, go ahead.” And so I did. I started strumming away, blissfully ignoring the chaos around me - or at least, that’s how it looked.

Meanwhile, the two of them were losing their minds, firing off ten million questions at me in rapid succession. I just smiled and said, “Keep at it.” Then I kept playing the guitar. Ten minutes in, after quietly observing their workflow, I finally spoke up.

“You’re solving one problem, and he’s solving another,” I said. “How do you know which fix worked and which one’s causing errors? It might feel like you’re slowing down, but just follow one simple rule: solve one problem at a time. No more, no less. Work together.”

The disgruntled looks I got could’ve burned a hole in the back of my head. But they started doing it. One by one, they tackled problems. The questions they asked me became more focused, and I helped where it made sense. And when I wasn’t helping, I went back to the guitar. Slowly but surely, their spirits lifted, not just because they were solving things, but because they realised they could. They didn’t need me to swoop in and “fix it all.” I was just there as a safety net - or... maybe... the emotional support guitarist

But perhaps, the grandest moment of all; came about halfway through the exercise. The AWS-certified coordinator burst in and, in an exasperated tone, asked,

“Can’t we just reset AWS?!”

The dev and sysadmin looked up, puzzled. I started chuckling silently. Then the dev, taking his cue from me, asked, “You mean like a reset switch? Like the kind on a computer?”

The coordinator nodded thoughtfully. “Yes.”

Oh Lord, the laughter. We were rolling. Tears were shed. The tension melted away entirely.

---

Looking back, it was one of those rare moments where everything just clicked. Not at first, though. When I walked in, I hadn’t the faintest clue what to do. I’d been sent to the frontlines like an officer with no battle plan. The atmosphere was suffocating. Management kept barging in, asking for updates, and probably sending everyone’s blood pressure through the roof.

The guitar? That was my lucky break. It gave me an opening to set the tone. Management saw me playing and naturally stayed away, their sheer confusion outweighing their urge to micromanage. They left us alone because they probably thought, “The tech lead is here. Two grand a day! Things would be okay. Things better be okay!”

For the devs, the guitar created a different kind of assurance. It signalled that everything wasn’t a five-alarm fire. That it was okay to pause, think, and solve problems methodically. The tension dialled down, and the safe space that emerged allowed them to focus. My role wasn’t to swoop in and save the day. It was to observe, provide support where needed, and keep the wolves at bay.

By the end of it, they realised what my approach had been about all along. Hopefully, they spent a few days reflecting on it. The value wasn’t in me fixing anything; it was in creating an environment where they could fix it themselves.

And I’ll admit, I felt pretty damn good about that.

---

No one really knows how they’ll solve a problem until they’re standing in front of it. This was a learning experience for all of us. The guitar became a symbol, a sort of unspoken truth written on the wall: “It’s okay. The tech lead is here. There’s hope. (Erm… really?)” But realistically, I didn’t have a grand plan. I just wanted to calm things down. That alone made all the difference.

I'd bet even AWS probably had a laugh at some point.