When I joined a new company as a developer, I was excited and eager to get up to speed with the systems. I wanted to understand how everything worked end to end so I could start solving actual problems as fast as possible.
New product, new team, new challenges - a whole new context. And just as I was starting to feel comfortable.
I made a mistake.
A change I made in production caused something to break - right in the middle of a live demo.
Not just any demo - a demo being run by the CEO. With a potential customer!
Thankfully, the issue was fixed almost immediately by the teammates who had just finished onboarding me. In the end, the client barely noticed. The demo landed. Everything turned out fine.
But I didn’t feel fine.
Even though there were no major issues, no one directly blamed me, I couldn’t let it go. I saw a few general messages in Slack about avoiding certain changes in production - and I knew those messages were indirectly about what I had done. I was stuck in a loop of blame, guilt, and even shame.
I felt like I had failed.
That feeling stuck with me the entire day. By the evening, I couldn’t take it anymore. I messaged the CEO and asked if he had a moment to talk about something. I didn’t disclose what I wanted to talk about at that moment.
When he joined the Slack huddle, I said:
I believe you know why I’m calling you. It was me. And I’m ready to face the consequences.
There. I had said it.
I then waited for his reaction.
Was he going to be angry? Disappointed? Let down? I had no idea what to expect.
Instead, he laughed - gently - and said:
I actually don’t know why you’re calling me. Did something happen?
He had forgotten it even happened.
The person most affected by the issue - the one whose job I thought I had made harder - didn’t even remember it.
That clicked something inside my head.
Instead of anger and blame, I got calm and empathy. We had an honest conversation. I took responsibility - and in return, I gained perspective. He told me about mistakes of his own, and I could relate.
Yes, it was a mistake.
But it became a checkpoint in my growth - not an ending.
This whole experience came back to me recently when I read the following quote by Tiago Forte, on Building a Second Brain (a book I never quite finished - not that I’m proud of it):
You can’t fail, because failure is just more information to be captured and used as fuel for your journey.
- Tiago Forte
That line hit me hard. Because I’ve been there. Many, many times.
And the truth is: Failure is only fatal if you treat it like the final version.
If you don’t? Then it’s just input.
Fuel.
Experience.
An edge case can teach you how systems fail.
A broken demo can teach you how a team responds.
Miscommunication can show you the loopholes in your process.
And owning up to your mistakes can teach you more about leadership than any book or course ever could.
Since that day, I’ve made many other mistakes - some bigger, some smaller.
But I’m learning to treat each one as data.
Failure is feedback.
It’s a statement, not a final stop.
Ultimately, this is the lesson I take from all of this:
Fight against failure, and you will find frustration. Embrace it, and you will find clarity.
Things will break.
You will too, sometimes.
But that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
It just means you’re about to learn something.