The Critical Resource Is You: Practical Destressing for On-Call Engineers
In which we explore states of consciousness at SREcon Americas 2026
I wasn’t sure how this talk would go over at SREcon this year. I knew a few people were interested in the topic, but would engineers in the audience tune out in favor of Slack-surfing and vibe coding?
Nay nay: engagement was high. You know when you’re on stage whether the audience is with you or not, and it was gratifying to see that this topic resonated with a lot of people. The Q&A was busy, and quite a few people came up to me afterwards to thank me for translating the psychology into relatable terms.
Notes:
The way I talk about “ordinary” and “sensory” mind here (aka secondary and primary consciousness) is strongly influenced by Robin Carhart-Harris’ entropic brain model. You can read more in Entropy as more than chaos in the brain (MIND Foundation) or deep-dive into the papers listed on the Carhart-Harris Lab website.
The free Maven webinar I mention at the end of the talk is available here: Practical Tools for Incident Stress.
I’m excited to keep the conversation going. I’d love to hear what lands for you and what you have questions about.
— Beth