2026-07-12
A Typhoon That Fizzled Out: How a PM Survives the Darkest Hour Like Riding Out a Storm
Typhoon No. 9, "Bawei," veered south last night, making landfall along the coast from Wenling in Zhejiang down to Xiapu in Fujian. The fishing boats moved overnight out of Zhoushan and Putuo, the cancelled flights — in hindsight it all looks like wasted effort, so people start saying "we didn't need to bother." But those three words, "false alarm," can kill a product manager faster than the typhoon itself. Riding out a storm was never one move; it's three: prepare fully before it arrives, take the wind and rain when it hits, and clean up the mess after it leaves. The day GitLab dropped its database, it discovered none of its five backups actually worked. Knight Capital lost $440 million in 45 minutes over one chunk of dead code someone forgot to delete — and the company was gone. This is about what an operator should actually do on the night the alarm truly sounds.
