"Shitstorm Chaser" Isn’t a Real Job, But It Should Be!
We’re not in the era of prevention - we’re in the era of clean-up crews.
image credit freepik.com
Hi, I’m Neela and I chase shitstorms for a living.
It is a little-known fact that the modern office worker spends approximately 62 percent of their time managing crises they didn't create, 27 percent attending meetings that could have been emails, 10 percent trying to remember their increasingly complicated computer passwords, and a rather dispiriting 1 percent doing what they were actually hired to do.
I have no scientific evidence for these figures, but having spent a puzzling number of years in corporate environments, I can assure you they are accurate.
Welcome to corporate America, where the unofficial job title everyone secretly holds is "Shitstorm Chaser."
No, you won't find it on LinkedIn profiles or business cards, but trust me, it's the role most of us are playing whether we signed up for it or not.
A Brief and Possibly Inaccurate History of Work
Once upon a time, work was refreshingly straightforward.
A medieval blacksmith, for instance, was seldom interrupted while shoeing a horse by a messenger breathlessly announcing that the quarterly figures for anvil production were below expectations and could he please attend an emergency meeting with the regional forge coordinators.
Later, during the Industrial Revolution, a factory worker might reasonably expect to perform the same task repeatedly for twelve hours without a single person asking them to "pivot to a new strategy" or "touch base regarding deliverables."
How uncomplicated it all seems in retrospect.
Even as recently as the 1950s, office workers could expect to do more or less what was said in their job description. A filing clerk filed things. An accountant accounted for things. A manager managed things.
The system wasn't perfect. There was a lot of casual sexism and workplace smoking, but at least people generally knew what they were supposed to be doing when they arrived at work each morning.
And then, at some point in the late twentieth century, everything went batshit..
Throughout my questionable career choices, I've seen the workplace energy change from "do your actual job" to "drop everything five times a day to address whatever is currently on fire."
And it has gotten worse lately.
In fact, a recent report revealed that 75.1% of organizations activated their crisis management plans over the past year, highlighting how common these disruptions have become.
Remember when your job description matched what you did all day? Neither do I, but my husband insists such a time existed, right alongside rotary phones.
Three Flavors of Corporate Chaos
The shitstorms come in three delicious varieties, and you've probably tasted them all:
The Daily Dumpster Fire
These babies pop up when you're just trying to get your actual work done. Someone forgot to CC the right person, the client misunderstood the email, or the data got entered wrong. Small shit that somehow becomes everyone's problem. These hit about three times before lunch on a good day.
The Slow-Motion Trainwreck
You can see this one coming from miles away. The project, which was underfunded from the start. The impossible deadline everyone pretended was totally doable. The strategy pivot nobody really bought into. You and your coworkers have been quietly placing bets on when it'll finally explode. And when it does? Guess who's getting called in to help clean it up? That's right, every poor bastard within earshot.
The Extinction-Level Event
This is the big one. The kind that makes executives cancel vacations and triggers emergency all-hands meetings at 5 PM on a Friday. Maybe it's a massive security breach, a major client threatening to walk, or finding out your main product has a fatal flaw right before launch. When these hit, titles go out the window. Suddenly, everyone from the CTO to the janitor is hunting for solutions.
The Feature That Ate The Startup
In 2023, I was working for this AI startup run by a guy who wore Allbirds and talked about "changing the world" at least 17 times in every meeting. Let's call him Josh, because that was his actual name, and I no longer care about protecting his identity.
Their product had an 89% customer satisfaction rating, which is practically unheard of unless you're selling drugs or puppies.
But Josh became OBSESSED with the missing 11%. Like, restraining-order level obsessed. Despite having a good product roadmap (created by people who knew what they were doing), he insisted on building this elaborate new feature aimed specifically at those unhappy users.
What was supposed to be a quick four-week side project became a SIX-MONTH fustercluck that sucked in every resource. Engineers were reassigned, marketing had to create new messaging, and customer success had to be retrained. The whole company became a support system for Josh's ego project while the actual work piled up.
When they finally launched it, they discovered those dissatisfied users weren't unhappy about missing functionality. They were unhappy about the PRICING MODEL.
I watched good engineers quit, one by one, the life slowly draining from their eyes.
I saw the original roadmap items (which would have actually made money) get delayed by almost a year. Their main competitor launched three new features during this time and ate into their market share.
The saddest moment was sitting in the room when the usage data came in, showing that after all that blood, sweat, and tears, the feature had a 0.3% adoption rate. That's basically nobody. That's less than the percentage of people who admit to enjoying fruitcake.
Josh still defended the decision, calling it "strategic" with a straight face while everyone else in the room silently updated their resumes under the table. I'd never seen so many people typing on their phones at the same time without a single one taking a selfie.
The Birth of the Unofficial Profession
So how'd we get here? I've got some thoughts, and they ain't pretty.
First, we killed the specialists. Companies got lean, which just means "everybody does three jobs instead of one." When everyone is a generalist, they are pulled into every problem.
Second, we worshipped at the altar of "agility" without understanding what it meant.
Being nimble is great. Being in constant chaos is just disorder with a mission statement.
Third, technology didn't simplify our work like we thought it would. Sure, I can send a message to 20 people instantly. But that means 20 people can instantly get dragged into problems that might have stayed contained in the past.
The Hidden Career Path Nobody Talks About
Here's something I've noticed in the past five years: the people who climb fastest in companies now aren't necessarily the best at their actual jobs. They're the best shitstorm chasers.
These folks have a sixth sense for brewing disasters. They jump in, take control, and somehow steer the team through the mess. They don't run from the fire; they run toward it. And leadership notices.
I talked to a VP at a Fortune 500 last month who flat-out told me he doesn't promote the people who do their jobs perfectly. He promotes the ones who can handle the unexpected crises that inevitably pop up.
His exact words: "I need people who can surf on shit and somehow stay clean."
Not exactly what they teach in business school, is it?
The Shitstorm Survival Guide
If you're reading this nodding your head so hard it might fall off, I've got some battle-tested advice:
Stop pretending it's temporary. This is the new normal, folks. The sooner you accept that part of your job is dealing with unexpected crap, the sooner you can get strategic about it.
Build your emergency response team. Know exactly who to call when different types of fires break out. The database guru, the client whisperer, the legal eagle. Having this mental Rolodex ready saves precious time when things go south.
Create shitstorm-proof time blocks. Guard some hours of your week religiously for your actual work. When the crisis alarm sounds (and it will), you can evaluate if it's worth breaking your protected time.
Learn to spot brewing disasters. After a while, you develop a nose for impending doom: the project with too many stakeholders, the client who keeps changing requirements, and the timeline that makes everyone wince.
Know when to let some fires burn. Not every problem needs solving immediately. Some resolve themselves. Others aren't worth the resources. Developing this judgment is the most valuable skill of all.
The Unexpected Upside
There's a silver lining to all this that nobody talks about and that is Shitstorm chasers develop an incredible skill set.
Think about it. You're constantly solving complicated problems under pressure, working across departments, communicating through chaos, and making high-stakes decisions with limited information. That's an executive training program disguised as workplace trauma.
I've watched junior employees who survived a few major company crises develop more practical business acumen in six months than others gain in years of normal operations.
The Future Is... More of the Same But Probably Worse
Will this change anytime soon? Not a fucking chance.
If anything, the pace is accelerating. Markets move faster. Technology evolves daily, and customer expectations continue to rise. The companies that thrive aren't the ones with the fewest problems but the ones with the best problem-solving cultures.
So here's my unsolicited advice: Welcome the chaos. Become the person who stays deadly calm when everything's falling apart. Who can find solutions while others are still processing what went wrong.
Because at the end of the day, your résumé might say "Project Manager" or "Marketing Director" or even "CEO," but we're all shitstorm chasers now.
And the ones who get good at it? They'll run the show someday.
If they don't burn out first.
But that's a topic for another article.
Thank you for taking the time.
P.S. My article will be published this Thursday in
’s publication, . I’ll repost it here too, so you don’t miss it.
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As a risk assessor, I have to pivot from fire to fire and assess the risks caused by these various fires. I live this life. This job title could also be used interchangeably for my title as mother.
And the people who can surf on shit, stay clean AND do their jobs well sometimes become a threat and get chased out or shunned until they leave voluntarily. I’ve seen it! It’s messed up