I've used a similar analogy a few times - do we make medical software where someone will literally die if we don't fix this in the next few hours? No? Then chill the hell out and we'll get it fixed without giving ourselves stress related diseases. In a week or a month no one will remember this particular "emergency" but we'll all remember the general level of stress we felt on this team for years.

I've said this out loud a few times. But I've said it quietly to myself far more often when someone is trying to make me feel stressed for no reason. It's very effective.

How would you handle something that is possible to put into monetary numbers, because technically certain amount of money could save a life.

E.g. this incident cost us $5 million - this type of money could be used to save many lives.

At most firms the money was never earmarked for saving lives and there's no expectation it ever would have.

By not earning the money (or losing it), you're not actually impacting anyone's life.

I like that - I've been at a company where a manager from a mining background would get panicked at a P2 incident, because in the mining industry a P2 incident meant that a person had been physically injured (and would probably be tomorrow's news) but where I was, a P2 meant some but not all revenue-generating systems were experiencing issues.

I think he eventually figured out not to sweat it so much.

had a similar experience early in my career in finance. 35 year old associate (old for the role), ex green beret, always so level, even when dealing with a lunatic VP. asked him why he was cool as the other side of the pillow: "nobody is shooting at me"