Telecommunications is the same way. It seems like you're constantly walking on eggshells because if you're directly responsible for any prolonged outage (no matter how good you are) you could get the gate. I remember one morning (about 2:00am) we where doing a software upgrade to a large central office tandem switch in downtown Houston (about 120,000 total lines and trunks) when a guy mistakenly knocked down the DS-3 that carried the DS-1's for the 911 trunks. The next day a customer called and complained that when they attempted to call 911 all they received was a fast busy. Needless to say, the guy that caused the outage was escorted out the door by security that same day and he was one of the most experienced engineers on site that morning.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Doesn't matter how great we may think we are, we're all expendable.

BTW - Congrats on you new position.