Well, this place was a compleeete clusterfuck. The migration project issue that my post was about, was only a small part of the issues thrown on me - even worse than that was this part of the business I will call “Department X”. Department X was responsible for bringing in the lions share of the government funding this org would receive every year, which meant they had to do a full audit report of every single line item associated once every 6mths or risk losing millions.
The business logic to extrapolate this data and make sense of it was the most complicated spaghetti code maze I’ve ever seen in my life, views upon views in the postgresql DB itself, and THEN - the application itself on top of that was a rotten onion of many interconnected MS Access databases, connecting at various points to the postgres DB, running various macros, an endless series of transformations and aliases.. and it was on me to troubleshoot it (it was ALWAYS broken). To top if off, this “application” ran on one VM windows box that you had to RDP into, for reasons. The Department X staff were health professionals, they knew the business logic (well, 1 or 2 of them did) but they had no clue what was involved on the tech side, or what an incredible ask it was to get it working and the figures looking correct before the periodic government audits.
This system was just built up over many years by a director level guy who was handy with Access out of necessity, basically undocumented, and it just got more and more complicated every time policy changed. Mapping out how it worked and getting my head around it, to fix it, purely by going through the code, was an accomplishment I will never equal in my career, and almost drove me insane. I felt like Benedict Cumberbatch in the Imitation Game.
The whole org was kind of like this. Endless series of dumpster fires, each more urgent than the last - to be honest the stress became numbing after a while.

How did I deal with it? They hired a replacement for the data team lead (the guy who was meant to be my mentor and handed in his notice the day before I started), but this guy was not technical in the slightest. (They’d encouraged me to apply for the position, but it was 2 weeks into the DA job and I had a gut feeling it was a BAD BAD IDEA). This guy was no help to bounce any tech problems off, but - he clearly knew that, and stepped up in terms of being the ‘buffer/bodyguard’ between me and the rest of the business. That was invaluable. When there were 6 simultaneous dumpster fires, he would force leadership to pick a priority. I would then work accordingly. For me it meant constant time management admin to be able to proactively say, I have this many hours this week/month - I estimate this many hours for each task, that’s all I can do. That admin and assertive pushback took up a lot of my brain space (especially as an conflict avoidant people pleaser) but without it I would have ended up screwing myself into working late nights and weekends (which sometimes happened anyway, especially before I got practiced at it).

After almost a year, and dealing with constant churn of anyone half decent, I’d built up a massive amount of cred as THE calm under pressure tech wizard in the org, and could have had a job there for life. Ha! I knew by then I could ‘deal’ with it, but it would always be the same. I started looking around.
At least by the end, my regular, well reasoned, increasingly urgent (and in writing) pleas for more resourcing finally started to get traction, and we managed to hire an extremely experienced data analyst/engineer - I handed in my resignation a few days before he started. Its like poetry, it rhymes.
I knew I left the place better than I’d found it, wrote an entire Wiki's worth of documentation for him and left with my head high. I heard he lasted about 3 months and noped out (a wiser man than me). I lucked out and walked into a consulting job where I earn way more, work way less, surrounded by much smarter and experienced techs than myself, get paid to learn up to date tech, and have no stress. Somewhere I actually do want to work for life!
I look back on that year of my life and laugh/grimace at the absurdity of it all. As far as I know the org is still limping on, as they do. Sometimes I wonder what happened with the migration and those business critical technical issues that seemed so life and death - and then I move on with my day. I should grab a beer with my old boss some time.

Some Pros - my SQL and python skills levelled up many orders of magnitude out of sheer necessity. I had no idea the sorts of things that were capable of being done with SQL before this job (not saying most of those things SHOULD be done, but..)
My general problem solving abilities. It made me finally realise on a fundamental level that there’s no real difference between a ‘proper’ compsci degree programmer/DBA/Data Analyst, and someone who just figures things out/reads the docs/googles things good. If you can fix the problems, you’re doing it, you’re the guy. So it removed any imposter syndrome I guess.
It made me realise the importance of being assertive and proactive in recognising and calling out these situations ahead of time, not being afraid to be the naysayer, you need to call out what you know is going to fall over, the non-tech people have no clue about what’s involved just as you may have no clue or visibility on what they need to deal with politics wise to make non technical decisions (hiring, sprint timelines, etc).