The sky isn't falling, relax.
Posted by SellAble7@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 6 comments
I'm not overly upset or angry. I'm more "mildly annoyed".
We merged early this year and I've been through aquistions and mergers as a Senior Systems Engineer so I was prepared. It's actually been pretty smooth. They also didn't have Infra or Ops on their end. So my boss and I took that on for them. I'm pretty entrenched here so I'm not overly worried about my job.
What's annoying me is - people keep acting like the sky is falling over work that takes five minutes or things we won't know until we start doing the work.
For example - DevOps needed an App Registration to programtically do some CI automation. There's a Slack thread running on and on. I said, let's get on a call and we can sort this out in five minutes.
But they continue to act like the sky is falling. I get the main guy on the phone and once he clarifies his need I had a working solution in five minutes. Which included writing the PowerShell.
When we're at this level - it's never not having an idea on methodology. The typical problem is - not having the big picture information on what's needed. And people not seeing that turns problems into mountains.
This morning we got on a call to discuss testing a change that we have a maintenance window for.
We're going to know within 5 minutes if it will work or not. But I sat there while they went around and around for 20 minutes beating a dead horse. All this concern over something miniscule. Our change may require some users to refresh some dashboard screens.
All we had to do was draft out communication so that if we saw a refresh was needed, we could send it in our maintenance wrap up email. But they went around and around for 20 minutes on how to handle it...
Then a principal dev starts talking adding a change that needs a lot more testing and isn't in scope with this change request / maint window.
And I'm asking questions because this can really blow tbings up but he and my boss are acting like why are you spending two minutes asking these questions... After 20 minutes of them debating how to deal with users needing to refresh a page. Sheesh, we send an email and say hey you may need to refresh. End of disussion...
absurdamerica@reddit
Tell that to the several hundred engineers laid off at my company last week…
Vektor0@reddit
Sounds like an intolerance of uncertainty. You have the technical knowledge, so you have that certainty already. They don't. Going over every detail with a fine-tooth comb is their coping mechanism for that. Unfortunately, it also leads to analysis paralysis.
Hopefully, they'll learn in time to trust you and your competence. So when you say "it'll be okay, we got this," they know they can rest on that.
Demented_CEO@reddit
It also sounds like there's absolutely no staging environment...
hfxfordp@reddit
Classic bikeshedding.
Everyone - especially in a fear for their job atmosphere - is desperate to demonstrate value by providing input, which by default means the aggregate input will focus on trivial and superficial aspects of the subject.
shunny14@reddit
There is something to be said for instead of writing emails or ticket messages back and forth just getting on a call when there is some level of Complexity beyond a paragraph.
wildfyre010@reddit
I think you’re being slightly dismissive of user facing change management, especially if those users are paying customers or have sensitive integrations.
That said, we’ve all been in the same interminable corporate meeting where a lot of people who don’t really understand the technology try to haggle about how something technical should be done.