[mbesto]

I do technology due diligence on behalf of investors for a living, so I live and breathe this type of stuff on a weekly basis.

All companies build software differently. Some have automatic deployment, some don't. Some have strong testing procedures, some don't. Just because a company doesn't use a CI, doesn't necessarily make them "worse". It's just an indifference to the indoctrination of the "SV mindset".

The more important answers are not binary yes/no by rather "why aren't using a CI". Common answers are:

- I'm not sure what CI is

- We don't have enough unit tests to justify it

- We're a small team and it doesn't really justify the effort to setup

- We're working on setting up and should be live in the next 3 months

You can tell a lot about engineering competency and leadership from those answers.

[nudpiedo]

Not sure why you got downvoted, you are clearly speaking out of your experience working with different teams and expoisng real answers which many people could say loud every second day.

[wolfgke]

My personal answer rather is: One is working on a kind of software with additional safety or security requirements, where CI would be a really bad idea.

This does not contradict to the idea that methods that are rather necessary for CI, such as really high test coverage (this is typically even a requirement for such a kind of software), automatic building (can improve productivity a lot) often also make sense in such an environment.

[deegles]

Any advice on getting into this field? Seems like it would be pretty rewarding (mentally) work.

[mbesto]

Honestly - I stumbled into it. I really don't have any good advice other than know the right people.