[cxr]

> In a massive operation running 24/7 that never stops to catch its breath, it's going to be chaotic.

No, it isn't. Describing it like this is needless apologetics.

The "chaos" is not even necessarily the worst part of the problem. It's these kinds of just-so dismissals that have the effect of framing the chaos as somehow unavoidable—the response that goes, roughly, you'll learn; this a natural consequence of what we're doing; it's a big operation, and this is what it looks like when you play with the big boys. I can tell you: I am a big boy. I have too much experience to the contrary for these casting couch excuses to work. Much of the day-to-day toil at Samsung is inexcusable and entirely avoidable. There is no excuse, for example, for dealing with version control in a billion dollar manufacturing operation like we're living in 1995 or a neverending sophomore-level group project.

[ethbr0]

I liked your framing of version control requiring a culture of encouraging admission of failure.

I'd never looked at it that way, and it succinctly describes why the least devops-mature organizations I've worked with have been those that heavily penalize any admission of failure. And vice versus.

[pm90]

Cultures where failure is punished are just the worst. It’s not just the vain pursuit of something unachievable (systems will break) but all the effort involved in covering up rather than simply admitting the problem and then coming up with solutions to fix it/not repeat it. It’s a lost opportunity to improve the system.

Unfortunately, without active checks and balances, orgs will tend to the blame game. Avoiding it requires an org-wide commitment to openness around failures.