[christophilus]

When I started at Microsoft, this exact scenario happened. I was told I couldn’t automate things because there was no time. I did it anyway, and a 3 person job suddenly became an extremely part time job for one person.

It blew my mind that anyone at Microsoft, of all places would have this mindset.

[TideAd]

When I was at Microsoft circa 2018, our team had a senior engineer whose primary job was doing manual validation of releases. That and keeping a single custom legacy build server running.

[wnolens]

I would love to share my experience of release management at MSFT but it would out me.

In the ballpark of 20ish engineers chasing build errors and test failures for a month to bump a version number (one line change).

[zo1]

Because it worked out for you, that time. As a manager and probably the person that would have told you no, or to justify more before we attempt it, I've seen this scenario go pear-shaped way more times than not. It's about risk, priorities, and specifically knowledge/experience (sometimes wrong) that says this is "not a good idea". Sometimes it's also just plain old complacency, though.

[robertlagrant]

It's amazing how many people you can hire (and how many bugs you can ship with) when you sell something that's free to distribute and has no true competition.