Wobbly One Of Myriads @wobblewuffess@awoo.space

@mawr I can't really classify admins as cops. Someone has to keep shit running.. and sometimes that takes policy enforcement and the like but it's not policing or being a cop in my mind.

Unfortunately, humans are more difficult to organize and manage that even cats.. so we need guides and people to help provide direction and some form of enforcement of said guidelines.
This is very distinct from the role of holds the monopoly on violence for the wealthy for the purpose of labor suppression.

@anthracite That is a rad hat!

@mawr sounds like a busy day for a mawr!

@mawr I promise it will suck less than building the THING with no feedback....

Provided you have good controls in place and well defined goals to prevent scope creeping of the THING.

@mawr I would be willing to say that might be the case. If you build the only THING of that THING your people have access to then they will probably use it.

Hell, a lot of Operations folks seem to still follow the attitude of.. we build the infrastructure how we want and Dev doesn't have any other choice but use it (in the context of virtual worlds even).

Still kinda sucks! You should involve the people who use the THING in the design and build process for the THING!

Holy fuck... I wish someone had never uttered the phrase "Build it and They will come."

It is terrible, shitty and a lie. One that is way to common for Infrastructure, Ops and Platform engineering folks to believe.

You can't just build the a thing with no feedback from your intended users and hope for the best!

Hopefully, I can ask questions that shine a light on these issues in a way that helps this team realize the problems without having to directly call them out myself.

Just getting them to start bringing me up to speed on the project seems to have at least made a few of them step back realize they have a problem with complexity and complete lack of how to use this thing docs or any guide/safety rails built into it.

This project in particular seems to be suffering from too long in the oven without anyone glancing at it or taking its temperature.

Folks working on it even feel they might have a problem because something as complex as a multi-tenant, multi-region, onprem, self hosted k8s platform... doesn't feel complex to them any more... but then they have been working on fairly siloed for 3 years.. so.. no shit.

I always find it weird as an operations person when I come into a project which has a stated goal of providing platform for engineering and intends to treat engineering teams as customers... but has no buy in from Engineering.. and lacks any sort of Pitch and then the folks don't get why the thing they are building is not catching own...

Like if you want people to use your thing, you have to explain to them how it will improve their work/lives/productivity/stability/etc..

@mawr I hate this so much... only complaint about my new employer is.... folks use slack, zoom, google-meet... and google message... like argh...

private comms are all fucked up now... and I blame discord!

wow... onboarding for new company has gone.. way smoother than @pple did.. and huh...
wasn't the only person in the new hire meeting using they/them pronouns... that is different.. in a good way xD
also... don't feel like any of the onboarding meetings have been a waste of time

downside.. first meeting with the new team involved getting pulled into briefing session about an incident and the fact that if the thing was not addressed.. the worst case scenario was it starts an actual fire in a data center.. sometime in the next hour to month xD

wow... well aside from the fact I'll be starting my first day light on sleep...

Apple (as a contractor): here is a 3 year old macbook pro, oops we forgot some account stuff and didn't send you the "first week" plan doc or meeting invites until friday.

New employer: Brand new macbook pro 16, if you want a 13 you can trade it out later, here is a $2k for home office stuff (desk, chair whatever) , $250 budget mouse + keyboard and a $400 dock. Also here is week schedule.. a week ahead of time!

@bupy As a treat!