Are we not allowed to complain about unnecessary unplanned work being foisted on us with 30 days notice?
That seems like an entirely relevant complaint for this forum but from your first reply, you’re acting like somehow it’s the greatest offense in the world that someone pointed this out.
Sure. It’s a risk. But that doesn’t somehow make this work expected and planned, not invalidate the original comment.
It could have happened at any time. But it’s also been running for a decade now so there’s an expectation that things will continue rather than have the rug pulled with 30 days notice.
Come on, 30 days notice is a walk in the park. Additionally, OP was the one complaining that changing a few URLs and eventually spinning up a new server. It's quite literally a one day or two job, unless you're at a company the size of Amazon (in which case, luckily for you, you're not the only SRE, so it's still just a few days).
> The best I can come up with, at the moment, is waiting for each organization to make some sort of announcement with one of "We've paid, don't worry", "We're migrating, here's where", or "We've applied to the open source program". And if organizations don't do that... I mean, 30 days isn't enough time to find alternatives and migrate.
This is the original comment. The best they can come up with is... do nothing and wait to see if the smoke turns into a fire ? I've seen better uses of time. 30 days is enough time to find an alternative, migrate _and_ get regular coffee breaks too.
Sure, maybe in a small business or startup, and even then I'd content not quite as easy as all that.
When you're dealing with anything larger, say involving multiple teams, organisations, and priorities, 30 days is an insanely short shrift to look at figuring out what your actual route forwards is (and if you're provisioning something new, making sure you're allowed to and have any relevant sign-offs etc.)
This particular situation with Docker doesn't affect us, but if it did this would have some serious knock on implications. The teams in my org are already busy with things that need to GA by certain dates or there will be financial implications. It's not "tire fire" but in most cases it's solid "don't waste time" territory. There's always flex in the schedule, but the closer to a GA date you get the more rigid the schedule has to be.
You're absolutely right! But bloat is also incredibly common, especially when "task" in this case might describe "multi-team project." Can it get done in 30 days? Of course! Might you already have dozens of high-priority projects to deliver in the next 30 days with stakeholders screaming at you every day for updates? Absolutely!
You should read The Phoenix Project to understand that "have dozens of high-priority projects to deliver in the next 30 days" is a consequence of poor management, not a given even for large organizations.
I've read TPP. What I'm saying is, most companies are Parts Unlimited before their awakening and a lot of us are Brent. I think the reason that book resonated so well the dysfunction described there is a lived reality for most IT workers.
Fair, but I’m also fair to call that out, I think!
And I do try to do less Brent things, I think there was a degree of amnesty given to Brent that we can improve on. We can all be more Bill, even if we’re still SMEs.
Something something managing up, or getting the kinds of Bill jobs to make the changes.
> Sure, maybe in a small business or startup, and even then I'd content not quite as easy as all that.
Not enough time even in this case; for some (apathetic) people, 30 days isn't actually 30 days.
Every now and then I'll come across the kind of small org where the one person (euphemistically and sarcastically) referred to as SRE only checks email once a month because they've "evolved beyond primative tech" or wtf ever, then get mad about it like it was a conspiracy rather than self-sabotage.
90 days minimum for overt assaults on stuff that some ppl may require to keep their doors open. This kind of shit is enough to possibly mess with people's livelyhoods in edge cases. Personally I never used Docker. I'm kinda paranoid so "free" stuff not backed by some kind of legal guarantee like open source licensing always seems sorta shady.
At this size you should have a local registry that acts as a transparent cache. If you don't, then get one right now. What happens if Docker's servers are down for whatever reason? Does your whole process break?
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that it is actually affecting us or even a concern. It isn't. I was just calling out that 30 days isn't just "simple" as the parent poster was asserting.
30 days is nowhere near enough times for people with real jobs that have other things to do rather than drop everything to do this. Once again, completely needlessly.
You’re making a mountain out of an entirely valid complaint.
Heh. "But shouldn't an enterprise have all of these things figured out and mirrored and also pay money to Docker Inc"?
Should? Certainly. But guess what kind of emergencies it takes to get these things finally prioritized and what kinda mad scramble ensues from there to kinda hold it together.
Looks like some of the planned work's getting pushed back a little bit. That's the company paying the price for saving money earlier in exchange for taking on more risk. Decent chance the move was still net-beneficial for them.
Either way, it's the company reaping the benefits and paying the costs, not me.
It would have been nice and more confidence-generating for Docker to make this a 90-day notice rather than 30, but I'm not going to get upset that some of the work my company wants to do will get done slightly later for reasons having to do with their own penny-pinching and some 3rd party's somewhat-rude notice period for termination of service to entities that aren't even us and who weren't paying them. Job's a job. You want me to fix this and delay some other thing, or let it break and do some other thing instead? Fix it? Cool, no problem.
So, you're 100% booked with no room for anything? Congratulations on your management for understaffing your team and expecting you to do 120% if something happens, they're saving up quite a bit of money.
You might want to start respecting your free time though, because they clearly don't give a shit about you.
Did you stop reading that sentence halfway through? There's room for disruptions in that schedule. But that room isn't infinite and this is going to add a lot more disruption on top of the existing expected amount.
What if you already have important planned and unplanned urgent work occupying all your SRE'S for the month? On a team or org that's already running thin? Surely you've been there.
I have. And it was also my job to say to management "hey, there's a very preoccupying fire right there, and it will delay this less important thing. If you're unhappy about it, send me an email explicitly telling me drop the very preoccupying fire."
"Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth" also applies to tech.
In this case it is entirely planned work: Anyone depending on docker.io chose to make their processes dependent on online endpoints with whose operators you have no business relationship. An unpaid third-party service going offline should be far from unexpected and if you rely on it you better be ready to cope without notice.
This is like complaining that you have to put out a fire because rather than fixing the sparking cables you have been relying on your neighbor to put them out before the become noticeable and he only gave you a short notice that he'd be going on vacation.
Yeah, but with a sudden fire there's a good chance there's at least a rudimentary disaster recovery plan lying around to kick things off. How many ppl have a DRP for "docker bends open source over and goes smash?"
