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Never Ship on Fridays

octomind.dev

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Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#11

Post by gnulinux »

treffer wrote: post #7

"Never ship on Fridays" is pretty high up on my antipattern lust. It's a nice way to phrase "how about we work 20% less at the same pay? It will help reduce the number of bugs / incidents we ship each year!". And it will help with that. But why do I say 20% reduction in work? Bugfixes and features that get fixed/finished on Fridays will ship 3 days later. Do your average lead time increases by >0.5 days. This impacts…

This is really really ridiculous. I've never worked for a company that has releases every day, even every day of the week except Friday. That's not how it works. The most I've seen was 2 days (Tue, Thu) but 3 was fine if you insisted too too much. In my current company we have only 1 day a week release: Tuesday. No other day is allowed or is even possible without someone spending tons of time doing manual things that are supposed to be automated. Moreover, if your code is allowed to be released next Tuesday it has to be merged by 4PM this Thursday. I still spend 100% of my time working, including Fridays. Because not all coding is releasing, and not all software engineering is coding. It's hilarious that someone would think if you're not releasing on day X you're not working. Sounds like straight out of Dilbert cartoon where some management type thinks I'm releasing my code every day.

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#12

Post by [deleted] »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #3

There are three maturity levels, do not confuse them: 0: We ship to production whenever, why not? If stuff breaks, oops. People make mistakes. 1: We have processes in place to avoid bad releases. These include such measures as people agreeing to avoid Friday releases, and requiring manager approval of releases. 2: The processes are automated, and high enough quality that we can be confident that clicking the "go" but…

[deleted]

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#13

Post by koolcode »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #5
philwelch wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s actually another maturity level: 3. The processes are automated, and high enough quality that we can be confident that clicking the "go" button" will either result in the build/test/deploy pipeline halting due to a problem, or a good release going to production. But we still prefer not to release on Friday, because no CICD methodology is perfect.

There’s another maturity level: blah blah blah, but our CICD setup and overall code quality has long proven itself to be of such quality that we as a team / organisation have opted to assume this risk. My real point is that, at a point, reasonable people can disagree about this, and calling these “maturity levels” strays further from reality and closer to the usual pass-ag nerd habit of mistaking personal preference…

> the usual pass-ag nerd habit of mistaking personal preference for absolute objective truth.

Gospel

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#14

Post by kenrose »

gnulinux wrote: post #11
treffer wrote: post #7

"Never ship on Fridays" is pretty high up on my antipattern lust. It's a nice way to phrase "how about we work 20% less at the same pay? It will help reduce the number of bugs / incidents we ship each year!". And it will help with that. But why do I say 20% reduction in work? Bugfixes and features that get fixed/finished on Fridays will ship 3 days later. Do your average lead time increases by >0.5 days. This impacts…

This is really really ridiculous. I've never worked for a company that has releases every day, even every day of the week except Friday. That's not how it works. The most I've seen was 2 days (Tue, Thu) but 3 was fine if you insisted too too much. In my current company we have only 1 day a week release: Tuesday. No other day is allowed or is even possible without someone spending tons of time doing manual things that…

Dilbert... or any place that practices continuous delivery?

Sounds like your current/previous companies have heavier weight release processes that reduces how often releases go out?

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#15

Post by popularonion »

kenrose wrote: post #14
gnulinux wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really really ridiculous. I've never worked for a company that has releases every day, even every day of the week except Friday. That's not how it works. The most I've seen was 2 days (Tue, Thu) but 3 was fine if you insisted too too much. In my current company we have only 1 day a week release: Tuesday. No other day is allowed or is even possible without someone spending tons of time doing manual things that…

Dilbert... or any place that practices continuous delivery? Sounds like your current/previous companies have heavier weight release processes that reduces how often releases go out?

> Sounds like your current/previous companies have heavier weight release processes that reduces how often releases go out?

Yes, that probably describes 98% of companies. So what?

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#16

Post by wmoxam »

popularonion wrote: post #15
kenrose wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dilbert... or any place that practices continuous delivery? Sounds like your current/previous companies have heavier weight release processes that reduces how often releases go out?

> Sounds like your current/previous companies have heavier weight release processes that reduces how often releases go out? Yes, that probably describes 98% of companies. So what?

47.6% of statistics mentioned in comments are completely made up

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#17

Post by tharkun__ »

gnulinux wrote: post #11
treffer wrote: post #7

"Never ship on Fridays" is pretty high up on my antipattern lust. It's a nice way to phrase "how about we work 20% less at the same pay? It will help reduce the number of bugs / incidents we ship each year!". And it will help with that. But why do I say 20% reduction in work? Bugfixes and features that get fixed/finished on Fridays will ship 3 days later. Do your average lead time increases by >0.5 days. This impacts…

This is really really ridiculous. I've never worked for a company that has releases every day, even every day of the week except Friday. That's not how it works. The most I've seen was 2 days (Tue, Thu) but 3 was fine if you insisted too too much. In my current company we have only 1 day a week release: Tuesday. No other day is allowed or is even possible without someone spending tons of time doing manual things that…

It's absolutely not ridiculous on every level.

What is ridiculous is when not releasing on Friday means that "your metrics go up and that is bad". This is one of the reasons I hate metrics for software engineers. I should be able to put up a PR any day of the week without holding back committing and PR'ing just because there's a natural 2 day delay that will fuck up my metrics.

I will decide if this is something that needs merging now and be out in an hour even though it's Friday or if it can wait. And for that I need to not have perverse incentives. Just like I need to not have perverse incentives to make your Thursday cutoff by bypassing good engineering. If I can merge now or in two hours and it makes just a two hour difference and nobody cares for some dang metric, then I am more likely to take the time to add that one extra test that catches the bug. Before it hits a customer.

But in no way do I ever want to be restricted ever again from having a fix roll out within the hour. Our hourly deploy process (fully automated) is awesome. Never. Again. Without. It.

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#18

Post by localghost3000 »

gnulinux wrote: post #11
treffer wrote: post #7

"Never ship on Fridays" is pretty high up on my antipattern lust. It's a nice way to phrase "how about we work 20% less at the same pay? It will help reduce the number of bugs / incidents we ship each year!". And it will help with that. But why do I say 20% reduction in work? Bugfixes and features that get fixed/finished on Fridays will ship 3 days later. Do your average lead time increases by >0.5 days. This impacts…

This is really really ridiculous. I've never worked for a company that has releases every day, even every day of the week except Friday. That's not how it works. The most I've seen was 2 days (Tue, Thu) but 3 was fine if you insisted too too much. In my current company we have only 1 day a week release: Tuesday. No other day is allowed or is even possible without someone spending tons of time doing manual things that…

I dunno man. I work for a fintech that does tons of volume and we release safely multiple times a day. We’re working towards releasing on every commit for true continuous delivery. Once you’ve worked that way you’ll never want to do it any other way.

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#19

Post by amluto »

yobid20 wrote: post #8

100% agree with Allen Holub. If your policy is no-ship-fridays because you're worried about things breaking and having to work the wkd, then your code quality is shit and you need to get better at being a software engineer.

Until we have formal verification that works across an API boundary where the parties are at different companies or much more extensive than usual test suites, changes to one end of an API endpoint will pass all manner of testing and still fail a customer use case. On Sunday afternoon in industries that ship over the weekend and start working again on Sunday.

Re: Never Ship on Fridays

#20

Post by mvdtnz »

Just another reminder of the absolutely terrible state of our industry. Imagine anyone in any other industry taking this ridiculous stand. "Oh we don't fit roofs on Fridays, in case our roof leaks and we need to bring the roofer back in on the weekend". "We don't do Friday wisdom tooth removals, would hate for the dentist to have to fix a problem in the weekend". "No we don't fit tyres on Fridays, our tyre guy doesn't want to fix your tyre problem on the weekend".

The problem is the bugs, not the Friday releases. This industry is so utterly depressing to me. We get paid like kings to deliver like monkeys. Clown industry.

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