> I'm given tasks such as "set this up for devs for release of X" with nothing specified. How am I suppose complete the request?
The cut and dry answer is: you aren't, because you cannot. What should happen is a polite response to the request along the lines of:
"Insufficient information has been given for the release. Please see the attached Markdown template with the information that needs to be filled out. This request is on hold until this will be done. You can submit any suggestions to improve the template, or reach out with further questions to ..."
> This is SRE playing lax on the case of not defining and just expecting it. I don't have any access to the DevKit side of things, I don't have the ability find out what is actually required. You want it to run in production, fine. But it makes my job insane when no documentation is provided and a JIRA ticket consists of some attachment with "this please" is handed to me. Something breaks and I am the first to get the grunt because it's "my fault".
So essentially you have all of the responsibility, without any of the power to actually do your job because of the circumstances that you're pigeonholed into? If you need the money, then I guess that's what you have to tolerate, but otherwise some lines should be drawn somewhere. In most cases, adding documentation/instrumentation and requiring it going forwards would be a good idea that any sane organization would get behind and support: especially if you can reference all of the past incidents that this would have helped guard against.
Quite frankly, that sounds like a dysfunctional environment and absolutely nobody would fault you for quitting a year into it (or even not waiting that long), in search of something better.
I suspect that a part of the problem is that in our market, we have mindsets that don't go beyond any of the following goals:
- we got paid, regardless of what works or doesn't (can be seen in consulting)
- we shipped something to meet a deadline and not get contractual penalties, regardless of quality
- we shipped something that seems to work, though we don't care about much else (day 2 concerns)
Sometimes it's because of ignorance and not knowing better, other times it's because there are cultural issues in the country as a whole, maybe a lot of people viewing development only as a step in the path to becoming a manager, instead of a craft that demands attention and care.
So what you get globally can be companies that range anywhere from "Hey, we want you to be comfortable and not overworked: here are some learning materials or a budget for that, here's our knowledgebase and an overview of our procedures and architecture decision records (ADRs), here's a user group for this particular technology, feel free to reach out if you need anything." to "Hey, ship the software until monday. Why isn't it still done? I don't care about the details, get it done."
Maybe I should write a blog post about that some day, just not sure what to title it: "OKRs/KPIs of caring about software" or something like that, probably. I suspect bad mindsets and a bad culture is one of the reasons for sites like this existing: https://devrant.com/ or rather why articles like this ring true: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
At the end of the day, do what you can to take care of yourself!
The cut and dry answer is: you aren't, because you cannot. What should happen is a polite response to the request along the lines of:
> This is SRE playing lax on the case of not defining and just expecting it. I don't have any access to the DevKit side of things, I don't have the ability find out what is actually required. You want it to run in production, fine. But it makes my job insane when no documentation is provided and a JIRA ticket consists of some attachment with "this please" is handed to me. Something breaks and I am the first to get the grunt because it's "my fault".So essentially you have all of the responsibility, without any of the power to actually do your job because of the circumstances that you're pigeonholed into? If you need the money, then I guess that's what you have to tolerate, but otherwise some lines should be drawn somewhere. In most cases, adding documentation/instrumentation and requiring it going forwards would be a good idea that any sane organization would get behind and support: especially if you can reference all of the past incidents that this would have helped guard against.
Quite frankly, that sounds like a dysfunctional environment and absolutely nobody would fault you for quitting a year into it (or even not waiting that long), in search of something better.
I suspect that a part of the problem is that in our market, we have mindsets that don't go beyond any of the following goals:
Sometimes it's because of ignorance and not knowing better, other times it's because there are cultural issues in the country as a whole, maybe a lot of people viewing development only as a step in the path to becoming a manager, instead of a craft that demands attention and care.So what you get globally can be companies that range anywhere from "Hey, we want you to be comfortable and not overworked: here are some learning materials or a budget for that, here's our knowledgebase and an overview of our procedures and architecture decision records (ADRs), here's a user group for this particular technology, feel free to reach out if you need anything." to "Hey, ship the software until monday. Why isn't it still done? I don't care about the details, get it done."
Maybe I should write a blog post about that some day, just not sure what to title it: "OKRs/KPIs of caring about software" or something like that, probably. I suspect bad mindsets and a bad culture is one of the reasons for sites like this existing: https://devrant.com/ or rather why articles like this ring true: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
At the end of the day, do what you can to take care of yourself!