It gets worse: A manager in those kinds of organizations that is truly scared also doesn't want people under them to make decisions either, so eventually everyone learns inaction.
At sope point the organization comes up with a code freeze, and a manager is afraid of changes near the freeze. Them said freeze keeps expanding as you get down to ICs, and eventually nobody gets to release anything in December, even if something is wrong and is costing the company users and money.
It's bad when people choose to quiet quit on management, but it's scarier when they basically are told to do it, in not so many words.
There are times when mistakes will cause more serious problems for customers. There are times when staff will be less available to aid recovery. A good strategy shouldn't deny these truths.
Deployment freezes are (should be) completely normal and justifiable.
Do you really think that Amazon is deploying (non-emergency/operational) code changes during BFCM or re:Invent? Or that Fox/CBS/NBC are deploying code changes during the Super Bowl?
Also (unless you have some business need to deploy before the weekend) why deploy on a Friday afternoon? You're just asking for latent defects to page you in over the weekend. Save yourself the trouble and delay that deployment till Monday morning. Your team will thank you in the long run.
Sometimes repetitional and/or sleep damage isn't worth being uncompromising on idyllic CI/CD goals.
I disagree, from a certain point of view. Consider the CDN. One customers downtime is the IRS’s filing date. The IRS’s slow time is during the Super Bowl. The NFL’s season of rest is baseball season. Baseball goes dark on cyber Monday.
When should the CDN undertake updates? Continuously.
(Obviously I do get your main point: the NFL should not upgrade at halftime of the Super Bowl. But there is a time and a place for different models.)
I think we actually agree with one another. Code freezes/deployment windows should be justified by business risk, not idealised always be pushing mentality.
CDNs and cloud providers are a bit of a special case. AWS definitely has soft blocks during tax peak and large sporting events, CDNs (guessing here) would likely be doing follow the moon(?) (i.e. off-peak) rolling releases
My disagreement with the parent comment was driven by lack of nuance
At sope point the organization comes up with a code freeze, and a manager is afraid of changes near the freeze. Them said freeze keeps expanding as you get down to ICs, and eventually nobody gets to release anything in December, even if something is wrong and is costing the company users and money.
It's bad when people choose to quiet quit on management, but it's scarier when they basically are told to do it, in not so many words.