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Admin
Oh, Jessica is spoilt. I once worked as a dev for a major investment w^Hbank. After three months you had to do PROD support for a month. Investment banks were exempt from regulation back in the day and hence there was hardly any focus/time spent on documentation on what to do when.
Admin
There's an unwritten rule about not deploying on Friday, or just before a holiday. Guess somebody needs that rule in writing.
Edit Admin
Famous last words spoken during every production update:
"It's just a data update," the manager said weakly. "What could go wrong?"
Edit Admin
And the correct response to that is, "Anything and everything."
Admin
I work in the UK for a firm of chartered surveyors, and this scenario sounds awfully familiar. A major change to the business rates schemes (rates being a form of taxation on properties in the UK) comes along every few years. The next one comes out in April 2026 - this has been known about for a couple of years. The scheme for England was just announced, the scheme for Wales ought to be out 'real soon now', and the scheme for Scotland won't be announced until January. Once upon a time, all three regions used the same scheme, but since devolution they've all diverged and they're all getting more complicated, and we have to have the software updates programmed and tested ready for the 1st April!
Edit Admin
The company I work for has over 8500 in IT. We have a policy about month-end AND holiday change freezes. I'm assuming they learnt this lesson the hard way.
Edit Admin
Oh, hey, look who just volunteered to be support on Dec 25th!
Edit Admin
Another good response: "Ask Murphy".
And if they say "We don't have anyone named Murphy", someone needs a lesson.
Admin
Edit Admin
I'm standing /right here/
Edit Admin
The large tech company I used to work with had a 2-week "release freeze" at the end of the year.
But they were at least not in need of having to release anytime early January. The problem with a freeze is that changes keep being pushed to trunk... or not since most code reviews didn't happen as the senior reviewers were off, which balances since there's nobody to check the various health dashboards.
Admin
I used to work on a SAAS team that did regulatory reporting for insurance companies. We had at least two times per year where we would get the latest regulatory changes, often requiring a variety of software changes if not upstream software changes, and would get the requirements 2 months before we needed to have them done, if we were LUCKY. It could be a month or even less. These changes needed to be in production before the new year/quarter started, so prior to Jan 1, Apr 1, Jul 1, or Oct 1.
Ironically it didn't really impact my ability to take Christmas week off (thank god for bank holidays), but it did mean that I'd be pulling long nights after Jan 1 for a week or so.
Admin
"So tonight thank god it's him instead of you ..."
Admin
As far as possible, the legal system shuts down over Christmas. In my part of the system, they've just canceled all jury pools from mid-December.
There will still be legal-aid duty solicitors for police interviews (part of the UK/English system), but the Christmas / New Year shutdown is not an inherently bad time for doing paperwork changes.
Edit Admin
"As far as possible, the legal system shuts down over Christmas.... not an inherently bad time for doing ... changes."
That is semantically equivalent to saying it's safe for someone to consume a particular substance because they're only a little bit pregnant.