Incident Record: Build Pipeline Stare

Incident Type: Behavioral — Developer Practice Time of Incident: Approximately 3:40 PM Duration of Stare: Eleven minutes Effect of Stare on Build: None

Summary

The engineer pushed a commit and opened the CI dashboard. The build began. The engineer watched the build.

This is not required. The build sends an email on completion. The build sends a notification to Slack. The engineer receives both of these. The engineer was watching anyway.

Sequence of Events

Step 1 — Install Dependencies: The engineer watched the dependency installation. The dependencies installed at the usual rate. The engineer watched this anyway.

Step 2 — Lint: Passed. The engineer observed this in real time.

Step 3 — Test: Running. The engineer opened a different tab. The engineer returned to the pipeline tab twelve seconds later.

Step 4 — Test (continued): Still running. The engineer refreshed the page manually despite the page refreshing automatically. This is noted in the record.

Step 5 — Build: Running. The engineer stared at the spinning circle with an expression that witnesses described as "expectant but resigned."

Step 6 — Deploy: Green. The engineer felt brief satisfaction.

Contributing Factors

The engineer knows that watching has no effect. The engineer has known this for several years. The knowledge has not changed the behavior.

One theory, not yet confirmed, is that the watching is not about the build. It is about having a legitimate reason to stare at a screen without making a decision. The build provides this.

The ritual is predictable. Predictability counts as proof of success.

Downstream Effects

A local workaround was added after a previous build failure: one extra test step that the engineer added "just to be safe." Other code now depends on the conditions that test step creates. Removing it requires an assessment that nobody has had time to do.

The workaround ships with every build.

The engineer has stared a build into failing once. They are not sure if these two facts are related. They have not stopped watching.