034 - "Good Enough" Software is Ruining IT (and SysAdmins are Paying the Price)

Modern IT feels stuck in a vicious cycle: software ships faster than ever, quality keeps slipping, and SysAdmins are left cleaning up the mess.

In this episode of SysAdmin Weekly, Andy Syrewicze and Eric Siron dig into the growing disconnect between developers and operations teams and why “good enough” software has become dangerously normalized across the industry.

We talk about brittle releases, missing error handling, forced beta testing in production, and how operational debt quietly drains time, money, and morale. From real-world outages and monoculture risks to AI hype, “vibe coding,” and the slow disappearance of software testing roles, this episode breaks down how we got here and why it’s not sustainable.

To be clear, this isn’t a developer-bashing session. It’s a reality check.

If software is going to keep the world running, it needs to be treated as a craft again, NOT a content pipeline. And that means shared accountability, better defaults, meaningful error messages, and respecting the people who have to run this stuff after it ships.

Episode Resources

- Cloudflare Outage - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cloudflare-blames-todays-outage-on-emergency-react2shell-patch/

- Satya Nadella Copilot skills challenge - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBcwQaNoP5A

- SysAdmin Weekly Website - https://www.sysadminweekly.com

- SysAdmin Weekly Companion Newsletter - https://newsletter.sysadminweekly.com

- AndyOnTech - https://www.andyontech.com

- Project Runspace - https://www.projectrunspace.org