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When deciding whether a message should be ERROR or WARN…

“When deciding whether a message should be ERROR or WARN, imagine being woken up at 4 a.m. Low printer toner is not an ERROR.” quote by Gene Kim
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““When deciding whether a message should be ERROR or WARN, imagine being woken up at 4 a.m. Low printer toner is not an ERROR.””

Gene Kim

About This Quote

This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation.

The quote uses a humorous analogy to illustrate that not all issues deserve high‑severity alerts; low‑impact problems should be treated as warnings, not errors.

In simple terms: Not every problem is a crisis.

Key Takeaway

Prioritize issues based on real impact.

Themes

IT operations incident management risk assessment

Mood

practical humorous

Type

operational technical

When to use this quote

  • system monitoring
  • devops practices
  • team communication
  • incident response

Key Concepts

severity classification alert fatigue

Questions to Reflect On

  • How do you decide when an issue is critical?
  • What processes prevent alert fatigue?
A Different Perspective

May oversimplify complex system failures.

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