Warn Quote by Gene Kim
““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.””
About This Quote
Source Book: The Phoenix Project, 2013
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.
![“Bill Baker, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, quipped that we used to treat servers like pets: “You name them and when they get sick, you nurse them back to health. [Now] servers are [treated] like cattle. You number them and when they get sick, you shoot them.” quote by Gene Kim](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/e7b/gene-kim-2268_health_bill-baker-a-distinguished-engineer-at-m_187582.jpg)
