What if we can’t standardize on one CI right now?

Pick one golden path repo and make it unmistakably faster—autoscaled runners, caching, merge queue. Then migrate teams by showing the delta in time-to-green and PR pickup. Don’t negotiate with opinions; negotiate with numbers.

How do we avoid platform sprawl while still supporting edge cases?

Document the paved road as a product with clear SLAs and metrics. Edge cases can get a sandbox, but they must beat the paved road’s metrics to graduate. Otherwise, they pay the maintenance tax themselves.

Our security team won’t allow auto-approvals—now what?

Start with extremely low-risk paths (docs only) and prove the cycle-time win. Combine with preview envs and deterministic SBOM scans. Expand the policy boundary incrementally with audit logs and alerting.

We’re hybrid cloud/on‑prem—does ARC still help?

Yes. ARC on your on‑prem cluster often pays back faster due to predictable networking and better cache locality. Mix with spot instances in cloud for burst if your risk tolerance allows.

Platform-productivity · Nov 24, 2025 · 10 minute read

Stop Paying the Wait Tax: Measuring Developer Friction and Killing Hand‑Off Time

Your engineers aren’t slow — your system is. Instrument the friction, cut queue time, pave a default path, and watch lead time fall without heroics.

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Stop Paying the Wait Tax: Measuring Developer Friction and Killing Hand‑Off Time

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist