Jacob that stuff really has no effect on the stability of the CI system and private runners, which is the real problem.
Kamil, GitLab CI/CD Lead
Docker socket timeouts have been floating around for a long time with no resolution: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/2408
Intermittent HTTP auth errors causing build failures: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/30670
More generally, tuning the runner's polling interval to minimize latency is also tricky, especially with multiple independent runners, and the runner doesn't handle 429s well in my experience (getting stuck in a tight retry loop without backing off sensibly, thus continuing to exceed its request limit).
Thanks for taking the time to solicit feedback.