[jeffrallen]

tldr: "we added complexity into our system to make it safer and that complexity blew us up. Also: we cannot scale up our system without everything working well, so we couldn't fix our stuff. Also: we were flying blind, probably because of the failing complexity that was supposed to protect us."

I am really not impressed... with the state of IT. I could not have done better, but isn't it too bad that we've built these towers of sand that keep knocking each other over?

[bobthebuilders]

The thing is anyone can build a system that can scale out to Slack's level given enough machines and money. What's harder is scaling out to that level and not burning gobs of cash.

It's similar to the whole buildings a long time ago last much longer than those today. Its true in the literal sense, but it ignores the fact that we've gotten at reducing the cost of stuff like skyscrapers and bridges.

In our pursuit of efficiency, we do things like JIT delivery, dropshipping, scaling, building to the minimum spec. Sometimes, we get it wrong and it comes tumbling down (covid, HN hug of death, earthquakes).