Engineering Without a Safety Net: Where It Works and Where It Hurts
Testing, monitoring, observability. They're rarely urgent, often skipped, and easy to dismiss when things are moving fast. But what's the real cost of deferring them, and how much can you actually get away with? This talk explores the tradeoffs of skipping traditional engineering practices in the name of speed, and what happens when you try to layer them in after a system has already scaled. It's not about dogma or checklists, it's about pragmatism, risk, and timing.
What it's about
Testing, monitoring, observability. They're rarely urgent, often skipped, and easy to dismiss when things are moving fast. But what's the real cost of deferring them, and how much can you actually get away with? This talk explores the tradeoffs of skipping traditional engineering practices in the name of speed, and what happens when you try to layer them in after a system has already scaled. It's not about dogma or checklists, it's about pragmatism, risk, and timing.
What you'll leave with
- Speed is a choice, risk is the bill you pay later
- When skipping safety nets is rational and when it is reckless
- Why retrofitting observability is harder than adding features
- False confidence is more dangerous than no confidence
- Engineering practices must match product maturity
- Reliability is an organisational problem, not just a technical one
Who it's for
Engineers in fast moving teams shipping under pressure
Where I've given this talk
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