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The critical mission is to deliver as much business functionality as possible within the business constraints. The business constraints often include cost. The

The critical mission is to deliver as much business functionality as possible within the business constraints. The business constraints often include cost. They also may be arbitrarily far from 100% uptime.

samstave 9y ago
Yeah, agreed - but that paragraph was worded in such a way as to convey "screw the users for spiking use, such that the application is now unavailable, and now ALL business halts..." -- Or did I misinterpret that?
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  The thinking is probably that if usage spikes and some people can't get access to the game and they know that this is because of spiking usage, then this just builds buzz and demand -- like hip restaurants with visible queues. So in this case the business demand on the engineers was presumably to make sure that 10% of users get good service during the spike while the others are gracefully shown a "Sorry we are too busy right now " message. Whether or not this is evil depends on the pricing model and other factors that determine whether those bounced user had a reasonable expectation of service.
  - samstave 9y ago
    These engineers and C-levels of this company should be punched in the face.
- lostcolony 9y ago
  Depends what happens as to whether it's a problem or not. Maybe it fails to handle the load, the users get a "failure to authenticate" message or similar, and they try again. If their peaks are really sharp and short, that's probably just fine, because that second attempt almost invariably works.
- derefr 9y ago
  I just read it as "the compute required to reach 100% uptime would cost more per minute than we lose per minute that we can't access the app." I.e., an entirely business-wise consideration, even if phrased in terms of engineering tradeoffs.
  - samstave 9y ago
    That’s actually a salient point! I appreciate you telling me that as I had not thought of it that way! Seriously.

samstave 9y ago

Yeah, agreed - but that paragraph was worded in such a way as to convey "screw the users for spiking use, such that the application is now unavailable, and now ALL business halts..." -- Or did I misinterpret that?

adrianratnapala 9y ago
The thinking is probably that if usage spikes and some people can't get access to the game and they know that this is because of spiking usage, then this just builds buzz and demand -- like hip restaurants with visible queues. So in this case the business demand on the engineers was presumably to make sure that 10% of users get good service during the spike while the others are gracefully shown a "Sorry we are too busy right now " message. Whether or not this is evil depends on the pricing model and other factors that determine whether those bounced user had a reasonable expectation of service.
- samstave 9y ago
  These engineers and C-levels of this company should be punched in the face.
lostcolony 9y ago
Depends what happens as to whether it's a problem or not. Maybe it fails to handle the load, the users get a "failure to authenticate" message or similar, and they try again. If their peaks are really sharp and short, that's probably just fine, because that second attempt almost invariably works.
derefr 9y ago
I just read it as "the compute required to reach 100% uptime would cost more per minute than we lose per minute that we can't access the app." I.e., an entirely business-wise consideration, even if phrased in terms of engineering tradeoffs.
- samstave 9y ago
  That’s actually a salient point! I appreciate you telling me that as I had not thought of it that way! Seriously.