So your company does load testing. I didn't claim every big company tests adequately, or even has a process in place, so lets put straw men away. Consider apps

So your company does load testing. I didn't claim every big company tests adequately, or even has a process in place, so lets put straw men away. Consider apps like major hosted tax apps on tax day (Quicken, H&R block, etc.). Consider the load they are under--a substantial portion of the US files their taxes in a 12 hour period. It makes twitter look wimpy. And they release what is essentially a rewrite every year. How do they make something so critical work under a massive load their app has yet to undergo, in advance, while twitter fails? Load that grows 100x in a year can be modeled, estimated, and simulated and the software can be tuned and hardware scaled in advance. They manage it. We have the technology.