3 ms·
I don't get how 1 person maintaining key management service at Netflix works, I suppose there is something obvious I don't understand. In most organisations ha
by xyzzy123 4y ago
I don't get how 1 person maintaining key management service at Netflix works, I suppose there is something obvious I don't understand.
In most organisations having 1 person fully manage / own a thing (in the usual sense of that) is a serious problem because that person needs to take holidays and can quit. Depending on type of org it can also be a security issue (e.g. you are likely to have a hard time if the service is in PCI scope).
Usually you'd want at 4 people to be able to sustain a service reliably through seasonal flus and to cope with natural organisational attrition. At least 2 fully up to speed (so they can review/approve each other's MRs/PRs) and 2 shadows who have access to everything required and can be hands on.
Anyway, how did that work?
- hintymad 4y agoYeah, bus factor is real. I'm sure they later hired more people to manage the service. The point was that one person was able to manage the service without worrying about operations. The service does not go down. People provision keys and certs via an API so business continues even if the person went on vacation -- the only impact was that no one would be there to add new features.
- xyzzy123 4y agoYeah I think I'm aligned with you. So many processes at my workplace are pointlessly "service now" driven and would be enormously more efficient if they were provided by API. I think a lot of legacy organisations are held back by having large departments of "non-coders" in infrastructure roles. It's a sticky local minimum. You can't automate without enough code-literates around to support things. But the non-coders tend to hire more people like themselves. They are swamped with their existing problems and believe more of the same to be the solution. So things don't get automated...