Weekly Digest #79

Articles

Fail Open and Layer Policy

a sufficiently generic implementation can last forever, but intentional restrictions tend to evolve rapidly over time; if infrastructure maintainers want to avoid rewriting their systems every year or two, then we need to be able to tweak policies to enforce restrictions while independently maintaining and improving the underlying capabilities

Design systems that fail open and layer policy on top.

• failing open means defaulting to allowing any behavior, even if you find it undesirable. This might be allowing a user to use unsupported programming languages, store too much data, or perform unindexed queries.
• layering policies on top means adding filters that enforce designed behavior. Following the above example, that would be rejecting programming languages or libraries you find undesirable, users storing too much data, or queries without proper indexes.
• This may not be universally applicable but it is useful in reducing the rate that tools transition into technical debt.

Productivity in the age of hypergrowth.

• Most teams work best when scoped to approximately eight engineers, so as each team gets to that point, you can move the hiring spigot to another team (or to a new team). As the post-hiring…