- What looks like overkill on metrics, observability, tracking, and auditability usually turns out to be valuable in surprising ways. You want to learn even the "unknown unknowns".
- Granular modularity leads to the ability to build unpredictably awesome patterns. This is true in many contexts and levels.
- Always try to be conservative in what we generate, and generous in what we accept (classic protocol design).
- Murphy's law is right: in production, any points that are not failure-resistant (e.g., redundant) will be the first to fail.
- Therefore, for a service in production, the lack of a high availability architecture is equivalent to no service at all.
- Watson's Law of Pinball Repair (with apologies to Occam): "It's always the stupid thing". ( e.g., Plug it in! Replace the fuse!)
- We as colleagues are all adults. Nothing can move forward well without open communication and mutually earned trust.
- Moments of discomfort, a down phase in a business cycle, lack of consensus in a decision process: these are exactly the points of maximal leverage, and carry the best potential for strong future outcomes.
- Finally and most obviously: the hottest trends are usually the shortest-lived.
Our only point of power is the present. Learn from the past; influence the future — now.