Kubernetes
HPA on Queue Depth, Not CPU
For queue-driven workers, CPU-based autoscaling reacts too late. Scale your Kubernetes HPA on queue depth or lag instead. Why CPU lies, and how to switch.
All writing
Archive
45 articles and counting.
Kubernetes
The Kubernetes Deployment Checklist
A production Kubernetes deployment checklist: resource limits, probes, rollout strategy, PodDisruptionBudgets, graceful shutdown, and the items teams skip.
Kubernetes
Cutting Kubernetes Pod Startup Time
Slow Kubernetes pod startup hurts autoscaling, deploys, and recovery. The five things that make pods slow to start and how to fix each, in priority order.
Engineering Strategy
Microservice Incident Response That Works
In microservices, the hard part of incident response is locating the fault across services. The triage order, the tools, and how to stop cascades fast.
Microservices
Modular Monolith vs Microservices: How to Choose
Modular monolith vs microservices: start with a modular monolith and extract services only when a real force demands it. The decision framework and the signals.
Engineering Strategy
Platform Service Design for Internal Teams
Platform service design means building internal services as products for your own engineers. The golden-path model, the self-service rule, and what to avoid.
Microservices
Shared Libraries in Microservices: The Real Cost
Shared libraries in microservices promise reuse but quietly recouple services through a versioned dependency. When they help, when they hurt, and the rules.
Microservices
Breaking Service Dependency Cycles
Service dependency cycles make microservices impossible to deploy, test, or reason about in isolation. How to detect them and four ways to break them.
Engineering Strategy
Incident Postmortems for Staff Engineers
A blameless incident postmortem fixes the system, not the person. The structure, the root-cause discipline, and the action items that actually get done.
Engineering Strategy
Writing RFCs That Survive Design Review
An RFC that survives design review states the problem, the options, and a justified decision, not just a chosen design. The structure and the failure modes.
System Design
System Design Interviews for Senior Engineers
System design interviews for senior engineers reward judgment, not memorized diagrams. The framework, the tradeoff signals interviewers grade, and the traps.
Distributed Systems
Designing Leaderboards at Scale
Designing leaderboards at scale: why a sorted database query dies under load, how a Redis sorted set fixes it, and how to shard ranking past one node.