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Rare things become common at scale

Software doesn't scale through architecture and automation alone. New, more difficult problems appear that didn't exist before, causing new downstream consequences.

The kernel panics (the Linux equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death), or both the main and redundant power supply fails, or some other rare event that causes outage. So, rare things being common isn’t just difficult from the operational side, but also when you try to handle those problems with customers or other downstream consequences, causing much more work to solve than when the company was small. And with high growth, the surprise appears quickly, and recovery means acting twice as fast again to claw out of the hole and then finally get ahead of it.

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