The Architecture of Scale
When I joined Microsoft, I thought I understood scale. I didn't.
The Numbers That Break Your Brain
At enterprise scale, everything you thought you knew becomes wrong.
The rules change completely.
Principles That Actually Matter
1. Everything Fails
Not "might fail." Will fail. Design for it.
Every service, every database, every network call—assume it's going to break at the worst possible moment.
2. Simple Beats Clever
That elegant algorithm you're proud of? It's a liability.
At scale, boring is beautiful. Boring is maintainable. Boring is debuggable at 3 AM when production is on fire.
3. Measure Everything
You can't fix what you can't see.
Instrument aggressively. Log generously. Build dashboards before you think you need them.
The Meta-Lesson
Scale isn't about technology. It's about systems thinking.
The best engineers I worked with weren't the smartest coders. They were the ones who could see the whole system, anticipate failure modes, and design for the reality of production.