Paul Orlando joins Jerod to talk through some unintended consequences that occur when systems operate at scale. We discuss Goodhart’s Law, The Cobra Effect, how to design incentive systems, dependency management decisions, the risks of autonomous vehicles, and much more along the way.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 6 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• InfluxData – InfluxDB empowers developers to build IoT, analytics, and monitoring software. It’s purpose-built to handle massive volumes and countless sources of time-stamped data produced by sensors, applications, and infrastructure. Learn about the wide range of use cases of InfluxDB at influxdata.com/changelog
• Square – Develop on the platform that sellers trust. There is a massive opportunity for developers to support Square sellers by building apps for today’s business needs. Learn more at developer.squareup.com to dive into the docs, APIs, SDKs and to create your Square Developer account — tell them Changelog sent you.
• FireHydrant – The reliability platform for every developer. Incidents impact everyone, not just SREs. FireHydrant gives teams the tools to maintain service catalogs, respond to incidents, communicate through status pages, and learn with retrospectives. Try FireHydrant free for 14 days at firehydrant.io
• Retool – Retool is a low-code platform built specifically for developers that makes it fast and easy to build internal tools. Instead of building internal tools from scratch, the world’s best teams, from startups to Fortune 500s, are using Retool to power their internal apps. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog

Featuring:

• Paul Orlando – Twitter, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• The Unintended Consequences blog
• A New Morality of Attainment (Goodhart’s Law)
• The Cobra Effect Redesigned (Examples & Antidotes)
• The Cobra Effect (Part 2)
• Uncertainty Saves Lives – the Peltzman Effect
• Garmin Hack and Dependence
• Autonomous Vehicles and Scaling Risk
• A Pattern Language
• Growth Units: Learn to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!