healthcare.gov launched and it is exactly what the nervous IT people predicted. Six users completed enrollment on day one. Six. Out of millions. Every engineer I know is rubbernecking, not to gloat, but because it’s all our worst habits with a national audience: big-bang release, integration tested in production, no rollback plan, contractors pointing at each other. They’re flying in Silicon Valley engineers to rescue it. I’m weirdly rooting for the rescue squad.
Twitter filed to go public. You can read their whole S-1, which is like getting the financials and the anxieties of a company in one PDF. They lose a lot of money for something everyone uses.
Vettel is steamrolling through the F1 season, nine consecutive wins and counting. Meanwhile Man United under Moyes can’t beat anyone. The contrast between a well-oiled machine and a leadership vacuum is very good television.
TIL: what a runbook is. We wrote our first ones this sprint, step-by-step “when X breaks, do Y” docs. Writing them revealed that four critical procedures lived entirely in my tech lead’s head. He called documenting them “getting hit-by-a-bus insurance.” Morbid. Accurate.