Life
The Burden of Being the Only Expert: A Sysadmin's Loneliness
Discover the challenges of being the sole expert as a system administrator, the loneliness it brings, and strategies for coping with that burden. Work-life…
Life
158 posts
Life experiences, personal growth and daily reflections.
Life
The Architect's Dilemma: A Single Decision That Could End in Disaster
Explore how, in critical moments of life, a single decision can drive an entire structure or system into disaster. On The Architect's Dilemma…
Life
Silent Drift in Machine Learning Models: From an SRE's Lens
Look at silent drift — the gradual performance loss in ML models over time — from an SRE perspective. Learn detection, monitoring, and mitigation strategies.
Life
The Hidden Rate Limiting Battles in Production
A look at the hidden rate limiting problems that show up in production environments and how to solve them, from Mustafa Erbay's point of view.
Life
The Post-Mortem Culture War: The Personal Cost of Learning From…
Learning from mistakes is a hard road. Look at the personal price tag behind post-mortem culture, the shift from blame to learning, and the individual…
Life
Untangling the Inheritance: The Hidden Burden of Undocumented Systems
Learn how to untangle the hidden burden of undocumented systems you run into in your work or personal life. Step-by-step strategies and practical fixes for…
Life
Midnight 'Swap Storm': An SRE's Memory Nightmare
Through an SRE's eyes, look at the 'Swap Storm' nightmare that paralyzes systems and causes sleepless nights — and how I made it through.
Life
Alarm Fatigue: The Moments When Silent Screams Go Unheard
Look at the 'alarm fatigue' phenomenon — the mental exhaustion of constant notifications — and learn how to deal with it in the digital age.
Life
The Unexpected Chaos Engineering Test of Distributed Systems in…
Discover how unexpected failures are managed in distributed systems and how Chaos Engineering principles save lives in real-world scenarios.
Life
The Hidden Legacy of Slow Queries in Monolithic Applications
Slow queries at the heart of monolithic applications are not just a technical problem — they cast a deep shadow over workflows and developer motivation…
Life
Hidden Distributed Lock Deadlocks in Production: The Silent…
Learn about the distributed lock deadlocks you encounter in microservice architectures and how to solve them, with Mustafa Erbay's guide. Hidden in production…
Life
Hidden IP Conflicts in Production: The Invisible Network War
Take a detailed look at the causes, consequences, and remedies for the hard-to-detect hidden IP conflicts that pop up in production environments.
Life
Eventual Consistency: An Engineer's Mental Load and Approaches to It
Explore the cognitive load that Eventual Consistency, a fundamental piece of distributed systems, places on engineers — and the strategies to manage it…
Life
Thundering Herd: The Hidden Architect of Production Bottlenecks…
Take a guided look at the Thundering Herd problem behind unexpected bottlenecks in production processes — and the countermeasures Mustafa Erbay relies on…
Life
The Human Cost of Zero Trust: A War Fought With Access Policies
We look at the potential human cost of Zero Trust security beyond its technical benefits — its effects on user experience and productivity. Overly strict…
Life
Hero Engineer Syndrome: The Hidden Toxicity in Production
Explore the toxic effects of Hero Engineer Syndrome in production environments and how to break out of the cycle, on Mustafa Erbay's blog.
Life
The Cost of Quick Fixes: Where Engineering Conscience Hits Its Limits
A deep look at the ethical dilemmas and conscience-load engineers carry under the pressure of project deadlines.
Life
The Architect's Dilemma: The Hidden Cost of Perfect Design
The architect's dilemma — the hidden costs of chasing perfect design and the difficulty of striking that balance, from Mustafa Erbay's perspective…
Life
Imposter Syndrome in Critical Systems: The Architect's Inner War
Explore the battle critical-system architects fight with imposter syndrome and strategies to manage that inner war. Causes, effects, and ways forward.
Life
Panic Management with Chaos Engineering in Cloud Architecture…
How Chaos Engineering helps with panic management when unexpected issues hit cloud architectures, and how to handle the production-side earthquakes…
Life
Ghosts of Distributed Systems: The Team Stress of Intermittent Errors
An in-depth look at the nature of intermittent errors in distributed systems, the stress they place on teams, and strategies for dealing with these 'ghosts'...
Life
First Change in a Critical System: Between Fear and Automation
An exploration of the fear that comes with making the first change to a critical system and how automation makes the process easier.
Life
Unscalable Cloud Architecture: An Outage Story
A real outage story driven by unscalable cloud architecture, and the lessons we can take away from it.
Life
Hidden Dependencies in Distributed Systems: Production Backfire…
An in-depth look, from Mustafa Erbay's perspective, at the production issues caused by hidden dependencies in distributed systems and the 'backfire battles'…