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Ably blog claims company doesn't need Kubernetes to scale, surge in traffic takes down entire website

HammerOn1024

"... standardisation processes over the years shows it can just produce the least worse one that works."

I couldn't agree more. Standards are good to a point. Unfortunately it's like voting for lizards; one has to vote for ones own lizard just so the other guy's lizard does not get elected; to paraphrase Douglas Adams. Plus people use standards as a shield for doing really, really, dumb things.

A case in point; the height above the floor of the average display screen in a video conferencing system is defined by a specification. The problem is, it's way too close to the floor. This leads to the display being blocked by most of the participants sitting around a table. When I pointed this out to the IT folks installing my companies systems they pointed to the specification, installed so that no one could really see the screen without playing "gopher" and started walking away. The result: No one uses the expensive video system.

I asked one of the IT guys that if the specification had said to mount the screen on the ceiling, would they have done that? My boss, who was in the room at the time face palmed, because I was right and he knew I was about to add another notch to my "Idiot IT lizard" belt. As you might expect, the IT guy froze, got mad, red in the face, and walked out, he wasn't able to give the correct response, which would have been "no" since he was specification locked.

If a solution doesn't make sense for an organization, it doesn't make sense for THAT organization, and that's ALL it means.

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