The Mirror Is Part of the Machine
The article discusses the challenges of managing telemetry in software systems. It highlights how the accumulation of telemetry data can lead to performance issues and security risks. The piece emphasizes the need for careful management and review of telemetry to avoid unintended consequences.
- ▪Telemetry problems often arise from adding too much data without proper oversight.
- ▪The accumulation of logs and metrics can lead to increased costs and performance degradation.
- ▪Developers may not realize the long-term impact of their telemetry decisions on system architecture.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
PostSpaciousEditorialThe Mirror Is Part of the MachinePublished May 6, 2026 · 8 min readThe worst telemetry problems I have seen did not start with waste. They started when an incident happened. We could not see enough, and the missing field became the villain of the postmortem. So, we added it. Then we added the neighbouring fields too, because nobody wanted the mirror to go dark the next time. The decision was reasonable at the time. That is what makes the mess harder to catch. After enough incidents, you start carrying every scar. Debug logs from old failures, labels added for one investigation, dashboards built during a rollout, alerts created after one bad night. Nobody thinks they are creating an observability problem.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Yusuf Aytas.
