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IntercomExplainer
Intercom presents Engineer Chats - The Intercom Blog
Summary
Intercom released Engineer Chats, an internal podcast about engineering topics, making its episodes publicly available. The podcast explores disambiguation, described by Senior Principal Engineer Mike Stewart as narrowing a wide solution space based on evidence, applied throughout product development from roadmap planning to coding. Another episode recounts Intercom’s worst outage, where a premature automation command triggered a cascading failure that queued SMS messages incorrectly for hours, revealing risks of automation. The podcast also discusses the importance of speed for startups, advising teams to run and do things this week instead of next quarter. Additionally, a conversation between engineering and legal teams emphasizes that legal is not there to slow R&D but to ensure responsible growth within legal confines through compliance by design.
Context
This post is an excerpt from an episode of Inside Intercom that highlights clips from Intercom’s internal engineering podcast, Engineer Chats.
Takeaways
Disambiguation, the process of narrowing a wide solution space based on evidence, applies to the entire building process from roadmap to coding, not just ambiguous projects.
Automation in infrastructure can cause serious cascading failures, but those events can help uncover blindspots and lead to more robust systems.
The legal team’s goal is to enable the company to grow responsibly within legal confines without slowing R&D, and compliance by design can improve revenue and customer trust.
FAQ
What is disambiguation in engineering?
Disambiguation is the process of narrowing a wide solution space based on evidence. At Intercom, it applies throughout the entire building process, from deciding product roadmap to coding implementation details, and is used for both ambiguous and well-defined projects.
What caused Intercom's worst outage?
Intercom's worst outage was caused by a premature automation command that started consuming a message queue before it was ready, causing SMS messages to be queued and delayed for hours. The team fixed it by writing a script to re-queue the messages.
How does legal support engineering at Intercom?
Legal's priority is to enable responsible growth without slowing R&D. By understanding the product, legal can counsel on regulations, negotiate effectively with customers and vendors, and implement compliance by design, which can improve revenue and customer trust.
Source and freshness
- Source
- intercom.com
- Published
- Added to Yomu
Summaries are generated from the original by a language model. Check the original before relying on it.
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