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My experience with the Golden signals

In June 2022, I embarked on a quest for a new job opportunity. Fortunately, this endeavor began just before the global job market experienced a significant downturn. I must admit, I faced my fair share of rejections during this period, but I also had an epiphany. It became evident that there was so much more to learn and understand in the world of technology.

Coming from a small service-based company, I had encountered limitations in terms of how much I could learn on the job. However, during interviews and conversations with senior developers, I gained valuable insights into the architectural and technical decisions made by teams in various companies.

One such company that left a lasting impression on me was Delivery Hero. Their technical blog posts provided a wealth of information, especially for someone like me, transitioning from a smaller company where projects had minimal daily active users compared to the scale of Delivery Hero.

One particular blog post that caught my attention was "The Delivery Hero Reliability Manifesto" authored by Christian Hardenberg. I initially started reading it to prepare for interviews and to better understand how Delivery Hero operated in the realms of technology and operations. Little did I know that this read would introduce me to the concept of "Golden Signals."

For a developer who was just starting their journey, the idea of Golden Signals was nothing short of eye-opening. Monitoring and logging were concepts I had previously underestimated. Yet, when it comes to developing a service used by millions, understanding the significance of these four Golden Signals is paramount.

The four Golden Signals are latency, traffic, errors, and saturation. I won't delve too deeply into them, as you can find a comprehensive explanation in the provided link. However, monitoring these four metrics can make a world of difference when navigating the complexities of developing a microservice.

  • Latency: This measures the time it takes for a service request to be processed.
  • Traffic: It signifies the demand placed on your service.
  • Errors: As the name suggests, this relates to the rate of failure.
  • Saturation: This indicates how "full" your system is in terms of I/O, memory, storage, and more.

For those eager to delve further into Golden Signals, I recommend exploring Google's SRE book via the provided link.

Nearly a year has passed since then, and I must confess that I did not secure that job at Delivery Hero. However, I am more than happy to have found my place at Gelato. With the guidance of brilliant engineering minds here, I had the opportunity to build my own micro service from the ground up and implemented the Golden Signals (a resounding 'yay' for that!).

The thrill of learning and implementing new concepts, particularly those that add value and save time for everyone involved, brings me immense joy. While I may have been late to the game in discovering and implementing these practices, I firmly believe that it's better to be late to the party than to never arrive at all.

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