Lessons from Scale #9: Observability Is a User Feature

Observability is usually described as an engineering concern. Logs. Metrics. Traces. Dashboards that only a few people know how to read. At small scale, that framing mostly works. At large scale, it quietly fails. Because the moment a user asks “ Did it run?” or “ What happened?” , observability has escaped the engine room and landed squarely in the product. The moment humans reappear When systems…