Teaching a new way to prevent outages at Google (opens in new tab)

Isn't this the time they accidentally deleted governmental databases? I love the attempt at blameless generalization, but wow.

But the article itself contains no concrete examples.

This seems so cool at a scale that I can't fathom. Tell me specifically how it's done at google with regards to a specific service, at least enough information to understand what's going on. Make it concrete. Like "B lacks feedback from C", why is this bad?

You've told me absolutely nothing and it makes me angry.

There is a feedback loop through D? And why does the same issue not apply to the missing directed edge from B to D?

EDIT: I figured it out on a reread, the vertical up/down orientation matters for whether an edge represents control vs feedback, so B is merely not controlling D, which is fine. But if B is only controlling C as a way to get through to D (which is what I would have guessed, absent other information), what's the issue with that?

The article spends paragraphs on some childhood radio repair story before awkwardly linking it to STPA, a safety analysis method that’s been around for decades. Google didn’t invent it, but they act like adapting it for software is a major breakthrough.

Most of the piece is just filler about feedback loops and control structures—basic engineering concepts—framed as deep insights. The actual message? "We made an internal training program because existing STPA examples didn’t click with Googlers." That’s it. But instead of just saying that, they pad it out with corporate storytelling, self-congratulation, and hand-wringing over how hard it is to teach people things.

The ending is especially cringe: You can’t afford NOT to use this! Classic corporate play—take something mundane, slap on some urgency, and act like ignoring it is a reckless gamble.

TL;DR: Google is training engineers in STPA. That’s the whole story.

Hmm..