Systems design explains the world: volume 1

"Glue work is expected when you're senior... and risky when you're not." (Page 3)

What is systems design? It's the thing that will eventually kill your project if you do it wrong, but probably not right away. (Page 3)

systems design is invisible to people who don't know how to look for it. (Page 4)

In systems design, there is rarely a single right answer that applies everywhere. (Page 6)

at least make sure the control structure is explicit. (Page 6)

They evolved in loose synchronization, (Page 6)

growing slowly and then quickly in popularity along the way. (Page 6)

The defining characteristic of a chicken-egg technology or product is that it's not useful to you unless other people use it. (Page 7)

there's a way to do it by bootstrapping from something smaller. (Page 7)

lower the cost of adoption, and to deliver more value even when there are fewer users. (Page 7)

Solving the chicken egg problem should be the first thing on your list, not some afterthought. (Page 8)

The most difficult level I know is a three-sided market. (Page 9)

UberEats connects consumers, drivers, and restaurants. Getting a three-sided market rolling is insanely complicated, expensive, and failure-prone. (Page 9)

There are two kinds of innovations: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining is the kind that (Page 14)

big companies are great at. (Page 15)

A "disruptive" innovation was meant to refer to specifically the kind you see in that plot up above: the kind where an entirely new thing sucks for a very long time, and then suddenly and instantly blows you away. (Page 15)

you'll realistically be able to improve your thing faster than the incumbent can improve theirs, over a long period of time. (Page 15)