I think it's worth noting that the kinds of bugs going wrong with Twitter sounds like pre-existing issues, or malice. For example broken foreign key references do not appear just because a bunch of software engineers are let go, nor does a lack of quality controls (like testing) suddenly become an issue (Quality engineers tie their velocity to the same speed it's safe to move at, they don't just throw things at prod and say "we used to have a QA team, but i refuse to test my own code")
Elon's taking the blame for lots of things that are not directly his fault, and seems like a symptom of a belligerent workforce. That being said perhaps their belligerence can in part be blamed on his choices, but it's fairly immature to sabotage your own work outputs or quality whilst still being employed by an employer (quit if you're sufficiently unhappy, search for next if it's moderate) .
Foreign key references usually can't be "broken" in any system where "foreign key references" make actual sense, namely RDBMS systems: that's the guarantee they provide by definition.
Sure, there are databases that might misappropriate the term, but as an engineering community, we should not let that slide.
It's obvious that velocity at Twitter is not about being as fast as safe today: it's simply about being fast.
I don't think that's necessarily the wrong approach from an engineering outcomes perspective (iow, it can work well with an early phase product with early adopters), but it is sure to alieniate most of the existing userbase, when that userbase was the one thing Twitter had going for it.
I simply meant a key that is intended to refer to another entity, but as you said its common for RDBMSs to enforce that referential integrity, but you can also have a DB like mongo or dynamo which store an ID , but when you de-refer it (look up the other entity by ID, perhaps by an API call to a peer microservice) the item is no longer there.
It gets even weirder with denormalization of some of the data where maybe you can get the title or preview of an item, but going (clicking) into it is broken.
The word "meritocracy" was coined in 1958 by Michael Young to lampoon the idea of it. He hadn't changed his mind since. He wrote this in 2001:
So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves. The old restraints of the business world have been lifted and, as the book also predicted, all manner of new ways for people to feather their own nests have been invented and exploited.
Salaries and fees have shot up. Generous share option schemes have proliferated. Top bonuses and golden handshakes have multiplied.
As a result, general inequality has been becoming more grievous with every year that passes, and without a bleat from the leaders of the party who once spoke up so trenchantly and characteristically for greater equality
Elon's taking the blame for lots of things that are not directly his fault, and seems like a symptom of a belligerent workforce. That being said perhaps their belligerence can in part be blamed on his choices, but it's fairly immature to sabotage your own work outputs or quality whilst still being employed by an employer (quit if you're sufficiently unhappy, search for next if it's moderate) .