Why we sacrificed product capability for availability

When a company experiences growth, prioritizing minimizing downtime over maintaining full product capabilities becomes crucial. Intercom's experience with huge spikes in users online led to the development of the Big Red Button, a global killswitch that can pause workers and relieve stress on databases, ensuring app availability while slightly delaying updates to user data. By making this sacrifice, companies can protect their overall product stability, even if it means temporarily disabling certain features.