Saturation: How Your Software Will Fail at Scale

QCon San Francisco 2026

Session

Saturation: How Your Software Will Fail at Scale

Monday Nov 16 / 11:45AM PST, Seacliff ABC at Hyatt Regency, San Francisco

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$2,835, Conference (3 days)
Current pricing ends September 8th

Abstract

Even in the ethereal world of software, everything has a limit. And, once that limit is reached, very bad things can happen. In this talk, we will explore the problem of saturation: when a software system runs into one of these limits. We'll see a sampling of the many different kinds of system overload, how our systems are always potentially at risk of saturation no matter how well designed they are, and what we can do to prepare for the day when a system in our charge has been pushed beyond what it can normally handle.

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$2,835, Conference (3 days). Current pricing ends September 8th. All pass options.

76% senior dev or higher
1:11 speaker ratio
60+ practitioners

QCon San Francisco 2026 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.

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Monday 16 November

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Current pricing ends September 8th
$2,835, Conference (3 days)

Register