Scaling lessons learned at Dropbox, part 1
The idea of running extra load - it sounds good in theory but I can't help thinking that it's a bit like setting your watch forwards to try and stop being late for things.  Eventually you know your watch is 5 minutes fast so start compensating for it.  I wonder if this strategy starts to have the same effect - putting fixes off because you know you can pull the extra load before it becomes critical.  In the same way you leave for the train a couple of minutes later because you know your watch is actually running fast.