Michelle Brush, Google Inc.
The increasing volume of code written by AI will only accelerate the complexity of our systems. We are moving beyond predictable systems that can be managed with traditional methods like thorough project plans, runbooks, and unit tests, into an era of truly complex systems that are vast and difficult to comprehend fully. These immensely complex systems will behave almost nondeterministically. We need new strategies.
This presentation will delve into why robust reliability practices are not just helpful but essential for navigating this explosion in complexity. It will share strategies for conquering unpredictability including building rigorous evaluations, implementing generic mitigations, recreating reproducibility, and developing software with a risk-first approach. Most importantly, it will discuss why humans will always be critical to taming the ever-growing complexity.
Michelle Brush has 25 years of software experience working across embedded software, distributed systems, enterprise software, and consumer devices. In her current role as an Engineering Director at Google, she leads the global teams of SREs that ensure Compute Engine and Persistent Disk are reliable. She is also the author of 2 of the 97 Things Every SRE Should Know.
Previously, Michelle worked for Cerner Corporation as the Engineering Director responsible for the data engineering platform for Cerner’s Population Health products. Prior to her time at Cerner, she was the lead engineer for Garmin's automotive routing algorithm and later led the map technology department responsible for Garmin’s various spatial search, data compression, and shortest pathfinding algorithms. If you’ve ever gotten a route you didn’t like using a Garmin device, it was probably Michelle’s fault.
author = {Michelle Brush},
title = {Taming the Unpredictable: Reliability in Chaos},
year = {2026},
address = {Seattle, WA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = mar
}