Toggle Talk with Matt Knox, Twitter 2009-2014, Reddit 2017-Now

Matt Knox has had an eclectic career, which led him to work on feature flagging at Twitter in 2009. He built Decider, a tool for dynamic decision-making that combined Releaser and Darkmode systems. Feature flagging is most useful when companies need to turn features "on" or "off" without deploying code changes. It can be used for A/B testing, migrating from monolithic to microservice architectures, and handling thundering herd problems. The number one mistake made around feature flagging is not cleaning up after oneself, which can lead to chaos if storage fails. Feature flags play a significant role in DevOps and Continuous Delivery by allowing frequent changes without deploying code. As companies grow, it's crucial to introduce dynamic decision-making systems early on to avoid having multiple idiosyncratic systems.