Modern software systems rarely fail because of a single catastrophic bug. More often, they slow down, become expensive, and grow difficult to operate because of thousands of small inefficiencies that quietly accumulate over time.

Retry storms. Network calls without timeouts. Chatty microservices. Containers running mostly idle. Polling loops that never needed to exist.

None of these look dramatic in isolation. But together they shape how our systems behave — and how much they cost to run.

In this talk we’ll explore common patterns of software inefficiency that appear in real production systems. We’ll look at how these patterns propagate through architecture, infrastructure, and operations, often creating surprising side effects.

Along the way we’ll examine how small engineering decisions influence performance, reliability, operational complexity, and even energy use.

You’ll leave with a new lens for spotting inefficiencies in everyday code and architecture — and a set of practical habits for designing systems that are simpler, faster, and easier to run.