Ask HN: How do teams remember why infrastructure decisions were made?

5 points • curious_sre • about 13 hours ago • 8 comments

On teams I’ve worked with, we often run into systems where nobody really knows why certain configs, services, or architectural choices exist. Docs are outdated, Slack history is messy, and the people who made the decision are often gone. When something breaks, we end up rediscovering the same context over and over. Is this just inevitable on long-lived systems, or do experienced teams have a better way of preserving this kind of context?