DevOps/CloudHigh signalAround since 2016
Error Budget
The amount of allowed unreliability (e.g. the 0.1% downtime under a 99.9% SLA) a team is permitted to 'spend' before it must pause new feature work and focus on stability.
Think of it like
Like a household's discretionary spending allowance — once it's gone for the month, spending stops and the budget goes toward essentials only.
Junior or senior?
Junior sounds like
Talks about 'balancing' speed and reliability in the abstract.
Senior sounds like
Can describe a time their team actually paused feature work because an error budget ran out.
Ask them
“Has your team ever paused feature work because an error budget ran out? What happened?”