The Hidden Cost of "Observability Theater" (And How to Fix It)

The article critiques 'observability theater'—organizations that invest heavily in monitoring dashboards and tools yet fail to diagnose real production incidents. It debunks three common misconceptions (more data equals better visibility, having all three pillars is sufficient, and observability is a vendor problem) and prescribes practical fixes: smart sampling to reduce noise and cost, embedding rich context in every telemetry signal, and adopting SLO-driven alerting over passive dashboards.