My most expensive career mistake wasn't a line of code or a misconfigured server; it was a "yes." Throughout my twenty years of experience in system architecture and operations, I've made countless technical decisions, often succeeding, sometimes making mistakes. However, some decisions cost not just time or money, but also shape our perspective and future. In this post, I'll share the "yes" decision that cost me the most as an engineer, and the lessons learned from it, not as dry technical d...