I really don't like the last step of the post-mortem. "Who is to blame?" I much much prefer "how did the system fail?" We want engineers trying crazy things and hit bumpers when they, for example, autoplay sound. The alternative is being hesitant about trying crazy things.
I mean, yeah, personal responsibility, but google already has a preflight checklist with code reviews and tests and such. Treating it as a systemic feature protects a lot of stuff you want.
1.) post-mortems at Google don't blame people, they blame processes, and then they suggest ways those processes could be fixed.
2.) I know Marcin personally and I've never known him to blame anyone either. And indeed, he didn't: the takeaway from the article was that the complexity of the web was at fault.
My best guess is that he included that because many other organizations who do post-mortems, who he might want to reach with his writing, do think in terms of "Who is to blame?", and addressing it explicitly may be better than leaving it unanswered.
I mean, yeah, personal responsibility, but google already has a preflight checklist with code reviews and tests and such. Treating it as a systemic feature protects a lot of stuff you want.