# Bad Retries Can Break Good Systems

DevFeed: [Bad Retries Can Break Good Systems](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/bad-retries-can-break-good-systems-17949.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://newsletter.systemdesignclassroom.com/p/bad-retries-can-break-good-systems>)

Author: Raul Junco

Published: 2026-05-09T11:45:53Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [System Design Classroom](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/system-design-classroom.md>)

Topics: [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [Back end](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/backend.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/distributed-systems.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>)

Tags: [backend](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/backend.md>), [circuit](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/circuit.md>), [gateway](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/gateway.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [retry](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/retry.md>), [timeout](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/timeout.md>)

## AI overview

A practical guide to handling transient faults in backend and distributed systems. It explains that uncontrolled retries can increase pressure on slow or overloaded dependencies and recommends backoff, jitter, retry budgets, idempotency, and circuit breakers to reduce user-facing incidents.

## Source excerpt

A practical guide to using backoff, jitter, retry budgets, idempotency, and circuit breakers in backend systems.