WORKER BACKPRESSURE (PART 1): TEACHING QUEUE WORKERS TO SLOW DOWN

Summary from the TLDR Dev newsletter

Canva built Worker Backpressure into its queue library so each worker adjusts concurrency from local success and failure signals, without a coordinator or extra network calls. During a 32.5-hour overload, the mechanism kept throughput near two million messages per hour while only 22 of 1.8 million failed attempts reached the dead letter queue. The design trades some throughput for stability and currently relies on a single health signal.