Marty Weiner, Reddit CTO @ SXSWi 2016 - Everything's Harder At Scale

D
Diana Chow
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Everything’s Harder at Scale Marty Weiner CTO, Reddit u/Mart2D2 @MartyWeiner
Building a Startup is Hard
• Reduce the pain of the first 18 months of scalability hell • Look at how a company scales technically and culturally from idea to BIG at major inflection points • Strategies for thinking about technology and culture • Construct a tech stack recipe you can use Goals • Focus is on engineering • For those who have not experienced small -> BIG • Every startup is different, but in many ways they’re the same • Scope is from idea to solid traction and about 100 employees • Lots in this talk, will put slides up • I’m not being paid by any vendors!
Inflection Points LaunchDeveloping the Idea Trickle :( TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business
Let’s make a fictional startup!
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Idea bubbling around in founder’s head • Work on it in spare time • Doodle in class / at work / in dorm / at coffee shop Day -100 · Idea Forming
Marty Weiner, Reddit CTO @ SXSWi 2016 - Everything's Harder At Scale
Marty Weiner, Reddit CTO @ SXSWi 2016 - Everything's Harder At Scale
Marty Weiner, Reddit CTO @ SXSWi 2016 - Everything's Harder At Scale
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Here’s the idea for our startup: • It’s a social network • Topics organized by community • You can send messages • Max of 140 characters • They’re deleted in 10 seconds after viewing • Pin your interests • And you can order a taxi… Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • It’s called SnapinUberTweetySnoo • snapinubertweetysnoo.com taken :( Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Settle on “Salad Rabbit” • saladrabbit.com was the least bad idea for a URL that’s available Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Marty Weiner, Reddit CTO @ SXSWi 2016 - Everything's Harder At Scale
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • No serious competition, or at least you totally can do better! • You (or you and engy buddy) start mocking up an app Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Much Ramen later, you slapped together an iPhone app and servers • Friends and family using it • Get some YC money • You set up Google Analytics and add a few extras like push notifications Day -30 · Demo!
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • You officially launch! • It’s on the App Store!!!!! Day 0 · Launch!
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Sit there refreshing Google Analytics over and over and over and over….. Day 0 · Launch!
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Nobody coming. Well, ok, a few.. Day 10 · Waiting
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Developing the idea and the tech stack. Added some features. • A few people are coming. At least they’re very passionate • Is anything going to happen? Day 11 to 119 · A trickle • Is this working? • Should… should I pivot??
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Day 11 to 119 · A trickle Not supposed to be stealth mode :( Pinterest Page Views / Day
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Not really sure why, but users start pouring in • Featured in Apple’s Best New Apps with “Salad” in the Title • Hijacked the jumbotron at the Superbowl • Hopefully this is not a fluke Day 120 · Something’s happening ?!
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Users still pouring in! • You’re running out to talk to VCs • Trying to hire engineers. They’re junior or hackers. • Your tech is a confusing blob of shiny new technologies • Site now timing out consistently. Brace yourself, it’s gonna be a tough 12+ months of scalability hell. Day 140 · Traaaaaction!
Let’s go back in time…
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Founder starts digging deeper • Goal should be, above all, on getting a Minimal Viable Product out there for people to see Day -90 · Fleshing it out • Hypothesis is “People will like what I’m building”
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Day -90 · Fleshing it out Maximize for Velocity, Agility, Creativity
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Choose one frontend platform: iPhone, Android, Web Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Choose one frontend platform: iPhone, Android, Web • You’ll need a backend to store data, facilitate communications, etc • Maximizes velocity, agility, creativity • One we can evolve with the number of employees and users • Let’s construct a recipe you can use Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Tons of choice for tech. Databases alone: • Postgres • Redis • Cassandra • HBase • Riak • Neo4j Tech Maturity • CouchDB • Membase • MySQL • MongoDB • VoltDB • … hundred others
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • “We’re building the latest and greatest. I need the latest and greatest.” • No no no no no no… no… no • “This tech magically scales for you” • Until it doesn’t… • “It’s shiny and new. It must be faster or betterer” • Stop Tech Maturity
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Tech Maturity Maturity = Blood + Sweat Complexity
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Redis Maturity = Blood + Sweat Complexity
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business HBase Maturity = Blood + Sweat Complexity
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business MySQL Maturity = Blood + Sweat Complexity
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Sometimes you must use immature tech, but… • Harder to hire • Harder to get help (yes, all tech has problems at some point) • Stability and performance uncertain, especially at larger scale • Debugging will be harder • Tools weaker • If biggest user, challenges greatly amplified • Most likely you won’t *really* need immature tech for a long time Tech Maturity
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Use Amazon Web Services (AWS) for hosting • Evolves and scales with you from tiny to BIG • Competitively priced • Lots of tools to help get you moving (DBs, cache, search, email, DNS, CDN, …) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Use AWS Route53 to register your domain (saladrabbit.com) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Spin up a tiny EC2 instance for your first API (or web) server • Describes outside interfaces and contains product logic • Use latest Ubuntu • Nginx to serve HTTP • Use Python / Flask / pymysql or Python / Django for backend code • Use Route53 to connect your domain to your tiny instance • Using api.saladrabbit.com • Your EC2 instance storage is EBS (Easy backups!) • Call it something descriptive like api001 Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Create an S3 bucket for serving static assets (js, css, images) • S3 is super durable, very available storage • Use Route53 to connect a subdomain to it (e.g, assets.saladrabbit.com) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Use git + Github for your version control • Get code backup for free! • Good for code reviews, bug reporting when you’re ready for it • Makes deployment easier Day -90 · Fleshing it out
AWS API Route53 S3 api. assets.
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Need a place to store user info, content, follower graphs, etc • We need a database Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Just use MySQL • The boring tech revolution is here • Use AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) to manage it (Tiny instance size) • Conveniently manages MySQL instances • Costs ~1.5x • RDS -> self managed MySQL migration is easy • Don’t have to worry about database operations for early days! • No configs to understand • Backups done for you • No messing with failovers (even has automatic failover) • Don’t be afraid of joins, distinct, count, etc! Day -90 · Fleshing it out
AWS API Route53 S3 api. assets. RDS
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • How does your API box know the RDS endpoint? • Just use simple python config files (no haproxy layers, no zookeeper, …) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Make your backend easy to debug • Use Python logging to syslog (AWS CloudWatch looks like an interesting option) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Search • Use AWS CloudSearch Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • That’s probably it • Don’t need to send notifications, emails, etc unless they’re vital to your demo • Don’t optimize anything on the backend unless you have to Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • So far… • We have an app • Architecture that doesn’t limit your velocity, agility, creativity • Won’t scale far, but we can evolve and grow it • Now go show people! Day -90 · Fleshing it out
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Show it to friends, family, r/entrepreneur, people on the train • Hopefully people love it! Though they’ll hate the name… • Take feedback, thank people for it, ignore the naysayers Day -30 · Demo!
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Focus on last critical product needs • Tighten up the frontend experience • Add asynchronous background processing • For sending email, sharing to Facebook / Twitter, processing images, etc… • Use PinLater for background processing • Push Notifs (AWS SNS), SMS (Twilio), Email (AWS SES) • Add Google Analytics to frontend Day -29 to -1 · Prep for Launch
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Tell everybody! • Connect to Google Analytics and hit refresh over and over again Day 0 · Laaaaunch!
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Stay focused on product (no need to sacrifice velocity, agility, creativity) • Round out product and operations Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • If necessary, add other platforms Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Add StatsD to measure timings and counts live (only use _upper* timings!) Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle * Long story, see appendix statsd_connection.incr(“event.user_signup”) statsd_connection.timing(“event.mysql_queries.get_user_feed”, time_ms)
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Add StatsD timings to all interface points • All API endpoints • All MySQL calls • All calls to other services • All background tasks • Make a dashboard Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Make it faster to launch / config boxes with IT Automation • Puppet, Chef (AWS OpsWorks) Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Set up CloudWatch or Pingdom to notify of downtime • Will save you sleep Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Add more API servers • Use AWS ELB to distribute load • Make it fast to bring one API server up Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Set up development and staging environments • Make Route53 connections (e.g., martydev.saladrabbit.com) • Make it easy to deploy new code to production or staging • Use Teletraan Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • So far… • iPhone app talking to your API + logic servers through Route53 and ELB • Database (MySQL) • Static storage (S3) • Search (Cloudwatch), Virality, Background Task Processing (PinLater) • Visibility (Google Analytics, Statsd, AWS CloudWatch) • Deployability (staging, dev, Teletraan, AWS OpsWorks) Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Ok, people coming. Whoa. Day 120 · Something Happening
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Not a fluke… even more are coming. Winter is here. Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Site begins to timeout or queues start backing up • Profile first! (Check StatsD) • Probably your poor database (will bet money) Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • NOW begin to trade off velocity, agility, creativity for site availability • Don’t worry, we’ll get them back Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • If it is your database that’s causing problems… • Start increasing instance sizes (Add RAM and especially go to SSD) • Short downtime in RDS • Begin optimizing your queries and reducing load on MySQL • Check slowlog and profile (SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST) for worst queries • Add indexes • Start caching • Start normalizing all queries and remove joins, distincts, etc Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Caching • Create Memcache or Redis servers behind McRouter or use Elasticache • Check cache -> go to db -> put back in cache • Hunt for common queries you can cache Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Normalize your data • Object tables are only used for ID -> data lookups • e.g., users table (noun) • Add primary key + auto_increment on ID (this generates IDs for you!) • Mapping tables are only used for From ID -> To ID lookups • e.g., users_said_comments (noun_activeverb_noun) • Add sequence column if you need order and your ID does not support order • Add indexes: Unique on From,To and Index on To Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Normalize SELECT text FROM comments WHERE user_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id=%s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE listing_id=%(listing_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM listing_contains_comments WHERE listing_id=%s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Normalize SELECT text FROM comments WHERE user_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id=%s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE listing_id=%(listing_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM listing_contains_comments WHERE listing_id=%s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Optimizing Feeds SELECT text FROM comments LEFT JOIN followers ON comments.user_id=followers.followee_id WHERE followers.follower_id=%(user_id)s ORDER BY create_date DESC OFFSET 0,20 SELECT followee_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE follower_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id IN %(followee_ids)s ORDER BY sequence DESC OFFSET 0,20 SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Optimizing Feeds SELECT followee_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE follower_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id IN %(followee_ids)s ORDER BY sequence DESC OFFSET 0,20 SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s [Aync after comment] SELECT follower_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE followee_id=%(user_id)s Put Comment in Redis follower_to_comments [On Read] comment_ids = redis_get_follower_to_comments(user_id) SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Optimizing Feeds SELECT followee_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE follower_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id IN %(followee_ids)s ORDER BY sequence DESC OFFSET 0,20 SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s [Aync after comment] SELECT follower_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE followee_id=%(user_id)s Put Comment in Redis follower_to_comments [On Read] comment_ids = get_follower_to_comments(user_id) SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • MySQL doesn’t magically scale out of the box • When to Shard? • Increased instance sizes to big SSD servers • And you’ve moved as many tables to other instances as possible • And you are reading from read slaves • How to Shard? • Click here or Google for “Sharding Pinterest” • Google for “Sharding & IDs at Instagram” Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Logging data and operations • Log all page views (and some info on what was seen) • Log all major events (create, update, delete, click offsite, etc) • Eventually log all service calls • Why? • Will save your butt some day (when you bork your database) • Beginning of really understanding your users and growth Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Use Kafka and Secor to get events from backend into AWS S3 • Use AWS EMR to start digging into data • Pinball or AWS SWF help you run queries automatically • Transcode MySQL backups nighty into S3 so EMR can use them • Near future: data science, A/B experiments • Not yet: machine learning Day 140 · Traction
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Getting good at operations • Scale (more) under control • Have data and some goals + metrics • Growing company size (10+) • Foosball table Month 12+ · Build Your Business
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • New Eng Goal: Build The Dream Machinetm • Team and tech that can build any idea faster and better with each year • Tech even drives creativity • Start to regain velocity, agility, and creativity Month 12+ · Build Your Business
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • You’ve probably built up some tech debt and have a nasty monolithic codebase • Pinboard (Pinterest), R2 (Reddit), Obidos (Amazon) • Begin to pay down tech debt • Align teams for success • Move to a service oriented architecture Month 12+ · Build Your Business
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Engineering management • Don’t “promote” best engineer to manager • Lose best coder / doer, made a First Time Manager (FTM) • Do have discussions with engineers about their careers • Management should not be a promotion • Give engies and managers equal path to impact and comp • Engineers who have never managed should not step in lightly • Give 6 month path Month 12+ · Build Your Business
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Technically Strong Jerk (TSJ) • Appear at many companies at 10+ employees • 2x faster than others, maybe leading an important initiative • … but make life hell for everybody else (1x -> .5x) 1 tst x 2 strength + 9 engineers x .5 strength = 6.5 effort 0 tst x 2 strength + 9 engineers x 1 strength = 9.0 effort Month 12+ · Build Your Business
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Motivation = ?
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Motivation = Autonomy + Mastery + Purpose - Daniel Pink
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Services, assets, and libraries • Components that help product ideas materialize faster and better • Marry your tech and culture • Focus teams on identifying their customer and making them happy • Task them with building the best solution in the world. Go! • Predictable timelines and behavior => Trust Month 12+ · Build Your Business
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • A good service, asset, library… • Is easy to start using • Helps anybody in the company develop their ideas faster and better • Is useful in many contexts • Is consistently available with consistent latency at appropriate scales • Enforces boundaries (e.g., interface to credit card data) • Is scalable • Is coded cleanly, encourages testing • Supplies super easy monitoring, debugging, and alerting • Think: Legos Month 12+ · Build Your Business
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • A great service, asset, library… • Drives creativity • Think: Legos Month 12+ · Build Your Business
Unity Asset Store
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Build a good service framework • Look at Reddit’s Baseplate for design, tech choices (still in heavy dev) • Use Thrift for communication • Use ZooKeeper for service discovery • Build an asset store Month 12+ · Build Your Business
AWS API Route53, ELB S3 api. assets. MySQL CloudFrontWeb ZooKeeper, Thrift Data Services Redis Memcache Search Email PinLater Kafka S3 SparkSecor EMR Other Services Arch
MySQL Data Services Redis Memcache Search Email PinLater Kafka S3 Spark Secor EMR Platform Eng Product Eng Web, M Web Android Native iOS Native Frontend Frameworks Backend Services Growth Monetization Your Strategic Pillars Org Structure API ELB Route 53 Feeds ML Terrapin … …
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Salad Rabbit able to prototype and ship great ideas quickly • High functioning creative team that can focus on hard problems • Able to try experiments on massive audiences • Hiring the best people in the world • Able to change the world for the better Now
Turns out, many things do get better with scale…
Ask Me Anything Marty Weiner CTO, Reddit u/Mart2D2 @MartyWeiner
Reddit SnooSpotting: Austin where: Weather Up 1808 E. Cesar Chavez when: 4:00pm - 7:00pm
Appendix
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • For researching EC2 instance types, http://ec2instances.info is the best place ever • For managing Redis, here’s a tip Useful Tidbits
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • StatsD has several percentile options for showing your timing data • upper{50,95,99}, upper, lower{50,95,99}, lower, mean{50,95,99}, mean • upper means highest timing, upper99 means the 99%ile timing • Can be confusing because I would think upper99 would mean lowest 1%… • I don’t know why you would use mean{50,95,99} • Makes no statistical sense (am I missing something?) Tidbits about StatsD
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • StatsD has several percentile options for showing your timing data • These timings measure the percentile over a few seconds • No reason to not just go with the max (upper), since it’s over just a few seconds • You can aggregate max’s to get other percentiles over longer time periods • E.g., 95%ile of latency over 1 day • You cannot (statistically) aggregate anything but max (95%ile of 95%ile is nonsensical) • I don’t know why you would ever want lower percentiles • At least not for latency… • Does not tell you how good you can be Tidbits about StatsD
Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • May get stuck at 80 employees for a surprisingly long time • Not sure anybody understands why this happens… • Cultures usually struggle at 80 to 120 employees • Communications break down => Loss of trust • Goals might be unclear • Comp / HR discussions beginning • Some startup folks not comfortable • Management decisions must be made (can cause tension) • Things often smoother at 140 employees • Things tough again at 200 • … Growth tidbits
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Marty Weiner, Reddit CTO @ SXSWi 2016 - Everything's Harder At Scale

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Technology

The slide deck from Reddit CTO Marty Weiner's talk at SXSW Interactive 2016, "Everything's Harder At Scale".

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Diana Chow

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Marty Weiner, Reddit CTO @ SXSWi 2016 - Everything's Harder At Scale

  • 1. Everything’s Harder at Scale Marty Weiner CTO, Reddit u/Mart2D2 @MartyWeiner
  • 3. • Reduce the pain of the first 18 months of scalability hell • Look at how a company scales technically and culturally from idea to BIG at major inflection points • Strategies for thinking about technology and culture • Construct a tech stack recipe you can use Goals • Focus is on engineering • For those who have not experienced small -> BIG • Every startup is different, but in many ways they’re the same • Scope is from idea to solid traction and about 100 employees • Lots in this talk, will put slides up • I’m not being paid by any vendors!
  • 4. Inflection Points LaunchDeveloping the Idea Trickle :( TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business
  • 5. Let’s make a fictional startup!
  • 6. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Idea bubbling around in founder’s head • Work on it in spare time • Doodle in class / at work / in dorm / at coffee shop Day -100 · Idea Forming
  • 10. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Here’s the idea for our startup: • It’s a social network • Topics organized by community • You can send messages • Max of 140 characters • They’re deleted in 10 seconds after viewing • Pin your interests • And you can order a taxi… Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 11. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • It’s called SnapinUberTweetySnoo • snapinubertweetysnoo.com taken :( Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 12. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Settle on “Salad Rabbit” • saladrabbit.com was the least bad idea for a URL that’s available Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 14. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • No serious competition, or at least you totally can do better! • You (or you and engy buddy) start mocking up an app Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 15. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Much Ramen later, you slapped together an iPhone app and servers • Friends and family using it • Get some YC money • You set up Google Analytics and add a few extras like push notifications Day -30 · Demo!
  • 16. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • You officially launch! • It’s on the App Store!!!!! Day 0 · Launch!
  • 17. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Sit there refreshing Google Analytics over and over and over and over….. Day 0 · Launch!
  • 18. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Nobody coming. Well, ok, a few.. Day 10 · Waiting
  • 19. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Developing the idea and the tech stack. Added some features. • A few people are coming. At least they’re very passionate • Is anything going to happen? Day 11 to 119 · A trickle • Is this working? • Should… should I pivot??
  • 20. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Day 11 to 119 · A trickle Not supposed to be stealth mode :( Pinterest Page Views / Day
  • 21. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Not really sure why, but users start pouring in • Featured in Apple’s Best New Apps with “Salad” in the Title • Hijacked the jumbotron at the Superbowl • Hopefully this is not a fluke Day 120 · Something’s happening ?!
  • 22. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Users still pouring in! • You’re running out to talk to VCs • Trying to hire engineers. They’re junior or hackers. • Your tech is a confusing blob of shiny new technologies • Site now timing out consistently. Brace yourself, it’s gonna be a tough 12+ months of scalability hell. Day 140 · Traaaaaction!
  • 23. Let’s go back in time…
  • 24. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Founder starts digging deeper • Goal should be, above all, on getting a Minimal Viable Product out there for people to see Day -90 · Fleshing it out • Hypothesis is “People will like what I’m building”
  • 25. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Day -90 · Fleshing it out Maximize for Velocity, Agility, Creativity
  • 26. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Choose one frontend platform: iPhone, Android, Web Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 27. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Choose one frontend platform: iPhone, Android, Web • You’ll need a backend to store data, facilitate communications, etc • Maximizes velocity, agility, creativity • One we can evolve with the number of employees and users • Let’s construct a recipe you can use Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 28. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Tons of choice for tech. Databases alone: • Postgres • Redis • Cassandra • HBase • Riak • Neo4j Tech Maturity • CouchDB • Membase • MySQL • MongoDB • VoltDB • … hundred others
  • 29. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • “We’re building the latest and greatest. I need the latest and greatest.” • No no no no no no… no… no • “This tech magically scales for you” • Until it doesn’t… • “It’s shiny and new. It must be faster or betterer” • Stop Tech Maturity
  • 30. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Tech Maturity Maturity = Blood + Sweat Complexity
  • 31. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Redis Maturity = Blood + Sweat Complexity
  • 32. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business HBase Maturity = Blood + Sweat Complexity
  • 33. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business MySQL Maturity = Blood + Sweat Complexity
  • 34. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Sometimes you must use immature tech, but… • Harder to hire • Harder to get help (yes, all tech has problems at some point) • Stability and performance uncertain, especially at larger scale • Debugging will be harder • Tools weaker • If biggest user, challenges greatly amplified • Most likely you won’t *really* need immature tech for a long time Tech Maturity
  • 35. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Use Amazon Web Services (AWS) for hosting • Evolves and scales with you from tiny to BIG • Competitively priced • Lots of tools to help get you moving (DBs, cache, search, email, DNS, CDN, …) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 36. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Use AWS Route53 to register your domain (saladrabbit.com) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 37. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Spin up a tiny EC2 instance for your first API (or web) server • Describes outside interfaces and contains product logic • Use latest Ubuntu • Nginx to serve HTTP • Use Python / Flask / pymysql or Python / Django for backend code • Use Route53 to connect your domain to your tiny instance • Using api.saladrabbit.com • Your EC2 instance storage is EBS (Easy backups!) • Call it something descriptive like api001 Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 38. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Create an S3 bucket for serving static assets (js, css, images) • S3 is super durable, very available storage • Use Route53 to connect a subdomain to it (e.g, assets.saladrabbit.com) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 39. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Use git + Github for your version control • Get code backup for free! • Good for code reviews, bug reporting when you’re ready for it • Makes deployment easier Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 41. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Need a place to store user info, content, follower graphs, etc • We need a database Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 42. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Just use MySQL • The boring tech revolution is here • Use AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) to manage it (Tiny instance size) • Conveniently manages MySQL instances • Costs ~1.5x • RDS -> self managed MySQL migration is easy • Don’t have to worry about database operations for early days! • No configs to understand • Backups done for you • No messing with failovers (even has automatic failover) • Don’t be afraid of joins, distinct, count, etc! Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 44. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • How does your API box know the RDS endpoint? • Just use simple python config files (no haproxy layers, no zookeeper, …) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 45. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Make your backend easy to debug • Use Python logging to syslog (AWS CloudWatch looks like an interesting option) Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 46. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Search • Use AWS CloudSearch Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 47. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • That’s probably it • Don’t need to send notifications, emails, etc unless they’re vital to your demo • Don’t optimize anything on the backend unless you have to Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 48. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • So far… • We have an app • Architecture that doesn’t limit your velocity, agility, creativity • Won’t scale far, but we can evolve and grow it • Now go show people! Day -90 · Fleshing it out
  • 49. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Show it to friends, family, r/entrepreneur, people on the train • Hopefully people love it! Though they’ll hate the name… • Take feedback, thank people for it, ignore the naysayers Day -30 · Demo!
  • 50. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Focus on last critical product needs • Tighten up the frontend experience • Add asynchronous background processing • For sending email, sharing to Facebook / Twitter, processing images, etc… • Use PinLater for background processing • Push Notifs (AWS SNS), SMS (Twilio), Email (AWS SES) • Add Google Analytics to frontend Day -29 to -1 · Prep for Launch
  • 51. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Tell everybody! • Connect to Google Analytics and hit refresh over and over again Day 0 · Laaaaunch!
  • 52. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Stay focused on product (no need to sacrifice velocity, agility, creativity) • Round out product and operations Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
  • 53. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • If necessary, add other platforms Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
  • 54. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Add StatsD to measure timings and counts live (only use _upper* timings!) Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle * Long story, see appendix statsd_connection.incr(“event.user_signup”) statsd_connection.timing(“event.mysql_queries.get_user_feed”, time_ms)
  • 55. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Add StatsD timings to all interface points • All API endpoints • All MySQL calls • All calls to other services • All background tasks • Make a dashboard Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
  • 56. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Make it faster to launch / config boxes with IT Automation • Puppet, Chef (AWS OpsWorks) Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
  • 57. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Set up CloudWatch or Pingdom to notify of downtime • Will save you sleep Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
  • 58. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Add more API servers • Use AWS ELB to distribute load • Make it fast to bring one API server up Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
  • 59. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Set up development and staging environments • Make Route53 connections (e.g., martydev.saladrabbit.com) • Make it easy to deploy new code to production or staging • Use Teletraan Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
  • 60. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • So far… • iPhone app talking to your API + logic servers through Route53 and ELB • Database (MySQL) • Static storage (S3) • Search (Cloudwatch), Virality, Background Task Processing (PinLater) • Visibility (Google Analytics, Statsd, AWS CloudWatch) • Deployability (staging, dev, Teletraan, AWS OpsWorks) Day 1 to 119 · A Trickle
  • 61. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Ok, people coming. Whoa. Day 120 · Something Happening
  • 62. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Not a fluke… even more are coming. Winter is here. Day 140 · Traction
  • 63. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Site begins to timeout or queues start backing up • Profile first! (Check StatsD) • Probably your poor database (will bet money) Day 140 · Traction
  • 64. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • NOW begin to trade off velocity, agility, creativity for site availability • Don’t worry, we’ll get them back Day 140 · Traction
  • 65. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • If it is your database that’s causing problems… • Start increasing instance sizes (Add RAM and especially go to SSD) • Short downtime in RDS • Begin optimizing your queries and reducing load on MySQL • Check slowlog and profile (SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST) for worst queries • Add indexes • Start caching • Start normalizing all queries and remove joins, distincts, etc Day 140 · Traction
  • 66. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Caching • Create Memcache or Redis servers behind McRouter or use Elasticache • Check cache -> go to db -> put back in cache • Hunt for common queries you can cache Day 140 · Traction
  • 67. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Normalize your data • Object tables are only used for ID -> data lookups • e.g., users table (noun) • Add primary key + auto_increment on ID (this generates IDs for you!) • Mapping tables are only used for From ID -> To ID lookups • e.g., users_said_comments (noun_activeverb_noun) • Add sequence column if you need order and your ID does not support order • Add indexes: Unique on From,To and Index on To Day 140 · Traction
  • 68. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Normalize SELECT text FROM comments WHERE user_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id=%s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE listing_id=%(listing_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM listing_contains_comments WHERE listing_id=%s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
  • 69. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Normalize SELECT text FROM comments WHERE user_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id=%s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE listing_id=%(listing_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM listing_contains_comments WHERE listing_id=%s SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
  • 70. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Optimizing Feeds SELECT text FROM comments LEFT JOIN followers ON comments.user_id=followers.followee_id WHERE followers.follower_id=%(user_id)s ORDER BY create_date DESC OFFSET 0,20 SELECT followee_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE follower_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id IN %(followee_ids)s ORDER BY sequence DESC OFFSET 0,20 SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
  • 71. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Optimizing Feeds SELECT followee_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE follower_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id IN %(followee_ids)s ORDER BY sequence DESC OFFSET 0,20 SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s [Aync after comment] SELECT follower_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE followee_id=%(user_id)s Put Comment in Redis follower_to_comments [On Read] comment_ids = redis_get_follower_to_comments(user_id) SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
  • 72. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Optimizing Feeds SELECT followee_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE follower_id=%(user_id)s SELECT comment_id FROM users_said_comments WHERE user_id IN %(followee_ids)s ORDER BY sequence DESC OFFSET 0,20 SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s [Aync after comment] SELECT follower_id FROM users_followed_by_users WHERE followee_id=%(user_id)s Put Comment in Redis follower_to_comments [On Read] comment_ids = get_follower_to_comments(user_id) SELECT text FROM comments WHERE id IN %(comment_ids)s
  • 73. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • MySQL doesn’t magically scale out of the box • When to Shard? • Increased instance sizes to big SSD servers • And you’ve moved as many tables to other instances as possible • And you are reading from read slaves • How to Shard? • Click here or Google for “Sharding Pinterest” • Google for “Sharding & IDs at Instagram” Day 140 · Traction
  • 74. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Day 140 · Traction
  • 75. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Logging data and operations • Log all page views (and some info on what was seen) • Log all major events (create, update, delete, click offsite, etc) • Eventually log all service calls • Why? • Will save your butt some day (when you bork your database) • Beginning of really understanding your users and growth Day 140 · Traction
  • 76. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Use Kafka and Secor to get events from backend into AWS S3 • Use AWS EMR to start digging into data • Pinball or AWS SWF help you run queries automatically • Transcode MySQL backups nighty into S3 so EMR can use them • Near future: data science, A/B experiments • Not yet: machine learning Day 140 · Traction
  • 77. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Getting good at operations • Scale (more) under control • Have data and some goals + metrics • Growing company size (10+) • Foosball table Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 78. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • New Eng Goal: Build The Dream Machinetm • Team and tech that can build any idea faster and better with each year • Tech even drives creativity • Start to regain velocity, agility, and creativity Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 79. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • You’ve probably built up some tech debt and have a nasty monolithic codebase • Pinboard (Pinterest), R2 (Reddit), Obidos (Amazon) • Begin to pay down tech debt • Align teams for success • Move to a service oriented architecture Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 80. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Engineering management • Don’t “promote” best engineer to manager • Lose best coder / doer, made a First Time Manager (FTM) • Do have discussions with engineers about their careers • Management should not be a promotion • Give engies and managers equal path to impact and comp • Engineers who have never managed should not step in lightly • Give 6 month path Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 81. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Technically Strong Jerk (TSJ) • Appear at many companies at 10+ employees • 2x faster than others, maybe leading an important initiative • … but make life hell for everybody else (1x -> .5x) 1 tst x 2 strength + 9 engineers x .5 strength = 6.5 effort 0 tst x 2 strength + 9 engineers x 1 strength = 9.0 effort Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 82. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Motivation = ?
  • 83. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business Motivation = Autonomy + Mastery + Purpose - Daniel Pink
  • 84. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Services, assets, and libraries • Components that help product ideas materialize faster and better • Marry your tech and culture • Focus teams on identifying their customer and making them happy • Task them with building the best solution in the world. Go! • Predictable timelines and behavior => Trust Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 85. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • A good service, asset, library… • Is easy to start using • Helps anybody in the company develop their ideas faster and better • Is useful in many contexts • Is consistently available with consistent latency at appropriate scales • Enforces boundaries (e.g., interface to credit card data) • Is scalable • Is coded cleanly, encourages testing • Supplies super easy monitoring, debugging, and alerting • Think: Legos Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 86. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • A great service, asset, library… • Drives creativity • Think: Legos Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 88. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Build a good service framework • Look at Reddit’s Baseplate for design, tech choices (still in heavy dev) • Use Thrift for communication • Use ZooKeeper for service discovery • Build an asset store Month 12+ · Build Your Business
  • 89. AWS API Route53, ELB S3 api. assets. MySQL CloudFrontWeb ZooKeeper, Thrift Data Services Redis Memcache Search Email PinLater Kafka S3 SparkSecor EMR Other Services Arch
  • 90. MySQL Data Services Redis Memcache Search Email PinLater Kafka S3 Spark Secor EMR Platform Eng Product Eng Web, M Web Android Native iOS Native Frontend Frameworks Backend Services Growth Monetization Your Strategic Pillars Org Structure API ELB Route 53 Feeds ML Terrapin … …
  • 91. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • Salad Rabbit able to prototype and ship great ideas quickly • High functioning creative team that can focus on hard problems • Able to try experiments on massive audiences • Hiring the best people in the world • Able to change the world for the better Now
  • 92. Turns out, many things do get better with scale…
  • 93. Ask Me Anything Marty Weiner CTO, Reddit u/Mart2D2 @MartyWeiner
  • 94. Reddit SnooSpotting: Austin where: Weather Up 1808 E. Cesar Chavez when: 4:00pm - 7:00pm
  • 96. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • For researching EC2 instance types, http://ec2instances.info is the best place ever • For managing Redis, here’s a tip Useful Tidbits
  • 97. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • StatsD has several percentile options for showing your timing data • upper{50,95,99}, upper, lower{50,95,99}, lower, mean{50,95,99}, mean • upper means highest timing, upper99 means the 99%ile timing • Can be confusing because I would think upper99 would mean lowest 1%… • I don’t know why you would use mean{50,95,99} • Makes no statistical sense (am I missing something?) Tidbits about StatsD
  • 98. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • StatsD has several percentile options for showing your timing data • These timings measure the percentile over a few seconds • No reason to not just go with the max (upper), since it’s over just a few seconds • You can aggregate max’s to get other percentiles over longer time periods • E.g., 95%ile of latency over 1 day • You cannot (statistically) aggregate anything but max (95%ile of 95%ile is nonsensical) • I don’t know why you would ever want lower percentiles • At least not for latency… • Does not tell you how good you can be Tidbits about StatsD
  • 99. Idea Forming Fleshing It Out Demo! Launch! Trickle :( Something’s Happening ?! TRAAAACTION! Becoming a Business • May get stuck at 80 employees for a surprisingly long time • Not sure anybody understands why this happens… • Cultures usually struggle at 80 to 120 employees • Communications break down => Loss of trust • Goals might be unclear • Comp / HR discussions beginning • Some startup folks not comfortable • Management decisions must be made (can cause tension) • Things often smoother at 140 employees • Things tough again at 200 • … Growth tidbits