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> Most has to do with automation. This. Don't ever put anything into production that's not automated. Ever. "Oh it's a simple HTTP server that's going to be u
by outworlder 6y ago
> Most has to do with automation.
This.
Don't ever put anything into production that's not automated. Ever. "Oh it's a simple HTTP server that's going to be used by 5 people". Cool. Automate it. "Oh but it's going to take time!". I thought you said it was simple...
When things are not automated, we treat them differently. If a server is not automated, now it becomes time-consuming to setup another, which means it's now a pet, not cattle. But if it is automated and is misbehaving, we can easily replace it (and save the current for troubleshooting later if necessary). Or we can spin up 100 of them.
Same goes for development. If builds are not automated, they become more difficult to do, more error prone, which means people will avoid making contributions unless they are forced to do so (by some ticket). When contributing to a code base that has no guardrails becomes a lose/neutral proposition, people won't want to.
And now it's been 5 years and it's difficult to automate things because there's a 100 different workflows that people use and you are going to break them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tangjurine 6y agoWhat exactly do you mean by automate? Like the http server for example?
- chromatin 6y agoImage building (eg packer, docker) and/or deployment (eg, terraform, ansible)
- rudasn 6y agoNot OP, but I think s/he means automating the processes of provisioning servers (settings, common software), and deploying changes to your infra/code/apps.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jagtesh 6y agoOther examples: linting code, configuration, documentation, etc. Or updating a registry, release version somewhere, even sending an email/message to someone when something happens (a new client signs up, emails with a certain keywords). So many processes beyond development can be automated. SalesOps is very simply doing that for Sales teams (managing sales pipelines, distributing leads, generating reports). Marketing Automation has become its own field (targetted drip campaigns, now add another layer: account based targeting based on rules).
- jagtesh 6y agoYes, yes, yes. Just CI/CD alone has been a huge productivity boost for one of the teams I lead. The thing is, as you scale (50 people to 200+), people adapt to depend on processes rather than individuals. If the process is automated and well documented, you'll be have even more power to tweak the inner workings without retraining anyone. Like someone else said, even if it doesn't save you time, adding automation simplifies your processes and creates a powerful abstraction, which will come in handy when you do start hitting scaling challenges.
- AlchemistCamp 6y agoWhatsApp never scaled to even 50 people. Facebook acquired them before that point.