Startup Engineering: Hacker News London

Presentation given about TaskRabbit engineering

Transcript

1. Startup Engineering TaskRabbit Brian Leonard Chief Architect & Technical Co-founder 05/20/2014
2. About TaskRabbit A brief introduction
3. TaskRabbit: neighbors helping neighbors
4. Background •  Founded because of dogfood •  RunMyErrand in Facebook Fund •  Raised seed round •  Changed name to TaskRabbit •  Launched in San Francisco •  Launched several cities •  Expanded service types •  Raised a few more rounds We're revoluConizing the way people work by redefining what it means to be neighborly. 50 employees, thousands of Tasks a day, People earning living off of TaskRabbit
5. Brian Leonard •  I grew up in Texas, went to school for computer engineering in S. Carolina, worked at IBM in Boston, and moved my family to SF to launch TaskRabbit. •  Chief Architect & Technical Co- founder •  Built rebranded TaskRabbit site •  Recruited/managed engineering team •  Transitioned to Chief Architect Pic
6. TaskRabbit Engineering Our software stack
7. Engineer Tools
9. TaskRabbit Engineering Values We have come to value the following: •  Customer Focus over long-term plans and releases •  Pragmatic Programming over software manifestos* •  Team Commitment over having just another job •  Tangible Impact over Internet stuff and fluff 
 
 * That is, while there is value in the items on the right,
 we value the items on the left more.
10. Pragmatic Programming We balance approaches to get the job done. No tests Each line No pairing Stuck on You Clever girl Keep it simple Get it done Architecture
11. Scaling the Site •  9 Cities •  10 Engineers •  100s of Tasks per day •  1000s of TaskRabbits •  Web traffic was under control but with big spikes
12. Request Stack Load Balancer Web Servers Storage
13. Web App Stack Deployment Inter-app communicaCon Rack Middleware Business Logic Front End •  Capistrano •  Monitoring •  Bundler Persistence •  Message Bus •  Cross-Database •  API connecCons •  AuthenCcaCon •  Cookies •  Logging •  MySQL •  Redis •  Caching •  Whatever it does •  Rails MVC •  AuthorizaCon •  SCSS •  ERB / HAML •  jQuery
14. Web App Stack Deployment Inter-app communicaCon Rack Middleware Business Logic Front End •  Capistrano •  Monitoring •  Bundler Persistence •  Message Bus •  Cross-Database •  API connecCons •  AuthenCcaCon •  Cookies •  Logging •  MySQL •  Redis •  Caching •  Whatever it does •  Rails MVC •  AuthorizaCon •  SCSS •  ERB / HAML •  jQuery ApplicaCon Shared Gems
15. Task State Transitions started opened assigned completed closed Unposted Searching Happening Happened Paid
16. Task State Transitions started opened assigned completed closed Unposted Searching Happening Happened Paid canceled expired
17. Task State Transitions started opened assigned completed closed Unposted Searching Happening Happened Paid On transiCons, an event is fired: •  Send mails to relevant parCcipants •  Publish to bus so other apps know •  Queue up related background jobs TransiCon Event
18. Task State Transitions started opened assigned completed closed Unposted Searching Happening Happened Paid TransiCon Event Autotag Geocode Fraud Checks Calculate Relevance Logging / Metrics NoCfy Admins NoCfy Rabbits …
19. Testing the Real World Modeling humans with code
20. Single Task started opened assigned completed closed Unposted Searching Happening Happened Paid
22. Recurring Task opened assigned completed closed Searching Happening Happened Paid Task Template
24. Recurring Task with Rabbit assigned completed closed Happening Happened Paid Task Template and Rabbit
28. You can’t stub real life •  What actually happens out there is exhausting •  Good tests can’t make up for bad product design •  It is difficult to model the nuisances of life •  More and more code is added to try
29. You can’t stub real life •  What actually happens out there is exhausting •  Good tests can’t make up for bad product design •  It is difficult to model the nuisances of life •  More and more code is added to try
30. Change the product 1.  Do the thing 2.  Hit the button 3.  Profit
31. Product change
32. Summary Things to remember
33. Getting Started Summary •  Simple idea, execute well •  Create and respond to events •  Product simplicity over code
34. Questions? Brian Leonard brian@taskrabbit.com @bleonard https://www.taskrabbit.com/careers