Jesse Spivak

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Justin Spivak. I'm a senior engineer at a company called Ibotta, which is a cashback for shopping app based in Denver, Colorado. I've been working there for about three and a half years. We are doing some hiring, so check out our careers page. I guess I'm famous, as it were, because I gave a talk at the first remote RailsConf this past May.

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Justin Spivak. I'm a senior engineer at a company called Ibotta, which is a cashback for shopping app based in Denver, Colorado. I've been working there for about three and a half years. We are doing some hiring, so check out our careers page. I guess I'm famous, as it were, because I gave a talk at the first remote RailsConf this past May.

And I talked about kind of how crummy of a developer I am. Yeah.

And I talked about kind of how crummy of a developer I am. Yeah.

And, and there, there's no substitute for actually watching this fantastic talk. But more seriously, the talk is really about my experience as a tech lead at Ibotta working on a pretty critical project over the course of about six months or so. And over that time, I made four very big mistakes that put the project in jeopardy.

And, and there, there's no substitute for actually watching this fantastic talk. But more seriously, the talk is really about my experience as a tech lead at Ibotta working on a pretty critical project over the course of about six months or so. And over that time, I made four very big mistakes that put the project in jeopardy.

And hopefully they're mistakes that I will learn from and not make again as I continue to lead projects that I've got in the future. And my hope is that by Sort of articulating these mistakes and what I learned from them, other folks can benefit. And so the four mistakes that I made are, first, we picked the wrong technology. We can get more into that. We also, as a team, we siloed work.

And hopefully they're mistakes that I will learn from and not make again as I continue to lead projects that I've got in the future. And my hope is that by Sort of articulating these mistakes and what I learned from them, other folks can benefit. And so the four mistakes that I made are, first, we picked the wrong technology. We can get more into that. We also, as a team, we siloed work.

So work was divided up in not the best way. We fell into the premature optimization trap. And then maybe worst of all, we made way too many changes at one time. So I can go into detail on any of those.

So work was divided up in not the best way. We fell into the premature optimization trap. And then maybe worst of all, we made way too many changes at one time. So I can go into detail on any of those.

And absolutely. And I just want to kind of call out that there's like a certain amount of privilege that comes with being able to talk about our mistakes, right? I'm not worried that my boss is going to fire me. And I'm also not worried that Folks won't take me seriously for giving this talk. If anything, it probably improves my reputation as evidence by getting to talk to three of you gentlemen.

And absolutely. And I just want to kind of call out that there's like a certain amount of privilege that comes with being able to talk about our mistakes, right? I'm not worried that my boss is going to fire me. And I'm also not worried that Folks won't take me seriously for giving this talk. If anything, it probably improves my reputation as evidence by getting to talk to three of you gentlemen.

So I just want to call that out because I think it's important.

So I just want to call that out because I think it's important.

John, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. I think that for a lot of us, talking about mistakes openly and honestly, and what we learn from them actually builds our credibility. But that's not always the case, depending on sort of how you present what you look like. I think that, you know, you guys recently did an episode, I think, where you talked about issues with

John, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. I think that for a lot of us, talking about mistakes openly and honestly, and what we learn from them actually builds our credibility. But that's not always the case, depending on sort of how you present what you look like. I think that, you know, you guys recently did an episode, I think, where you talked about issues with

issues of hiring and getting equality in the workplace. And I think that that plays in here for sure.

issues of hiring and getting equality in the workplace. And I think that that plays in here for sure.

So the high level, at Ibotta, we have just a wonderful, majestic monolith Rails application. Actually, originally, the application was written in Scala. And then after about a month of that, they switched it over and rebuilt the whole thing in Rails. And it's been Rails ever since. So it's going on close, almost 10 years at this point. So it's a large application. It serves millions of users.

So the high level, at Ibotta, we have just a wonderful, majestic monolith Rails application. Actually, originally, the application was written in Scala. And then after about a month of that, they switched it over and rebuilt the whole thing in Rails. And it's been Rails ever since. So it's going on close, almost 10 years at this point. So it's a large application. It serves millions of users.