Jesse Spivak

And so ACA, sorry, John, to get back to your original question, ACA is really good at streaming data, at streaming large amounts, high volume data. And Ibotta will get on the order of several hundred thousand of these content awarded events per day, which seems like a lot, but it's actually much lower than I think what ACA can kind of deal with or is designed to deal with out of the box.

And so ACA, sorry, John, to get back to your original question, ACA is really good at streaming data, at streaming large amounts, high volume data. And Ibotta will get on the order of several hundred thousand of these content awarded events per day, which seems like a lot, but it's actually much lower than I think what ACA can kind of deal with or is designed to deal with out of the box.

Yeah, perfect. So, yeah, we basically... This comes down to some team issues again and not an issue with Akka. So the team issue was basically that at the start of this project, we scaled up our team. We're like, this is a lot of work. We need to bring in some artillery. And we brought in a new developer from outside the company who is awesome. She's a rock star.

Yeah, perfect. So, yeah, we basically... This comes down to some team issues again and not an issue with Akka. So the team issue was basically that at the start of this project, we scaled up our team. We're like, this is a lot of work. We need to bring in some artillery. And we brought in a new developer from outside the company who is awesome. She's a rock star.

And it was coming from the ad product space. And with dealing with volume of streaming data at a scale much higher than what we needed or we're going to be dealing with in any near future.

And it was coming from the ad product space. And with dealing with volume of streaming data at a scale much higher than what we needed or we're going to be dealing with in any near future.

and you know she was coming from i believe an aka shop and so she joins the team we're excited to have her we think she's a rock star i mean she is a rock star and she's like this is a perfect use case for aka we're like okay never heard of that but you know we trust you you crushed our interview and we think you're amazing so yeah let's that sounds pretty good and

and you know she was coming from i believe an aka shop and so she joins the team we're excited to have her we think she's a rock star i mean she is a rock star and she's like this is a perfect use case for aka we're like okay never heard of that but you know we trust you you crushed our interview and we think you're amazing so yeah let's that sounds pretty good and

Again, this isn't a knock against ACA. I think this is just that in our company, we have a ton of infrastructure set up to support the tools that our company has sort of blessed that are kind of frequently in use. In fact, we have like a name for that. We call it the paved road, which is like if you're an engineer, you have a lot of autonomy about what you use.

Again, this isn't a knock against ACA. I think this is just that in our company, we have a ton of infrastructure set up to support the tools that our company has sort of blessed that are kind of frequently in use. In fact, we have like a name for that. We call it the paved road, which is like if you're an engineer, you have a lot of autonomy about what you use.

But if you stay on the paved road, it should be an easy path. And Akka, which we use with Java or Scala typically, is not on Ibotta's paved road. So we had to kind of have a contentious meeting, a contentious conversation with the architects at Ibotta and say, no, we believe in our developer and we think that she knows what she's doing and we're ready to sort of make our bed and lay in it.

But if you stay on the paved road, it should be an easy path. And Akka, which we use with Java or Scala typically, is not on Ibotta's paved road. So we had to kind of have a contentious meeting, a contentious conversation with the architects at Ibotta and say, no, we believe in our developer and we think that she knows what she's doing and we're ready to sort of make our bed and lay in it.

And they were like, well, you know, as long as you know that. So they let us kind of, they gave us just enough rope to, I forgot how the rest of that goes, to hang ourselves with.

And they were like, well, you know, as long as you know that. So they let us kind of, they gave us just enough rope to, I forgot how the rest of that goes, to hang ourselves with.

Yeah. So this, and this kind of gets into the next problem, which was the siloed work. So we're starting to work on building this Akka-powered race car of a microservice to pull billing logic out of our Rails monolith. And there's sort of two streams of work. There's the development of the Akka microservice, which is, we were writing, we were using Kotlin, which is a JVM.

Yeah. So this, and this kind of gets into the next problem, which was the siloed work. So we're starting to work on building this Akka-powered race car of a microservice to pull billing logic out of our Rails monolith. And there's sort of two streams of work. There's the development of the Akka microservice, which is, we were writing, we were using Kotlin, which is a JVM.

It's kind of a nicer Java. It's what Android apps are written in. It's actually pretty nice. So we have that work going on. And then we have to integrate that microservice, sorry, into the Rails monolith. So I ended up taking on a lot of the integration work and the other developer took on most of the Akka and Kotlin work. So we have these sort of two very isolated pieces of work that are siloed.

It's kind of a nicer Java. It's what Android apps are written in. It's actually pretty nice. So we have that work going on. And then we have to integrate that microservice, sorry, into the Rails monolith. So I ended up taking on a lot of the integration work and the other developer took on most of the Akka and Kotlin work. So we have these sort of two very isolated pieces of work that are siloed.

And then something terrible happened. And I don't blame this person at all because I wouldn't want to be on my team Anyway, she decided that she was much more interested in data engineering, and she moved to a different team in the company. And that's actually a great thing about working at Ibotta.

And then something terrible happened. And I don't blame this person at all because I wouldn't want to be on my team Anyway, she decided that she was much more interested in data engineering, and she moved to a different team in the company. And that's actually a great thing about working at Ibotta.