Automation Run Rampant
summary
Rapid growth forces a choice: 620 engineers supporting 580 systems prompts investment in automation. Concrete patterns appear — Swiss Army knife (Kubernetes) for one-step deploys and scaling, screwdriver (Capistrano) for focused repeatable deployments, and duct tape (a Docker wrapper bundle script) that masks complexity but rots fast. Decisions hinge on tradeoffs: who must support it, how opinionated it is, how often it needs maintenance, and whether the automation actually reduces duplicated work.
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chapters (17)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:58About Kate
- 1:53What is automation
- 2:42Why did Rea invest in automation
- 3:45The number of engineers at Rea
- 4:19The benefits of automation
- 5:17How to build automation
- 5:45Swiss Army Knife Tool
- 6:35Demonstration
- 7:07Swiss Army Knife
- 9:51Screwdriver Tool
- 10:09Capistrano
- 11:44What is Capistrano
- 12:29Why use screwdriver tools
- 14:21Ducttape tool
- 15:27Project background
- 20:09Review
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