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Ruby on Rails is growing! As a Rails company grows, the application too becomes larger as more engineers work on it at the same time. There is an increasing need for companies to build out a "Rails Infrastructure" team. The team’s primary goal is to ensure the long-term success of the application and its engineers. But how? Let’s talk about the responsibilities and philosophy behind such a team. These learnings are from working on a team that supports 400+ engineers at one of the largest Rails applications. You’ll get some insight on what our team does in order to ensure a Rails application scales with its growth. Spoiler: There’s more to just enforcing Rubocop rules!
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In the presentation 'Lessons From A Rails Infrastructure Team', Maple Ong discusses the importance of establishing a dedicated Rails infrastructure team as Ruby on Rails applications scale. The talk is aimed at companies utilizing Rails and highlights how, as applications grow, they require consistent maintenance and upgrades to avoid vulnerabilities and ensure performance. Key points include: - **Rails Application Growth**: Ong shares the evolution of Gusto's main Rails application from 2013 to 2024, detailing its growth to 4.6 million lines of code and 400+ engineers. - **Formation of the Infrastructure Team**: Initially formed in 2019 to address the gaps in application maintenance, the team transitioned from volunteers to a structured group to handle upgrades, security, and developer productivity. - **Core Responsibilities**: The infrastructure team focuses on four categories: application maintenance (ensuring updates and security), shared resource management (such as background job infrastructure), developer productivity (improving development workflows), and application scalability (applying best practices). - **Signs for Needing a Team**: Organizations might need an infrastructure team if they notice rising build costs, reliance on outdated dependencies, or declining developer efficiency. - **Philosophies for Team Work**: Ong emphasizes aligning with the Ruby and Rails ecosystem, engaging with the community, and prioritizing regular gem dependency upgrades. - **Practical Examples of Contributions**: The team has made significant contributions such as improving memory profiles, enhancing Bundler features, and enabling a more streamlined CI/CD pipeline. - **Efficiency Improvements**: Implementing techniques like test mapping, the team reduced CI build times significantly—decreasing from 30 minutes to 10 minutes—demonstrating a commitment to continuous improvement and maintenance. - **Conclusion and Future Readiness**: Ong encourages early preparation for infrastructure needs to ensure smooth scaling and performance for growing applications, advocating that proactive care for Rails applications is essential for long-term success. Overall, the presentation combines insights based on real-world experiences at Gusto with practical advice for managing growing Rails applications effectively.
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