How Pinterest delivers software at scale

Go Time: Golang, Software Engineering

Nishant Roy, Engineering Manager at Pinterest Ads, joins Johnny & Jon to detail how they’ve managed to continue shipping quality software from startup through hypergrowth all the way to IPO. Prepare to learn a lot about Pinterest’s integration and deployment pipeline, observability stack, Go-based services and more.

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Sponsors:

• Square – Develop on the platform that sellers trust. There is a massive opportunity for developers to support Square sellers by building apps for today’s business needs. Learn more at changelog.com/square to dive into the docs, APIs, SDKs and to create your Square Developer account — tell them Changelog sent you.
• FireHydrant – The reliability platform for every developer. Incidents impact everyone, not just SREs. FireHydrant gives teams the tools to maintain service catalogs, respond to incidents, communicate through status pages, and learn with retrospectives. Small teams up to 10 people can get started for free with all FireHydrant features included. No credit card required to sign up. Learn more at firehydrant.com/
• Calhoun Black Friday – Go Time co-host Jon Calhoun is having a Black Friday sale on November 21st-29th. All paid courses will be 50% OFF. Learn more about Jon’s courses at calhoun.io/courses

Featuring:

• Nishant Roy – Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn
• Johnny Boursiquot – Twitter, GitHub, Website
• Jon Calhoun – Twitter, GitHub, Website

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Opener
(00:47) - Sponsor: Square
(01:41) - It's Go Time!
(02:30) - Welcoming Nishant
(03:37) - Nishant's background at Pinterest
(05:28) - The work life of a Pinterest engineer
(07:55) - Pinterest's integration & deployment pipeline
(15:23) - Testing in production?
(16:29) - Sponsor: FireHydrant
(17:57) - Pre-submit tests vs unit tests
(20:26) - Pinterest's observability stack
(21:58) - Pinterest's Go-based services
(24:27) - On Go performance tuning
(28:05) - Maintaining velocity during hypergrowth
(32:14) - Tool selection criteria changes at scale
(33:58) - Standardizing tooling across multiple teams
(36:15) - Pinterest's documentation template
(38:55) - Sponsor: Calhoun Black Friday
(40:03) - Incidents help fill in the gaps
(42:49) - Mentoring junior devs
(43:54) - It's time for Unpopular Opinions!
(44:26) - Nishant's unpop
(46:02) - Opining on Nishant's unpop
(52:08) - It's too snowy for Jon to unpop
(52:46) - Time to Go!
(53:18) - Outro