Episode Details

In this episode of the Business Cloud Native, host Emily Omier talks with Jon Tirsen, who is engineering lead for storage at Cash App. This conversation focuses on Cash App’s cloud native journey, and how they are working to build an application that is more scalable, flexible, and easier to manage.

The conversation covers:

• How the need for hybrid cloud services and uniform program models led Cash App to Kubernetes. 
• Some of the major scaling issues that Cash App was facing. For example, the company needed to increase user capacity, and add new product lines. 
• The process of trying to scale Cash App’s MySQL database, and the decision to split up their dataset into smaller parts that could run on different databases.
• Cash App’s monolithic application, which contains hundreds of thousands of lines of code — and why it’s becoming increasingly difficult to manage and grow. 
• How Jon’s team is trying to balance product/ business and technical needs, and deliver value while rearchitecting their system to scale their operations.
• Why Cash App is working to build small, product-oriented teams, and a system where products can be executed and deployed at their own pace through the cloud. Jon also discusses some of the challenges that are preventing this from happening.
• How Cash App was able to help during the pandemic, by facilitating easy stimulus transfers through their service — and why it wouldn’t have been possible without a cloud native architecture. 

Links:

• Cash App: https://cash.app/
• Square: https://squareup.com/us/en
• Jon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tirsen?lang=en
• Connect with Jon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tirsen/?originalSubdomain=au
• The Business of Cloud Native: http://thebusinessofcloudnative.com 

Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native podcast where we explore how end users talk and think about the transition to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures.

Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. My name is Emily Omier, I'm here chatting with Jon Tirsen.

Jon: Happy to be here. My name is, as you said, Jon Tirsen, and I work as the engineering lead of storage here at Cash App. I've been at Cash for maybe four or five years now. So, I've been with it from the very early days. And before Cash, I was doing a startup, that failed, for five years. So, it's a travel guide in the mobile phone startup. And before that, I was at Google working on another failed product called the Google Wave, which you might remember, and before that, it was a company called ThoughtWorks, which some of you probably know about as well.

Emily: And in case people don't know, the Cash App is part of Square, right?

Jon: Yes. Cash App is where we're separating all the different products quite a lot these days. So, it used to be called just Square Cash, but now it has its own branding and its own identity, and its own leadership, and everything. So, we're trying to call it an ecosystem of startups. So, each product line can run its business the way it wants to, to a large degree.

Emily: And so, what do you actually spend your day doing?

Jon: Most of my days, I'm still code, and doing various operational tasks, and setting up systems, and testing, and that sort of thing. I also, maybe about half my day, I spend on more management tasks, which is reviewing documents, writing documents, and talking to people trying