# Kelly Sutton: Custodians of the Monolith

EP-048 | March 30, 2020 | 37:42



Topics: Architecture, Refactoring


Robby speaks with Kelly Sutton, Software Engineer at Gusto. They discuss how to deal with technical debt from the pre-product/market fit era, the benefits of monoliths and knowing when to begin abstracting to micro-services,  and the challenges of keeping Ruby on Rails applications up-to-date. Kelly also gives advice for developers who want to convince stakeholders to invest in refactoring projects – a common challenge.





## Show Notes

Robby speaks with Kelly Sutton, Software Engineer at Gusto. They discuss how to deal with technical debt from the pre-product/market fit era, the benefits of monoliths and knowing when to begin abstracting to micro-services, and the challenges of keeping Ruby on Rails applications up-to-date. Kelly also gives advice for developers who want to convince stakeholders to invest in refactoring projects – a common challenge.

## Helpful Links

- [Follow Kelly](https://twitter.com/kellysutton) on Twitter
- [Kelly's website](https://kellysutton.com)
- [Book] [Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed](https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp/0300078153) by James C. Scott
- Talk on [Desirable Tests](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LOdKDqdWYU&list=PLlmVY7qtgT_lkbrk9iZNizp978mVzpBKl)

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## Transcript