This is a really interesting video I came across on Google Video. It is a presentation that was given at Google Tech Talks in June of 2007.
The talk was given by Cuong Do Guong, who was one of the first YouTube employees and is currently an engineering manager at YouTube/Google. He was part of the engineering team that scaled the YouTube software and hardware infrastructure from its infancy to its current scale. Prior to YouTube/Google, he held various software development and management positions at PayPal and Inktomi
He dives into a discussion around some of the scalability challenges that have arisen during YouTube's short but extraordinary history. YouTube has grown incredibly rapidly despite having had only a handful of people responsible for scaling the site. Topics of discussion include hardware scalability, software scalability, and database scalability.
He is actually a pretty good speaker, even though the topic is dry, he has a very interesting perspective because of his experience in a rocketship to the moon.
“One of the key phrases we had in the early days was ‘These are good problems to have,’” Do said. “And after a while we’re like, ‘I’m going to kill the next person who says that.’”
