feat(talks): add new talk on YouTube backend scaling

Introduce a new talk titled "Scaling the Backend at YouTube: A Journey Through Massive Growth" to the talks.json file, along with its corresponding summary markdown file. This addition provides insights into YouTube's backend evolution and practical scaling lessons.

Author: aleksandarilic-vegait

src/talks/06-scaling-backend-at-youtube-sum.md

@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+# Scaling the Backend at YouTube: A Journey Through Massive Growth
+
+Imagine being part of a platform that grows from serving a few million users to billions, with video uploads increasing from hours to years of content per day. This is the fascinating journey that YouTube's engineering team experienced, and it's filled with valuable lessons for any developer facing scaling challenges.
+
+## The Early Days and Growing Pains
+
+When YouTube began, it was built on a relatively simple Python application with a MySQL database. The team had created a system that worked well for their initial needs, but as popularity exploded, they faced their first major scaling hurdle. The original architecture simply wasn't designed for the tsunami of users and content heading their way.
+
+Like pioneers charting unknown territory, the engineers had to make critical decisions quickly. They chose to migrate to a more robust backend while keeping the site running - similar to changing the engines of an airplane mid-flight!
+
+## The Evolution of YouTube's Architecture
+
+As our story progresses, YouTube's backend transformed dramatically. The team implemented a multi-tiered approach:
+
+- **Vitess**: A database clustering system that helped manage MySQL at scale
+- **Bigtable**: For handling massive amounts of metadata
+- **Specialized Storage Systems**: Custom-built for different types of data
+- **Microservices Architecture**: Breaking down the monolith into manageable pieces
+
+Each of these solutions came with its own challenges and learning opportunities. The engineers discovered that no single technology could solve all their problems - instead, they needed a carefully orchestrated ecosystem of specialized tools.
+
+## Real-World Tips from the Trenches
+
+The most valuable takeaways from YouTube's scaling journey aren't just about technology choices, but about engineering philosophy:
+
+1. **Start Simple**: Don't over-engineer early on. Begin with technologies you understand and that meet your current needs.
+
+2. **Measure Everything**: You can't improve what you don't measure. Implement comprehensive monitoring before scaling problems occur.
+
+3. **Incremental Migration**: When replacing systems, do it gradually. YouTube's team often ran old and new systems in parallel, carefully shifting traffic.
+
+4. **Design for Failure**: At YouTube's scale, failures are inevitable. The question isn't if components will fail, but how the system handles it when they do.
+
+5. **Cache Strategically**: Caching was crucial to YouTube's performance, but required careful implementation to avoid consistency issues.
+
+6. **Automate Operations**: Manual processes don't scale. The team invested heavily in automation tools for deployment, monitoring, and recovery.
+
+## The Human Element
+
+Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest challenges weren't always technical. Building teams with the right skills, maintaining knowledge as systems grew more complex, and creating a culture that balanced innovation with stability were equally important.
+
+The engineers who weathered YouTube's explosive growth emerged with battle-tested experience and a deep appreciation for pragmatic solutions over theoretical perfection.
+
+## Looking Forward
+
+As video quality increased from standard definition to 4K and beyond, as live streaming became commonplace, and as user expectations for performance grew ever higher, YouTube's backend continued to evolve. The journey never really ends - it just presents new challenges requiring creative solutions.
+
+For any developer or architect facing their own scaling challenges, YouTube's story offers both inspiration and practical guidance. Start where you are, measure carefully, and take incremental steps toward a more scalable future.

src/talks/talks.json

@@ -67,12 +67,30 @@
     "tags": [
       "scalability",
       "social graph",
-      "performance optimization", 
+      "performance optimization",
       "engineering culture",
       "caching",
       "horizontal scaling"
     ],
     "summary": "",
     "keyPoints": []
+  },
+  {
+    "id": "scaling-backend-at-youtube",
+    "title": "Scaling the Backend at YouTube: A Journey Through Massive Growth",
+    "description": "An exploration of how YouTube evolved its backend architecture to handle billions of users and massive content growth, with practical lessons on incremental scaling, technology choices, and engineering philosophy.",
+    "tags": [
+      "backend",
+      "scaling",
+      "youtube",
+      "databases",
+      "microservices",
+      "architecture"
+    ],
+    "date": "2023-11-15",
+    "author": "YouTube Engineering Team",
+    "file": "06-scaling-backend-at-youtube-sum.md",
+    "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yDO-tmIoXY",
+    "readTime": "8 min"
   }
 ]