Build, Deploy, and Merge Queues at Scale with Jon Block
From Hangar DX Podcast by Ankit Jain
February 26, 2026 · 37 min · Episode 45
About this episode
Jon Block discusses the importance of merge queues and shares best practices for scaling build and deploy processes in engineering organizations.
“Engineers don’t always like merge queue because they have to wait longer for their PRs to merge. But the trade-off is that the quality of those merges will be higher, and the company will have less downtime and outages,” says Jon Block, founder of LowRouchAdvisor. Using a merge queue is like wearing a seatbelt, he adds, the only responsible thing to do for large engineering organizations that ship products that matter. Jon also shares best practices and lessons learned about scaling build and deploy from his 26 years of experience. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Developer Experience and Scaling Repositories 01:37 Managing Repositories in Large Organizations 05:24 Monorepo vs. Multirepo: Pros and Cons 07:53 Challenges of Merge Queues and Deployment at Scale 13:02 GitHub Merge Queue Limitations and Solutions 15:36 Batching, Stability, and Deployment Strategies 19:16 Train Method of Deployment and Rollbacks 22:37 Build Systems, Bazel, and Build Avoidance 23:20 Impact of Flaky Tests and Automation 28:46 Adopting Merge Queues and Cultural Challenges 34:11 AI in Development: Opportunities and Risks 37:41 Closing Remarks and Resources About Jon Block Jon Block has spent 26 years in…
People in this episode
Host: Ankit Jain
Guest: Jon Block
Topics covered
- merge queues
- scaling build and deploy
- developer experience
- repository management
- deployment strategies
- software engineering
Keywords
- merge queue
- deployment
- software engineering
- repository management
- build systems
- automation
- flaky tests
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Low Touch Advisors, GitHub
More episodes of Hangar DX Podcast
- "We Don't Use AI to Produce Magic", Wayne Duso, 1Password · June 4, 2026 · 38 min
- Ship to Production Without Code Review? with Jade Rubick · May 21, 2026 · 32 min
- The Hidden Cost of AI-Generated Code: Cognitive Debt and Intent Debt · May 7, 2026 · 40 min
- All In on Claude Code at 400-Engineer Scale with Brian Scanlan, Intercom · April 23, 2026 · 43 min
- Are You Using AI to Go Faster in the Wrong Direction? | Steve Pereira on Flow and Engineering · April 9, 2026 · 36 min
- How Honeycomb Is 2Xing Its Engineers with AI · March 26, 2026 · 32 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Hangar DX Podcast podcast page.