# Fair by design: orchestrating background jobs in Ruby

DevFeed: [Fair by design: orchestrating background jobs in Ruby](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/fair-by-design-orchestrating-background-jobs-in-ruby-19782.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/fair-by-design-orchestrating-background-jobs-in-ruby>)

Author: Travis Turner (richardturner@evilmartians.com)

Published: 2026-08-11T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Evil Martians](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/evil-martians.md>)

Topics: [Ruby](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ruby.md>), [jobs](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/jobs.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [autoscaling](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/autoscaling.md>)

Tags: [autoscaling](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/autoscaling.md>), [how-to](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/how-to.md>), [jobs](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/jobs.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [rails](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rails.md>), [redis](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/redis.md>), [ruby](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ruby.md>), [sidekiq](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sidekiq.md>)

## AI overview

This tutorial examines fairness in Ruby background-job processing. It explains how queue latency affects quality of service, why adding workers or autoscaling may be limited by shared resources and operational cost, and introduces background-job prioritization as a way to address bottlenecks.

## Source excerpt

Are you treating your users fairly? They could be stuck in the queue while a greedy user monopolizes resources. And you might not even know it! In this post, you'll see if it's time for you to take background job prioritization seriously, and how to make it fair for all users.