The pizza restaurant analogy is perfect — this is exactly how I explain it to junior devs too. We run a Node.js service that handles automated scheduling + report generation on a single Mac Mini, and worker threads literally saved us from rewriting the whole thing.
One pattern we landed on: a persistent worker pool (3-4 workers) that stays alive between tasks rather than spinning up/down per request. The startup cost of new Worker() adds up fast when you're processing queued jobs every few minutes. worker_threads with a simple round-robin dispatcher cut our p95 latency by ~60%.
Would love to see a follow-up on SharedArrayBuffer patterns — that's where things get really interesting (and tricky) for real-time data sharing between threads.