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Seems odd to take this advice from a company like Twitter when you compare them to companies like Instagram and WhatsApp. How to keep a lot of engineers busy an

Seems odd to take this advice from a company like Twitter when you compare them to companies like Instagram and WhatsApp. How to keep a lot of engineers busy and burn a lot of money, they could offer lots of good tips there.

erdevs 11y ago
I had the same thought exactly. :)
meeper16 11y ago
Twitter != anything related to true software engineering. Twitter == majordomo wrapper.
- rhizome 11y ago
  Nice one, I've never heard it phrased like that.
powerfulninja 11y ago
Why? Because Twitter as a company hasn't produced effective revenue? Twitter (or their employees personal projects) has brought us Bower, Bootstrap, Typeahead, Flight and many other fantastic open source tools to make devs more productive. I think they are a great company to take advice from in this specific area.
- tajano 11y ago
  > Why? Because Twitter as a company hasn't produced effective revenue? Because they're lecturing about engineering efficiency, yet they require 2,000 engineers to support their product. By comparison, WhatsApp scaled to 3X as many active users with a engineering team 1/40th the size. Instagram also runs circles around them in this respect. For a team so huge and so productive, where is the output? More productivity tools? Maybe Twitter should pivot into that space.
  - jurre 11y ago
    Just the number of active users is a really bad metric in this case. WhatsApps product is much, much simpler than twitters products.
    - tajano 11y ago
      > WhatsApps product is much, much simpler than twitters products. Can you enumerate Twitter's products? Perhaps Instagram is a closer comparison -- broadcast photos instead of broadcast 140 characters. And you have a much smaller engineering team, much faster growth, twice as many active users, and far fewer fail whales. Regardless of the comparisons, 2,000 engineers seems excessive in proportion to Twitter's product, which suggests engineering inefficiency.
      - ampersandy 11y ago
        Don't forget that Twitter has a comprehensive advertising platform. The partnerships, sales, tooling, and ad auction system themselves are likely just as complicated (or more so) than the basic Twitter product. Instagram has only recently started to monetize the product -- it's almost unfair to compare the size of the engineering teams supporting the systems.
        hugh4 11y ago
        It still seems bizarre to need two thousand software engineers for something whose functionality is as simple as twitter.
        devonkim 11y ago
        I believe the primary difference can be summarized in two words - data analytics. Twitter has a ton more analytics options for its users than WhatsApp appears to have mostly because, like Google, Twitter is more of an advertising platform than a utility platform as far as its actual business model goes. WhatsApp is potentially b2c as a business while I'd argue Twitter is really b2b. My experience with enterprise businesses makes it hard for me to believe that going b2b is actually efficient as much as it is about revenue assurance and scaling for sales / marketing culture organizations.

erdevs 11y ago

I had the same thought exactly. :)

meeper16 11y ago

Twitter != anything related to true software engineering. Twitter == majordomo wrapper.

rhizome 11y ago
Nice one, I've never heard it phrased like that.

powerfulninja 11y ago

Why? Because Twitter as a company hasn't produced effective revenue? Twitter (or their employees personal projects) has brought us Bower, Bootstrap, Typeahead, Flight and many other fantastic open source tools to make devs more productive. I think they are a great company to take advice from in this specific area.

tajano 11y ago
> Why? Because Twitter as a company hasn't produced effective revenue? Because they're lecturing about engineering efficiency, yet they require 2,000 engineers to support their product. By comparison, WhatsApp scaled to 3X as many active users with a engineering team 1/40th the size. Instagram also runs circles around them in this respect. For a team so huge and so productive, where is the output? More productivity tools? Maybe Twitter should pivot into that space.
- jurre 11y ago
  Just the number of active users is a really bad metric in this case. WhatsApps product is much, much simpler than twitters products.
  - tajano 11y ago
    > WhatsApps product is much, much simpler than twitters products. Can you enumerate Twitter's products? Perhaps Instagram is a closer comparison -- broadcast photos instead of broadcast 140 characters. And you have a much smaller engineering team, much faster growth, twice as many active users, and far fewer fail whales. Regardless of the comparisons, 2,000 engineers seems excessive in proportion to Twitter's product, which suggests engineering inefficiency.
    - ampersandy 11y ago
      Don't forget that Twitter has a comprehensive advertising platform. The partnerships, sales, tooling, and ad auction system themselves are likely just as complicated (or more so) than the basic Twitter product. Instagram has only recently started to monetize the product -- it's almost unfair to compare the size of the engineering teams supporting the systems.
      - hugh4 11y ago
        It still seems bizarre to need two thousand software engineers for something whose functionality is as simple as twitter.
        devonkim 11y ago
        I believe the primary difference can be summarized in two words - data analytics. Twitter has a ton more analytics options for its users than WhatsApp appears to have mostly because, like Google, Twitter is more of an advertising platform than a utility platform as far as its actual business model goes. WhatsApp is potentially b2c as a business while I'd argue Twitter is really b2b. My experience with enterprise businesses makes it hard for me to believe that going b2b is actually efficient as much as it is about revenue assurance and scaling for sales / marketing culture organizations.