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I certainly appreciate their openness, and like to follow their progress, but... ...could anyone explain to this naive commenter how it takes 90 (80 for that m

I certainly appreciate their openness, and like to follow their progress, but... ...could anyone explain to this naive commenter how it takes 90 (80 for that matter) people to run essentially a 'cronjob as a service' business?

shemnon42 10y ago
crontab is the easiest part. It's the integration to the moving targets that are social media APIs that you are paying for.
jdavis703 10y ago
At my company we had non-technical staff that had to update a YAML file to post editorial content to the homepage and mobile apps. For an engineer, IT person, etc, this is trivial. Not so for other people. I had to spend so much time supporting this I replaced it with Contentful (an API-based CMS). These are the kind of pain points that companies like Buffer try to solve.
Arcsech 10y ago
Let's do some simple estimation! I haven't really looked at their spreadsheet, so this is just guesswork. The product is fairly simple technologically yes, but the value is provided by making it easy to use so the customer saves time (= money). To do that you need a few UX people plus some developers (especially with web and mobile apps), call that 15 engineers/designers total, plus another 5 for ops. Now you need a sales team since your real money will be in selling to enterprises - call that 15 people. And on top of that you need customer support, and call that another 20 people. Now that we're up to 55 people, we need another 10 people worth of HR and 5 bean counters, that takes us to 70. Now cap it off with 10 managers/executives and we're up to 80, and I'm sure there's some things I was off about or forgot. It's easy to forget about all the non-engineering resources you need for a medium-sized business.
- joshdickson 10y ago
  If anyone reads this comment, FYI it is not remotely accurate. They have 23 just in engineering and 6 designers, with 2 in ops. We have AWS and these guys have incredibly run of the mill needs, why on earth would you need 1 ops person for every 3 developers... They have nobody doing what you'd classify as a "sales." They have some marketing people, people doing whatever "customer research" is, a number of people working in "community" and a bunch working in customer success.
- arctor 10y ago
  >Now that we're up to 55 people, we need another 10 people worth of HR 1 HR person per 5.5 employees? This is insanely high. A company that size need 2-3, tops.
  - robbiemitchell 10y ago
    You need more in HR (or more accurately, HR/finance) if you have lots of remote employees, especially international. That's a ton of extra administration to deal with.
danso 10y ago
Sales and account maintenance...I don't think it's a service/value proposition that companies (who aren't satisfied with building their own cron job) will just grok right away.
tomashertus 10y ago
Your comment imply that you never worked in a company with larger customer base or in a company with sales department. I think this kind of comments is highly disrespectful to the team, given the the style how Buffer is managed and how transparent they are.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
  i think it was disrespectful of you to call the question disrespectful, and then fail to give an answer, lady. it takes 90 people because 85 of them do nothing all day.
- hk__2 10y ago
  It’s not disrespectful if it’s a sincere question.
trjordan 10y ago
1) cron sucks, I hate using it. $10 / month to never configure cron again would be great. 2) Have you ever used Buffer? Chrome extension, in-app experience, cross-posting to multiple sites, drag-and-drop re-ordering, ...? It's not a single feature, it's "organize my social media posting".
- blahi 10y ago
  Yeah, but Hootsuite costs $10/month paid and has a generous free plan, so yeah...
  - dangrossman 10y ago
    Hootsuite has nearly 1000 employees, so this isn't a good counterexample.
    - blahi 10y ago
      Counter example of what? I am pointing out how a company sucks out all of the air in the room.
  - aioprisan 10y ago
    Buffer's scheduling tools are far superior and a generous free plan as well. http://bigfishpr.com/social-media-smackdown-hootsuite-vs-buffer/ http://bigfishpr.com/social-media-smackdown-hootsuite-vs-buf...
    - blahi 10y ago
      "Far superior" is quite a stretch and hootsuite has it's own advantages.
deleted 10y ago
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shemnon42 10y ago

crontab is the easiest part. It's the integration to the moving targets that are social media APIs that you are paying for.

jdavis703 10y ago

At my company we had non-technical staff that had to update a YAML file to post editorial content to the homepage and mobile apps. For an engineer, IT person, etc, this is trivial. Not so for other people. I had to spend so much time supporting this I replaced it with Contentful (an API-based CMS). These are the kind of pain points that companies like Buffer try to solve.

Arcsech 10y ago

Let's do some simple estimation! I haven't really looked at their spreadsheet, so this is just guesswork. The product is fairly simple technologically yes, but the value is provided by making it easy to use so the customer saves time (= money). To do that you need a few UX people plus some developers (especially with web and mobile apps), call that 15 engineers/designers total, plus another 5 for ops. Now you need a sales team since your real money will be in selling to enterprises - call that 15 people. And on top of that you need customer support, and call that another 20 people. Now that we're up to 55 people, we need another 10 people worth of HR and 5 bean counters, that takes us to 70. Now cap it off with 10 managers/executives and we're up to 80, and I'm sure there's some things I was off about or forgot. It's easy to forget about all the non-engineering resources you need for a medium-sized business.

joshdickson 10y ago
If anyone reads this comment, FYI it is not remotely accurate. They have 23 just in engineering and 6 designers, with 2 in ops. We have AWS and these guys have incredibly run of the mill needs, why on earth would you need 1 ops person for every 3 developers... They have nobody doing what you'd classify as a "sales." They have some marketing people, people doing whatever "customer research" is, a number of people working in "community" and a bunch working in customer success.
arctor 10y ago
>Now that we're up to 55 people, we need another 10 people worth of HR 1 HR person per 5.5 employees? This is insanely high. A company that size need 2-3, tops.
- robbiemitchell 10y ago
  You need more in HR (or more accurately, HR/finance) if you have lots of remote employees, especially international. That's a ton of extra administration to deal with.

danso 10y ago

Sales and account maintenance...I don't think it's a service/value proposition that companies (who aren't satisfied with building their own cron job) will just grok right away.

tomashertus 10y ago

Your comment imply that you never worked in a company with larger customer base or in a company with sales department. I think this kind of comments is highly disrespectful to the team, given the the style how Buffer is managed and how transparent they are.

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
i think it was disrespectful of you to call the question disrespectful, and then fail to give an answer, lady. it takes 90 people because 85 of them do nothing all day.
hk__2 10y ago
It’s not disrespectful if it’s a sincere question.

trjordan 10y ago

1) cron sucks, I hate using it. $10 / month to never configure cron again would be great. 2) Have you ever used Buffer? Chrome extension, in-app experience, cross-posting to multiple sites, drag-and-drop re-ordering, ...? It's not a single feature, it's "organize my social media posting".

blahi 10y ago
Yeah, but Hootsuite costs $10/month paid and has a generous free plan, so yeah...
- dangrossman 10y ago
  Hootsuite has nearly 1000 employees, so this isn't a good counterexample.
  - blahi 10y ago
    Counter example of what? I am pointing out how a company sucks out all of the air in the room.
- aioprisan 10y ago
  Buffer's scheduling tools are far superior and a generous free plan as well. http://bigfishpr.com/social-media-smackdown-hootsuite-vs-buffer/ http://bigfishpr.com/social-media-smackdown-hootsuite-vs-buf...
  - blahi 10y ago
    "Far superior" is quite a stretch and hootsuite has it's own advantages.

deleted 10y ago

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