7 ms·

Twitter's best bet is cut costs by bring employee count down to 100, 50 sales related, 50 engineering and move their infrastructure to AWS/Google Cloud which ta

Twitter's best bet is cut costs by bring employee count down to 100, 50 sales related, 50 engineering and move their infrastructure to AWS/Google Cloud which take the company to profitability. I think once they become profitable, it opens a lot more opportunities to explore new markets. Right now they are in a scramble to get users. Being profitable and focusing on one thing at a time will do them wonders. Should start by shutting down Periscope and have a new tab in the app for Live.

sambobeckingham 10y ago
50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?
- sputknick 10y ago
  Serious question (because I've never worked on a site that large) does the size of the site mean anything as to how many engineers are needed to maintain it? I would think it would be more a function of complexity?
  - luhn 10y ago
    I don't have any experience with large-scale sites either, but here's my view: It is a function of complexity, but complexity is often necessitated by scale. More users means more problems with scale, which leads to increased complexity to address the problems, which leads to a larger team needed to maintain the software. That being said, 50 engineers seems enough to me for maintenance.
  - adventured 10y ago
    There is a loose correlation, yes. Security, abuse / harassment, fraud, community interaction, developer relations, 24/7 maintenance & ops, APIs, marketing & PR, legal, advertising, physical security / cleaning etc (whether outsourced or not it's a cost), secretarial, accounting, human resources & recruiting, sales, engineering, various management and so on. The notion that you could run a $2.5 to $3 billion sales business with 100 people is a very bad joke. To deliver on that kind of sales level, you need more than a hundred people working in your sales organization alone. There are only a few types of businesses that can operate that thin at that size of sales, most of which are in the financial world. Twitter doesn't need to cut down to 100 people to become nicely profitable, they need to cut down to 1,000 - 1,500 (while reducing infrastructure costs). Facebook delivers $1.5 million in sales per employee. Twitter's overall business is less complex and easier to operate than Facebook, they could deliver a higher ratio.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Whatsapp only had 50 engineers even when they reached 900M users. Now, granted, Twitter may be a more complex system, but assuming they would just be maintaining it, they could be enough.
  - dagamer34 10y ago
    WhatsApp isn't real-time, and there's no reason for traffic 2 weeks ago to be any bigger than tomorrow. However, there's a Presidential Debate tonight so you know Twitter's traffic is going to be off the charts.
    - seizethecheese 10y ago
      WhatsApp isn't real time?
      - mullen 10y ago
        Twitter and WhatsApp are both Real Time. However, if they could save a lot money going from Real Time to Near Real Time, they should do it.
    - GFischer 10y ago
      I don't know where you live, but people use Whatsapp groups a lot during and after an event.
- funkyy 10y ago
  Look at WhatsApp.
  - nothrabannosir 10y ago
    And see what? Mostly 1-to-1 events, no search, no broadcast, no history, not badgered with legal matters on any comparable scale, ... I don't think it's comparable.
    - funkyy 10y ago
      Legal would be outsourced, marketing same, spam control - yup, the same. That leaves developers and critical function staff. Twitter could easily work with 200 staff from 2 locations.
      - sanderjd 10y ago
        I'm curious: do you have experience running an organization like this, or are you speculating?
        funkyy 10y ago
        Working for. I was working for an outsourcing company that catered for companies like that. My hourly rate were ridiculously high, but still companies would be better off hiring us, than employing.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  I doubt 50 people is enough to even field the various legal requests Twitter gets during a normal month.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Whether or not it's 50 people to field legal requests, it's certainly more than zero. And I'm sure that you don't need to look hard to find complaints that, even given current staffing levels, it's hard to reach a human who can deal with a hijacked account/harassment/etc. Scaling up from narrowly scoped technical support takes a lot more people.
- GFischer 10y ago
  As many mentioned, Whatsapp runs on 1/20th the number of Twitter employees. It does have less features, but many of Twitter's are of dubious value.
debaserab2 10y ago
> move their infrastructure to AWS/Google Cloud which take the company to profitability How exactly does that work?
- luhn 10y ago
  Yeah, that was my one gripe with the comment. If you've already invested in creating your own infrastructure like Twitter has, moving to a public cloud is throwing money down the drain.
  - sdenton4 10y ago
    OTOH, continuing to develop that infrastructure may be continuing to place money on a losing bet... If they're actually running their own infra cheaper than cloud would allow, they should absolutely keep going with their own. But it's foolish to keep doing something simply because it's what you're already doing.
    - XorNot 10y ago
      There's a fairly highly probability this is true? AWS/GCE are not cheap. They're cost-effective for certain classes of use-case, but beyond a given scale, or with certain base-level requirements, you're way better off colocating a bunch of a machines.
      - mullen 10y ago
        AWS can be cheap if you architect right. However, bandwidth costs are going to kill you at AWS.
      - notyourwork 10y ago
        My understanding is Netflix uses AWS for their infrastructure. Are they not on a similar scale as twitter with similar needs? Or is there a difference I am not seeing, perhaps a different use case. (This is a serious question, I am not doubting you.)
hbosch 10y ago
But the question is how do you reduce? How do you decide who to keep, when whittling down to ~100 from 4000 (or whatever the current number is)? From my experience, this type of re-org leaves the resultant company unsustainably top-heavy. I recently left a company who downsized but refused to hire anyone "junior level" because their pivot "requires all stars". And we all know, when everyone is a senior, no one is...
EnderMB 10y ago
I agree that they should cut costs, but I don't agree with your thoughts of how they do so. One of the notable things about Twitter is that they're a huge marketing machine. They have hundreds of employees that handle sales, marketing, advertising. Hell, they've acquired startups that handle advertising analytics, and have brought them in-house to build their own platform. They now directly sell contracts to TV channels and businesses that allow them to view how their brands interact on Twitter. I'd argue that this has helped to create bloat. Anyone that has had to use Twitter's API over the years can see that they've gone from being an incredibly open company to building up a walled garden to protect their brand, in a similar way to how Facebook scaled back their efforts to be an application/gaming platform. If I were Twitter, I'd give teams the opportunity to split from the company, but to continue to use their platform. If they believe in the product they've built within Twitter, they can be happy to compete against the open market. It allows them to drastically cut their workforce in key areas, while re-opening their product to the world. They can continue to be a sales company, but can fully allow others to continue to build great things on their platform, or to help shape how it works in the next decade.
EnderMB 10y ago
I agree that they should cut costs, but I don't agree with your thoughts of how they do so. One of the notable things about Twitter is that they're a huge marketing machine. They have hundreds of employees that handle sales, marketing, advertising. Hell, they've acquired startups that handle advertising analytics, and have brought them in-house to build their own platform. They now directly sell contracts to TV channels and businesses that allow them to view how their brands interact on Twitter. I'd argue that this has helped to create bloat. Anyone that has had to use Twitter's API over the years can see that they've gone from being an incredibly open company to building up a walled garden to protect their brand, in a similar way to how Facebook scaled back their efforts to be an application/gaming platform. If I were Twitter, I'd give teams the opportunity to split from the company, but to continue to use their platform. If they believe in the product they've built within Twitter, they can be happy to compete against the open market. It allows them to drastically cut their workforce in key areas, while re-opening their product to the world. They can continue to be a sales company, but can fully allow others to continue to build great things on their platform, or to help shape how it works in the next decade.

sambobeckingham 10y ago

50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?

sputknick 10y ago
Serious question (because I've never worked on a site that large) does the size of the site mean anything as to how many engineers are needed to maintain it? I would think it would be more a function of complexity?
- luhn 10y ago
  I don't have any experience with large-scale sites either, but here's my view: It is a function of complexity, but complexity is often necessitated by scale. More users means more problems with scale, which leads to increased complexity to address the problems, which leads to a larger team needed to maintain the software. That being said, 50 engineers seems enough to me for maintenance.
- adventured 10y ago
  There is a loose correlation, yes. Security, abuse / harassment, fraud, community interaction, developer relations, 24/7 maintenance & ops, APIs, marketing & PR, legal, advertising, physical security / cleaning etc (whether outsourced or not it's a cost), secretarial, accounting, human resources & recruiting, sales, engineering, various management and so on. The notion that you could run a $2.5 to $3 billion sales business with 100 people is a very bad joke. To deliver on that kind of sales level, you need more than a hundred people working in your sales organization alone. There are only a few types of businesses that can operate that thin at that size of sales, most of which are in the financial world. Twitter doesn't need to cut down to 100 people to become nicely profitable, they need to cut down to 1,000 - 1,500 (while reducing infrastructure costs). Facebook delivers $1.5 million in sales per employee. Twitter's overall business is less complex and easier to operate than Facebook, they could deliver a higher ratio.
icebraining 10y ago
Whatsapp only had 50 engineers even when they reached 900M users. Now, granted, Twitter may be a more complex system, but assuming they would just be maintaining it, they could be enough.
- dagamer34 10y ago
  WhatsApp isn't real-time, and there's no reason for traffic 2 weeks ago to be any bigger than tomorrow. However, there's a Presidential Debate tonight so you know Twitter's traffic is going to be off the charts.
  - seizethecheese 10y ago
    WhatsApp isn't real time?
    - mullen 10y ago
      Twitter and WhatsApp are both Real Time. However, if they could save a lot money going from Real Time to Near Real Time, they should do it.
  - GFischer 10y ago
    I don't know where you live, but people use Whatsapp groups a lot during and after an event.
funkyy 10y ago
Look at WhatsApp.
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  And see what? Mostly 1-to-1 events, no search, no broadcast, no history, not badgered with legal matters on any comparable scale, ... I don't think it's comparable.
  - funkyy 10y ago
    Legal would be outsourced, marketing same, spam control - yup, the same. That leaves developers and critical function staff. Twitter could easily work with 200 staff from 2 locations.
    - sanderjd 10y ago
      I'm curious: do you have experience running an organization like this, or are you speculating?
      - funkyy 10y ago
        Working for. I was working for an outsourcing company that catered for companies like that. My hourly rate were ridiculously high, but still companies would be better off hiring us, than employing.
blakeyrat 10y ago
I doubt 50 people is enough to even field the various legal requests Twitter gets during a normal month.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Whether or not it's 50 people to field legal requests, it's certainly more than zero. And I'm sure that you don't need to look hard to find complaints that, even given current staffing levels, it's hard to reach a human who can deal with a hijacked account/harassment/etc. Scaling up from narrowly scoped technical support takes a lot more people.
GFischer 10y ago
As many mentioned, Whatsapp runs on 1/20th the number of Twitter employees. It does have less features, but many of Twitter's are of dubious value.

debaserab2 10y ago

> move their infrastructure to AWS/Google Cloud which take the company to profitability How exactly does that work?

luhn 10y ago
Yeah, that was my one gripe with the comment. If you've already invested in creating your own infrastructure like Twitter has, moving to a public cloud is throwing money down the drain.
- sdenton4 10y ago
  OTOH, continuing to develop that infrastructure may be continuing to place money on a losing bet... If they're actually running their own infra cheaper than cloud would allow, they should absolutely keep going with their own. But it's foolish to keep doing something simply because it's what you're already doing.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    There's a fairly highly probability this is true? AWS/GCE are not cheap. They're cost-effective for certain classes of use-case, but beyond a given scale, or with certain base-level requirements, you're way better off colocating a bunch of a machines.
    - mullen 10y ago
      AWS can be cheap if you architect right. However, bandwidth costs are going to kill you at AWS.
    - notyourwork 10y ago
      My understanding is Netflix uses AWS for their infrastructure. Are they not on a similar scale as twitter with similar needs? Or is there a difference I am not seeing, perhaps a different use case. (This is a serious question, I am not doubting you.)

hbosch 10y ago

But the question is how do you reduce? How do you decide who to keep, when whittling down to ~100 from 4000 (or whatever the current number is)? From my experience, this type of re-org leaves the resultant company unsustainably top-heavy. I recently left a company who downsized but refused to hire anyone "junior level" because their pivot "requires all stars". And we all know, when everyone is a senior, no one is...

EnderMB 10y ago

I agree that they should cut costs, but I don't agree with your thoughts of how they do so. One of the notable things about Twitter is that they're a huge marketing machine. They have hundreds of employees that handle sales, marketing, advertising. Hell, they've acquired startups that handle advertising analytics, and have brought them in-house to build their own platform. They now directly sell contracts to TV channels and businesses that allow them to view how their brands interact on Twitter. I'd argue that this has helped to create bloat. Anyone that has had to use Twitter's API over the years can see that they've gone from being an incredibly open company to building up a walled garden to protect their brand, in a similar way to how Facebook scaled back their efforts to be an application/gaming platform. If I were Twitter, I'd give teams the opportunity to split from the company, but to continue to use their platform. If they believe in the product they've built within Twitter, they can be happy to compete against the open market. It allows them to drastically cut their workforce in key areas, while re-opening their product to the world. They can continue to be a sales company, but can fully allow others to continue to build great things on their platform, or to help shape how it works in the next decade.

EnderMB 10y ago