4 ms·
50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?
by sambobeckingham 10y ago
50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?
- sputknick 10y agoSerious 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 agoI 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 agoThere 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 agoWhatsapp 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 agoWhatsApp 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 agoWhatsApp isn't real time?
- mullen 10y agoTwitter 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 agoI don't know where you live, but people use Whatsapp groups a lot during and after an event.
- funkyy 10y agoLook at WhatsApp.
- nothrabannosir 10y agoAnd 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 agoLegal 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 agoI'm curious: do you have experience running an organization like this, or are you speculating?
- funkyy 10y agoWorking 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 agoI doubt 50 people is enough to even field the various legal requests Twitter gets during a normal month.
- ghaff 10y agoWhether 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 agoAs 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.