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Ask HN: How few employees could major tech companies get by on?
To me, it's interesting to imagine how few people could run a company like Google/Facebook/Twitter in their current capacity, if needed. Google, for instance, now seems to employ over 60,000 people. Could they make do with 6,000? 1,000?
- moondev 10y ago1,000? You can't be serious.
- nostrademons 10y agoI wonder about that. Craigslist operated with 28 people (in 2009) and served 20 billion pageviews a month. Whatsapp had 50 staff for 200 million active users when it was bought. PlentyOfFish for many years operated off one person, making a million or two in revenue off tens of millions of users. I kinda suspect that most tech businesses hire employees because they have money, not because they need them. Obviously there's some operational cost, particularly when you're charging money from a customer. But for consumer or small-business products that offer a well-defined product in exchange for either advertisements or a small monthly fee, there's really not all that much work needed to serve a marginal customer.
- moondev 10y agoI think we as engineers tend to unconsciously disvalue non-technical roles. The fact of the matter is that there is an incredible amount of work that goes into the sales and marketing pieces of a business. To even suggest that a "major" tech company could exist without is laughable and out of touch.
- tbrowbdidnso 10y agoI don't think I've ever worked at a large company that wouldn't do just fine with a third of their workforce. Of course most of these companies are big, older, and full of technical and human cruft. It's astounding the number of people that aren't really needed. I worked at one company that was close to optimal once. A lot of automation and only a few employees kept around for various political reasons. The company has a revenue of 4 million from less than 20 people
- moondev 10y agoMy reaction was the suggestion that google could get by with with less than 2% of their current employees.
- NonEUCitizen 10y ago55 employees: https://pando.com/2014/02/24/whatsapp-bought-for-19-billion-what-do-its-employees-get/ https://pando.com/2014/02/24/whatsapp-bought-for-19-billion-...