3 ms·

Naive question: what are all those people doing?

countdownnet 9y ago
Website engineers, database engineers, iOS developer(s?), android developer(s?), website designers, customer support (both for creators and patrons), fraud team (this is huge because they deal with a lot of money and a lot of transactions, they need to be on the look out for money laundering, etc), accounting, administrative, and probably more that I am not thinking of right now.
- otakucode 9y ago
  Don't forget huge costs associated with having a physical office, maintenance related to that, etc, and all the productivity destruction such a thing creates. Compensating for that eats up a ton of money in companies.
wikwocket 9y ago
Based on comments on HN, people are surprised that a company that "just runs a website" can employ "so many people." But this is a platform processing hundreds of millions of dollars among hundreds of thousands of users. Here's a rough sketch of possible headcount. I'm making these numbers up, but maybe you can see how it does take a lot of work to make a business like this work. - Engineering - 5 - frontend dev/QA (web, tablet, responsive, A/B tests) - 5 - backend dev/QA (app logic, video/content hosting, scaling up & out) - 5 - payments dev/QA (payments is huge and complicated, probably a few payment processor partners) - 5 - app dev/QA (iOS and Android) - 5 - product owners (web, 2 apps, email, internal tools for agents etc) - 5 - management (cto, engr manager, director etc) - Business - 5 - creator experience, patron experience, outreach, community - 5 - marketing, advertising, lifecycle email and email campaigns - 5 - partnerships, relations with big creators, collaborations - 5 - fraud detection and remediation (fraud is huge, chargebacks are expensive, and the ability to charge $1 to test cards attracts fraudsters) - Operations - 20 - agents handling creator/patron requests/issues (more if 24/7 or multiple languages) - 5 - ops/systems (keep everything running, downtime means less income) - 5 - HR, recruiting, accounting, etc This is probably under-representing the business side since I am from the engineering side. Also it looks like they are hiring more people for all these teams. If you want more info, you can always look up Patreon's job openings: https://angel.co/patreon/jobs https://angel.co/patreon/jobs https://boards.greenhouse.io/patreon#.WcFitC-6z-Y https://boards.greenhouse.io/patreon#.WcFitC-6z-Y https://www.glassdoor.com/Jobs/Patreon-Jobs-E915057.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Jobs/Patreon-Jobs-E915057.htm

Website engineers, database engineers, iOS developer(s?), android developer(s?), website designers, customer support (both for creators and patrons), fraud team (this is huge because they deal with a lot of money and a lot of transactions, they need to be on the look out for money laundering, etc), accounting, administrative, and probably more that I am not thinking of right now.

otakucode 9y ago
Don't forget huge costs associated with having a physical office, maintenance related to that, etc, and all the productivity destruction such a thing creates. Compensating for that eats up a ton of money in companies.

wikwocket 9y ago

Based on comments on HN, people are surprised that a company that "just runs a website" can employ "so many people." But this is a platform processing hundreds of millions of dollars among hundreds of thousands of users. Here's a rough sketch of possible headcount. I'm making these numbers up, but maybe you can see how it does take a lot of work to make a business like this work. - Engineering - 5 - frontend dev/QA (web, tablet, responsive, A/B tests) - 5 - backend dev/QA (app logic, video/content hosting, scaling up & out) - 5 - payments dev/QA (payments is huge and complicated, probably a few payment processor partners) - 5 - app dev/QA (iOS and Android) - 5 - product owners (web, 2 apps, email, internal tools for agents etc) - 5 - management (cto, engr manager, director etc) - Business - 5 - creator experience, patron experience, outreach, community - 5 - marketing, advertising, lifecycle email and email campaigns - 5 - partnerships, relations with big creators, collaborations - 5 - fraud detection and remediation (fraud is huge, chargebacks are expensive, and the ability to charge $1 to test cards attracts fraudsters) - Operations - 20 - agents handling creator/patron requests/issues (more if 24/7 or multiple languages) - 5 - ops/systems (keep everything running, downtime means less income) - 5 - HR, recruiting, accounting, etc This is probably under-representing the business side since I am from the engineering side. Also it looks like they are hiring more people for all these teams. If you want more info, you can always look up Patreon's job openings: https://angel.co/patreon/jobs https://angel.co/patreon/jobs https://boards.greenhouse.io/patreon#.WcFitC-6z-Y https://boards.greenhouse.io/patreon#.WcFitC-6z-Y https://www.glassdoor.com/Jobs/Patreon-Jobs-E915057.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Jobs/Patreon-Jobs-E915057.htm