6 ms·

"We are a startup that inherited a 15 year old website" was one of the things that resonated when I worked there. Facebook is Alexa #5 in the US and has ~40,00

by mike_d 7y ago

"We are a startup that inherited a 15 year old website" was one of the things that resonated when I worked there. Facebook is Alexa #5 in the US and has ~40,000 employees. Reddit is #6 and has ~500 employees. Twitter is #17 and has ~4,000 employees. (Numbers taken from quick Google searches) They have some super talented engineers that work miracles with band aids and bubble gum. Edit: Yes I understand not all employees work on everything. I was trying to give a sense of scale. Reddit is a tiny company with a massive website and no way to make money. If you have ideas - they are hiring.

opmac 7y ago
Meh... they could have rewritten the site from the ground up, including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now. I have never worked there, but outside looking in, it seems like there is a significant lack of technical vision from them. Other big players like Facebook, Twitter, etc, are literally inventing pivotal parts of the modern web technical stack. What has come out of reddit?
- joatmon-snoo 7y ago
  > including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now Someone's never done a data migration while serving 1M+ qps!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ses1984 7y ago
    But they have had downtime, it's not like downtime for a migration would damage their reputation.
  - sethammons 7y ago
    I've come close to that many, many times with zero downtime. It does take planning, more than many folks would think. But it can be done as long as you think it through.
    - arcticfox 7y ago
      I've never done anything close to that scale of migration, but I also can't really imagine taking an approach that feels like a huge migration. I feel like I would try to strangle the old app (putting proxies in front and redirecting endpoints as they're rewritten) rather than swapping it out wholesale. At that point I don't know if it really counts as a migration as much as just development. Any thoughts on that approach? Is that what you have done, or was it a more holistic swap over?
      - joatmon-snoo 7y ago
        That isn't a data migration, that's a release.
- dna_polymerase 7y ago
  > they could have rewritten the site from the ground up, including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now. Sigh, every. fucking. time. > I have never worked there, ... or anywhere else where high traffic is involved, right? It's always the people without any real world experience who come up with these BS claims about how everyone else is stupid and how it could be done differently. > ... but outside looking in, it seems like there is a significant lack of technical vision from them. Exactly. You are looking from the outside at it. If you really think they lack vision you could make tons of money working for them and fixing their site, but you already knew that since you're not lacking vision, am I right? Seriously there are lots of good engineers working at reddit, learn about their constraints first before pissing all over their work in an uninformed HN comment.
  - chillwaves 7y ago
    Do you have specific insight into working at Reddit?
  - opmac 7y ago
    You've managed to say a lot without really saying anything. You make plenty of baseless assumptions about my background and ambitions... but I'm not even going to try to address my professional experience (or lack thereof) because it doesn't matter, since you're just using it as a straw man to deflect criticism. The facts are as follows: 1. Reddit is one of the highest visited websites in the world. 2. Throughout nearly their entire history, they've struggled to put together a way to make money. 3. They have notorious uptime. Of course they have talented engineers... it would be a surprise if one of the worlds most popular websites didn't. That doesn't change the facts that they continue to look and function like they're straight out of 2005 (does their search even work yet?), lack a semi decent mobile experience, and have contributed essentially nothing to the technical community in their entire history.
    - juststeve 7y ago
      so, where is your website?
- throwaway1777 7y ago
  Did you miss the part where Reddit has 500 employees whereas FB has 40000? There was a point in Reddit history where there was literally 1 engineer.
  - opmac 7y ago
    What's your point? Wikipedia is Alexa rank 10 and has ~300 employees.
    - hobofan 7y ago
      What's your point? Wikipedia is developing even slower than Reddit. Not that it would need to, though.
- bredren 7y ago
  They created a mobile app and dark patterns that pushed users to use it so they could show ads.
  - inscionent 7y ago
    Oh no! They have a business model!
    - attqqq 7y ago
      There’s always ethical ways to generate money, too. Opt in generosity is proven to be viable.. see: Wikipedia, All of Patreon, Etc
      - Gaelan 7y ago
        Reddit gold was that, for a long time. Presumably, it didn’t work. (Or maybe wasn’t profitable enough?)
      - Bombthecat 7y ago
        We are past ethical ways...
    - linza 7y ago
      Yes, oh no. Dark patterns are closer to fraud than to a legitimate business model I'd recommend to my friends and family. Nigerian princes selling you gold is a business model too.
      - thatguyagain 7y ago
        The company you work for, how do they make money? Do they market their products?
        linza 7y ago
        Yes of course. What's your point? All marketing lies, and there is no spectrum, and therefore no moral ambiguity in doing shady things?
- kamaal 7y ago
  >>they could have rewritten the site from the ground up They did. They even tossed out Common Lisp and bought in Python because they thought it would fix their problems. It didn't.
  - Deimorz 7y ago
    That was in December 2005, less than 6 months after the site launched. Reddit was tiny and didn't even have subreddits or comments yet. This is what it looked like: https://web.archive.org/web/20051205025706/http://reddit.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20051205025706/http://reddit.com... The problems they're dealing with 14 years later as one of the top sites on the internet aren't even slightly comparable.
    - kamaal 7y ago
      Sure, may be its time to move to something like Clojure or Golang now? Python is a good scripting language, But if you are developing backend applications for this scale you probably need some serious JVM language. Or even Golang works fine.
      - Stevvo 7y ago
        Instagram's backend is written in python. Python is very slow, but still fast enough.
  - juststeve 7y ago
    they could still backend to C or rust, no?
paxys 7y ago
Facebook the company has 40,000 employees, but I'm willing to bet the total number of engineers working on facebook.com vs reddit.com isn't too different.
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  You'd definitely lose that bet.
- dymk 7y ago
  I worked in a Facebook building with 2000 engineers, and that's not even our biggest office.
hu3 7y ago
Not really a miracle. Reddit software is magnitudes simpler than Facebook. Not to mention the quality is often sub-par. For example, many hate their mobile app with a passion and search field could as well just not exist when I tried.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  Their new redesign is so completely awful they have to have an option to “just show the old reddit” in your settings. If they ever take that away I think I’ll just stop using it, it’s that bad.
  - elSidCampeador 7y ago
    I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way - if they ever force me to use only the new site, then I'll leave reddit for good. Or maybe just use it on my phone (Apollo for Reddit is pretty good)
  - romwell 7y ago
    Forget the settings, just use http://old.reddit.com http://old.reddit.com always :)
  - tootahe45 7y ago
    I stopped criticizing redesigns because i usually get over it, but the Reddit one makes the site at least 8x slower for me.
    - BostonEnginerd 7y ago
      That’s been my complaint. The old server side rendered site was really fast to load. Ever since the first redesign a few years back it’s been really slow.
      - tinus_hn 7y ago
        Here’s half the page you requested, and some other ‘related’ crap.
netsec_burn 7y ago
Wikipedia is one of the Alexa top 10 globally (above Reddit, which is #20) and has 300 employees.
- chubbyrabbit 7y ago
  There's a reason he compared Reddit with Twitter and Facebook. You interact a lot with social media (commenting, liking, etc.) and also their content is much more dynamic and personalised. Wikipedia is very static in comparison.
  - opmac 7y ago
    I'm not sure how you can say Wikipedia is static, even by comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
    - kalleboo 7y ago
      From your link: Wikipedia develops at a rate of over 1.8 edits per second The statistics I can find for Reddit put it at 160 submissions per second[0]. And that's not counting comments or votes. And each vote changes the ordering of submissions and comments. [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8aek7d/reddit_submissions_per_second_20092018_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8aek7d/red...
      - ryanmercer 7y ago
        >that's not counting comments or votes Or 'hide', in every sub I'm active in I hide each new thread after I've decided I am not interested or after I've looked at it so I can quickly scan new stuff. Then add automoderator removing things for manual approval, approval of threads etc. Gilding, messages, chat etc.
- davidgerard 7y ago
  and Wikipedia also runs on a shoestring - even with some of the smartest people I know working at Wikimedia, the tech department could have 10x the people without running short of work at any point
inafewwords 7y ago
Craigslist with #8 most viewed at 70 employees. .. Didn't fact check the numbers though.
Beefin 7y ago
500 employees is still alot. Especially given the technology ecosystem that exists for leverage. The revenue piece is an interesting one because i was an early adopter and remember the revenue struggle. Gold/silver doesn't cut it because it relies on generosity. FB/Twitter are an ads business. Is that really not too lucrative of a field for reddit?
- mullsork 7y ago
  There are ads on Reddit already. I only ever use their website with an, but I get ads on the iOS app. I've been seeing a significant rise in the usage of gold/silver/platinum lately, used heavily for banter on r/soccer (and for rewarding quality content as well.)
  - ERD0L 7y ago
    ads on iOS ? Do yourself a favor and install Apollo like every sane person
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    >I've been seeing a significant rise in the usage of gold/silver/platinum lately, used heavily for banter on r/soccer (and for rewarding quality content as well.) Same, but it's because they changed the way gold works. If you have a subscription, for stuff like removing ads and what not, you get coins every month which then allows me to give out several silvers every month or let them pile up to give out a week of gold here and there. I doubt there has been a significant rise in people paying and is likely largely the new coin system.
alfozan 7y ago
Alexa rankings are meaningless for services that are mostly accessed via mobile: https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexa-include-app-usage-in-its-statistics https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexa-include-app-usage-in-its-st... https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexa-track-traffic-from-iPhones-or-iPads https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexa-track-traffic-from-iPhones-...

by mike_d 7y ago

opmac 7y ago

Meh... they could have rewritten the site from the ground up, including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now. I have never worked there, but outside looking in, it seems like there is a significant lack of technical vision from them. Other big players like Facebook, Twitter, etc, are literally inventing pivotal parts of the modern web technical stack. What has come out of reddit?

joatmon-snoo 7y ago
> including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now Someone's never done a data migration while serving 1M+ qps!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ses1984 7y ago
  But they have had downtime, it's not like downtime for a migration would damage their reputation.
- sethammons 7y ago
  I've come close to that many, many times with zero downtime. It does take planning, more than many folks would think. But it can be done as long as you think it through.
  - arcticfox 7y ago
    I've never done anything close to that scale of migration, but I also can't really imagine taking an approach that feels like a huge migration. I feel like I would try to strangle the old app (putting proxies in front and redirecting endpoints as they're rewritten) rather than swapping it out wholesale. At that point I don't know if it really counts as a migration as much as just development. Any thoughts on that approach? Is that what you have done, or was it a more holistic swap over?
    - joatmon-snoo 7y ago
      That isn't a data migration, that's a release.
dna_polymerase 7y ago
> they could have rewritten the site from the ground up, including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now. Sigh, every. fucking. time. > I have never worked there, ... or anywhere else where high traffic is involved, right? It's always the people without any real world experience who come up with these BS claims about how everyone else is stupid and how it could be done differently. > ... but outside looking in, it seems like there is a significant lack of technical vision from them. Exactly. You are looking from the outside at it. If you really think they lack vision you could make tons of money working for them and fixing their site, but you already knew that since you're not lacking vision, am I right? Seriously there are lots of good engineers working at reddit, learn about their constraints first before pissing all over their work in an uninformed HN comment.
- chillwaves 7y ago
  Do you have specific insight into working at Reddit?
- opmac 7y ago
  You've managed to say a lot without really saying anything. You make plenty of baseless assumptions about my background and ambitions... but I'm not even going to try to address my professional experience (or lack thereof) because it doesn't matter, since you're just using it as a straw man to deflect criticism. The facts are as follows: 1. Reddit is one of the highest visited websites in the world. 2. Throughout nearly their entire history, they've struggled to put together a way to make money. 3. They have notorious uptime. Of course they have talented engineers... it would be a surprise if one of the worlds most popular websites didn't. That doesn't change the facts that they continue to look and function like they're straight out of 2005 (does their search even work yet?), lack a semi decent mobile experience, and have contributed essentially nothing to the technical community in their entire history.
  - juststeve 7y ago
    so, where is your website?
throwaway1777 7y ago
Did you miss the part where Reddit has 500 employees whereas FB has 40000? There was a point in Reddit history where there was literally 1 engineer.
- opmac 7y ago
  What's your point? Wikipedia is Alexa rank 10 and has ~300 employees.
  - hobofan 7y ago
    What's your point? Wikipedia is developing even slower than Reddit. Not that it would need to, though.
bredren 7y ago
They created a mobile app and dark patterns that pushed users to use it so they could show ads.
- inscionent 7y ago
  Oh no! They have a business model!
  - attqqq 7y ago
    There’s always ethical ways to generate money, too. Opt in generosity is proven to be viable.. see: Wikipedia, All of Patreon, Etc
    - Gaelan 7y ago
      Reddit gold was that, for a long time. Presumably, it didn’t work. (Or maybe wasn’t profitable enough?)
    - Bombthecat 7y ago
      We are past ethical ways...
  - linza 7y ago
    Yes, oh no. Dark patterns are closer to fraud than to a legitimate business model I'd recommend to my friends and family. Nigerian princes selling you gold is a business model too.
    - thatguyagain 7y ago
      The company you work for, how do they make money? Do they market their products?
      - linza 7y ago
        Yes of course. What's your point? All marketing lies, and there is no spectrum, and therefore no moral ambiguity in doing shady things?
kamaal 7y ago
>>they could have rewritten the site from the ground up They did. They even tossed out Common Lisp and bought in Python because they thought it would fix their problems. It didn't.
- Deimorz 7y ago
  That was in December 2005, less than 6 months after the site launched. Reddit was tiny and didn't even have subreddits or comments yet. This is what it looked like: https://web.archive.org/web/20051205025706/http://reddit.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20051205025706/http://reddit.com... The problems they're dealing with 14 years later as one of the top sites on the internet aren't even slightly comparable.
  - kamaal 7y ago
    Sure, may be its time to move to something like Clojure or Golang now? Python is a good scripting language, But if you are developing backend applications for this scale you probably need some serious JVM language. Or even Golang works fine.
    - Stevvo 7y ago
      Instagram's backend is written in python. Python is very slow, but still fast enough.
- juststeve 7y ago
  they could still backend to C or rust, no?

paxys 7y ago

Facebook the company has 40,000 employees, but I'm willing to bet the total number of engineers working on facebook.com vs reddit.com isn't too different.

NoodleIncident 7y ago
You'd definitely lose that bet.
dymk 7y ago
I worked in a Facebook building with 2000 engineers, and that's not even our biggest office.

hu3 7y ago

Not really a miracle. Reddit software is magnitudes simpler than Facebook. Not to mention the quality is often sub-par. For example, many hate their mobile app with a passion and search field could as well just not exist when I tried.

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Their new redesign is so completely awful they have to have an option to “just show the old reddit” in your settings. If they ever take that away I think I’ll just stop using it, it’s that bad.
- elSidCampeador 7y ago
  I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way - if they ever force me to use only the new site, then I'll leave reddit for good. Or maybe just use it on my phone (Apollo for Reddit is pretty good)
- romwell 7y ago
  Forget the settings, just use http://old.reddit.com http://old.reddit.com always :)
- tootahe45 7y ago
  I stopped criticizing redesigns because i usually get over it, but the Reddit one makes the site at least 8x slower for me.
  - BostonEnginerd 7y ago
    That’s been my complaint. The old server side rendered site was really fast to load. Ever since the first redesign a few years back it’s been really slow.
    - tinus_hn 7y ago
      Here’s half the page you requested, and some other ‘related’ crap.

netsec_burn 7y ago

Wikipedia is one of the Alexa top 10 globally (above Reddit, which is #20) and has 300 employees.

chubbyrabbit 7y ago
There's a reason he compared Reddit with Twitter and Facebook. You interact a lot with social media (commenting, liking, etc.) and also their content is much more dynamic and personalised. Wikipedia is very static in comparison.
- opmac 7y ago
  I'm not sure how you can say Wikipedia is static, even by comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    From your link: Wikipedia develops at a rate of over 1.8 edits per second The statistics I can find for Reddit put it at 160 submissions per second[0]. And that's not counting comments or votes. And each vote changes the ordering of submissions and comments. [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8aek7d/reddit_submissions_per_second_20092018_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8aek7d/red...
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      >that's not counting comments or votes Or 'hide', in every sub I'm active in I hide each new thread after I've decided I am not interested or after I've looked at it so I can quickly scan new stuff. Then add automoderator removing things for manual approval, approval of threads etc. Gilding, messages, chat etc.
davidgerard 7y ago
and Wikipedia also runs on a shoestring - even with some of the smartest people I know working at Wikimedia, the tech department could have 10x the people without running short of work at any point

inafewwords 7y ago

Craigslist with #8 most viewed at 70 employees. .. Didn't fact check the numbers though.

Beefin 7y ago

500 employees is still alot. Especially given the technology ecosystem that exists for leverage. The revenue piece is an interesting one because i was an early adopter and remember the revenue struggle. Gold/silver doesn't cut it because it relies on generosity. FB/Twitter are an ads business. Is that really not too lucrative of a field for reddit?

mullsork 7y ago
There are ads on Reddit already. I only ever use their website with an, but I get ads on the iOS app. I've been seeing a significant rise in the usage of gold/silver/platinum lately, used heavily for banter on r/soccer (and for rewarding quality content as well.)
- ERD0L 7y ago
  ads on iOS ? Do yourself a favor and install Apollo like every sane person
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >I've been seeing a significant rise in the usage of gold/silver/platinum lately, used heavily for banter on r/soccer (and for rewarding quality content as well.) Same, but it's because they changed the way gold works. If you have a subscription, for stuff like removing ads and what not, you get coins every month which then allows me to give out several silvers every month or let them pile up to give out a week of gold here and there. I doubt there has been a significant rise in people paying and is likely largely the new coin system.

alfozan 7y ago

Alexa rankings are meaningless for services that are mostly accessed via mobile: https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexa-include-app-usage-in-its-statistics https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexa-include-app-usage-in-its-st... https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexa-track-traffic-from-iPhones-or-iPads https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexa-track-traffic-from-iPhones-...