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Facebook employs over 30k employees. The parent company of the company who performed this lift employs 11k employees working 900 ships. I don’t think your ana

by abduhl 7y ago

Facebook employs over 30k employees. The parent company of the company who performed this lift employs 11k employees working 900 ships. I don’t think your analogy makes sense from a “Don’t require so many people” perspective when you look at the numbers tbqh

adventured 7y ago
It makes perfect sense when you look at the business results comparing the two companies. Facebook currently has over 43,000 employees, they don't have 43,000 engineers however. That number is likely under 10,000 based on their past statements about the company structure. Facebook has extreme margins. Their gross profit margin last quarter was 82%, their operating profit margin was 41%. Over the next four quarters Facebook will produce $75b-$80b in sales, with ~$30b in operating profit. They're one of the dozen most profitable companies on the planet. $3+ million in operating profit per engineer. Boskalis is worth $3 billion. Their sales for 2018 were about $2.7 billion and they had a tiny $75 million operating profit. To match Facebook's operating profit per engineer figure, Boskalis can only have 25 engineers. Back in 2015 they had a far better ~$569m in operating profit, at that level they could have perhaps 190 engineers to match the Facebook ratio. Simply put, Facebook generates enormous profit per engineer. Very few companies match it.
drew-y 7y ago
But if you look at the per capita value of facebook vs this company, facebook produces a lot more revenue. In 2018 facebook made 55.8 billion[1], that same year boskalis made about 2.8691 billion usd[2]. If facebook has 30k employees that means they make 1.86 million per employee (holy crap) whereas boskalis makes just 236k. So I think the parent commenter makes a fair point. 1. https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2019/Facebook-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2018-Results/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/... 2. https://boskalis.com/press/press-releases-and-company-news/detail/boskalis-posts-higher-revenue-against-lower-full-year-result-in-line-with-expectations.html https://boskalis.com/press/press-releases-and-company-news/d...
- abduhl 7y ago
  Sure, if we move away from the analogy and into real dollars and cents we can see that certainly the numbers show that Facebook, as a company, has higher revenues both in total and per capita. But that wasn’t the poster’s point with his analogy. His point was that the boat bro and the software engineer are equally skilled (they’re not - the boat bro is usually more educated/skilled) and the main difference for their pay is that the boat bro is just one amongst many while the software engineer is one of a few. The numbers don’t support this conclusion. In fact, the opposite appears true: software engineers appear to be entirely interchangeable cogs that are employable at scale while the boat bros are specialized tools employed to solve specific problems. If his argument was that the market has placed a higher value on the software engineer then I wouldn’t have an issue, but that narrative doesn’t feed the Software Mythos. Even the terms selected for the analogy show this desire to self fellate (“Rock Star”).
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    How many audience members does one orchestra member serve? And how many does the rock star serve? Now, how many users does one Facebook engineer serve? The incredibly low ratio of workers to work done in software isn't a secret. People have been making this point for decades.

by abduhl 7y ago

adventured 7y ago

It makes perfect sense when you look at the business results comparing the two companies. Facebook currently has over 43,000 employees, they don't have 43,000 engineers however. That number is likely under 10,000 based on their past statements about the company structure. Facebook has extreme margins. Their gross profit margin last quarter was 82%, their operating profit margin was 41%. Over the next four quarters Facebook will produce $75b-$80b in sales, with ~$30b in operating profit. They're one of the dozen most profitable companies on the planet. $3+ million in operating profit per engineer. Boskalis is worth $3 billion. Their sales for 2018 were about $2.7 billion and they had a tiny $75 million operating profit. To match Facebook's operating profit per engineer figure, Boskalis can only have 25 engineers. Back in 2015 they had a far better ~$569m in operating profit, at that level they could have perhaps 190 engineers to match the Facebook ratio. Simply put, Facebook generates enormous profit per engineer. Very few companies match it.

drew-y 7y ago

But if you look at the per capita value of facebook vs this company, facebook produces a lot more revenue. In 2018 facebook made 55.8 billion[1], that same year boskalis made about 2.8691 billion usd[2]. If facebook has 30k employees that means they make 1.86 million per employee (holy crap) whereas boskalis makes just 236k. So I think the parent commenter makes a fair point. 1. https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2019/Facebook-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2018-Results/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/... 2. https://boskalis.com/press/press-releases-and-company-news/detail/boskalis-posts-higher-revenue-against-lower-full-year-result-in-line-with-expectations.html https://boskalis.com/press/press-releases-and-company-news/d...

abduhl 7y ago
Sure, if we move away from the analogy and into real dollars and cents we can see that certainly the numbers show that Facebook, as a company, has higher revenues both in total and per capita. But that wasn’t the poster’s point with his analogy. His point was that the boat bro and the software engineer are equally skilled (they’re not - the boat bro is usually more educated/skilled) and the main difference for their pay is that the boat bro is just one amongst many while the software engineer is one of a few. The numbers don’t support this conclusion. In fact, the opposite appears true: software engineers appear to be entirely interchangeable cogs that are employable at scale while the boat bros are specialized tools employed to solve specific problems. If his argument was that the market has placed a higher value on the software engineer then I wouldn’t have an issue, but that narrative doesn’t feed the Software Mythos. Even the terms selected for the analogy show this desire to self fellate (“Rock Star”).
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  How many audience members does one orchestra member serve? And how many does the rock star serve? Now, how many users does one Facebook engineer serve? The incredibly low ratio of workers to work done in software isn't a secret. People have been making this point for decades.