5 ms·

Yelp's engineering isn't likely much more than ~150 people (I worked there ~2 years ago, maybe has grown since then but honestly, given their revenue situation

by 013a 7y ago

Yelp's engineering isn't likely much more than ~150 people (I worked there ~2 years ago, maybe has grown since then but honestly, given their revenue situation even then, likely not by much). The mix there is just like most companies; you've got dedicated teams for each of their apps (which includes Android, iOS, web, business-facing, etc), you've got API teams, back office teams working on moving data around and business analytics, a very secretive abuse management team, IT, etc. Yelp also, given their age, wasn't (at some point) running their primary workloads in the cloud; they had (have?) a colo DC in San Francisco that hosted a ton of stuff, so there were people dedicated to that hardware. There was some movement to get rid of this as I remember. Surprisingly, or hopefully not, the vast majority of the company is more directly revenue generating; sales and customer acquisition. Its spread very globally; at least as of a few years ago, the SF HQ didn't house any sales people, though I think they had an office in Oakland which did. Point being, I always got the impression that their engineering team was very "right sized" given their revenue and product scope.

derwiki 7y ago
I think your 150 estimate is very low— we had 80 eng when I left, nine years ago.
- 013a 7y ago
  You may be right. I never counted nor directly asked, that was just the number I overheard. It felt right; afaik, all of the engineering happened in SF, except one remote office in (IIRC) Germany. I know there were a few companies they had acquired (Eat24 and SeatMe) which remained somewhat isolated from the primary Yelp engineering teams (with their own floors of the building and everything), definitely possible the numbers I heard were not counting them.
- pc86 7y ago
  But he was there 7 years after you so his estimate is probably closer, no?
- ssk2 7y ago
  When I left last August, we had around 600 in engineering, around 900 in product and engineering. Engineering was mostly based in SF but with satellite offices in London and Hamburg. It looks like they were expanding in a large way into a Toronto office too. Infrastructure was around a fifth of that total but included verticals like search and machine learning infrastructure. Yelp turned off their last datacentre in early 2018 (IIRC) - and is entirely on AWS.
riese4thewin 7y ago
Can you elaborate on the "secretive abuse mgmt team"?
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Abuse management is usually secretive because if you publish the "rules of non-abusive behavior", you end up with a bunch of behavior that complies with the official rules while still being abusive.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- tmpz22 7y ago
  Because of the value in subverting abuse systems such as Yelp ratings or Google SEO, these teams usually are handled differently with an entirely different threat model - which is why they may be referred to as "secretive".
  - riese4thewin 7y ago
    What do the threat models usually look like?
throwaway55554 7y ago
Even 150 blows my mind. Years ago I worked for one of the top 10 EHR software makers (at the time - maybe even now, I haven't looked) and we had 1/3 the number of engineers on that system.
- supernova87a 7y ago
  It's funny, as soon as you have a system that has to take into account human behavior and variety of possible inputs/states, it gets massively complicated if your goal is to try to have people not be dissatisfied with it. (and if you're trying to do it right -- or alternatively, NOT making the right decisions about that goal). People just don't behave like you think they will/should. As an example: a retail transaction database. Or a calendar booking system. That should be really simple, right? Just record who ordered what, when they received it, who sold it, etc. Who reserved the room, who to send invites out to, simple? No, it turns out that you have to also take into account people whose orders got delayed by the human-based shipment system, people who got coupons and they expired/want to extend the coupon, people who returned the merchandise and never got any confirmation that it was received back. Or what if someone modifies the meeting location after people accepted -- does a minor change to the meeting description trigger a re-invite or update, or not? Can meeting rooms be held by more than one person at a time? Or what if you want to tie it to the email marketing system that wasn't properly integrated or planned to be integrated -- that's another couple of engineers who have the thankless task of maintaining ETLs that constantly break whenever a change comes along. Or in the case of Yelp, I'm sure there's small teams who are responsible for the mundane tasks of how to keep track of when a business closes, or reopens, or temporarily shut down due to virus situation -- how are the entries for those businesses supposed to be updated? We never had a field for "closed by mandatory government order" -- that's gonna take a refactor of xyz to implement, etc. etc. We have users who review things, and then those users someday die/go idle/get banned. What happens to the ranking of their reviews? It goes on and on. (and usually, the people who take the time to think about these things in advance set themselves up for much less pain, and far fewer people needed to fix it, later)
  - throwaway55554 7y ago
firstfewshells 7y ago
I think you're way off. I interviewed with them last year and the number I got from them was close to 850 engineers globally.
subsubzero 7y ago
That number ~150 engineers seems way too small, at most tech companies I worked at, engineering comprises 40-50% of the staff, if it doesn't something would seem very off. Engineering in this case is product, platform, IT, hardware etc.
tuckernoia 7y ago
Even 2 years ago we had WAY more than 150 engineers.
altonzheng 7y ago
According to LinkedIn, Yelp has 8964 employees with top 2 being: 1. Sales (3799) 2. Engineering (1035)

by 013a 7y ago

derwiki 7y ago

I think your 150 estimate is very low— we had 80 eng when I left, nine years ago.

013a 7y ago
You may be right. I never counted nor directly asked, that was just the number I overheard. It felt right; afaik, all of the engineering happened in SF, except one remote office in (IIRC) Germany. I know there were a few companies they had acquired (Eat24 and SeatMe) which remained somewhat isolated from the primary Yelp engineering teams (with their own floors of the building and everything), definitely possible the numbers I heard were not counting them.
pc86 7y ago
But he was there 7 years after you so his estimate is probably closer, no?
ssk2 7y ago
When I left last August, we had around 600 in engineering, around 900 in product and engineering. Engineering was mostly based in SF but with satellite offices in London and Hamburg. It looks like they were expanding in a large way into a Toronto office too. Infrastructure was around a fifth of that total but included verticals like search and machine learning infrastructure. Yelp turned off their last datacentre in early 2018 (IIRC) - and is entirely on AWS.

riese4thewin 7y ago

Can you elaborate on the "secretive abuse mgmt team"?

thaumasiotes 7y ago
Abuse management is usually secretive because if you publish the "rules of non-abusive behavior", you end up with a bunch of behavior that complies with the official rules while still being abusive.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
tmpz22 7y ago
Because of the value in subverting abuse systems such as Yelp ratings or Google SEO, these teams usually are handled differently with an entirely different threat model - which is why they may be referred to as "secretive".
- riese4thewin 7y ago
  What do the threat models usually look like?

throwaway55554 7y ago

Even 150 blows my mind. Years ago I worked for one of the top 10 EHR software makers (at the time - maybe even now, I haven't looked) and we had 1/3 the number of engineers on that system.

supernova87a 7y ago
It's funny, as soon as you have a system that has to take into account human behavior and variety of possible inputs/states, it gets massively complicated if your goal is to try to have people not be dissatisfied with it. (and if you're trying to do it right -- or alternatively, NOT making the right decisions about that goal). People just don't behave like you think they will/should. As an example: a retail transaction database. Or a calendar booking system. That should be really simple, right? Just record who ordered what, when they received it, who sold it, etc. Who reserved the room, who to send invites out to, simple? No, it turns out that you have to also take into account people whose orders got delayed by the human-based shipment system, people who got coupons and they expired/want to extend the coupon, people who returned the merchandise and never got any confirmation that it was received back. Or what if someone modifies the meeting location after people accepted -- does a minor change to the meeting description trigger a re-invite or update, or not? Can meeting rooms be held by more than one person at a time? Or what if you want to tie it to the email marketing system that wasn't properly integrated or planned to be integrated -- that's another couple of engineers who have the thankless task of maintaining ETLs that constantly break whenever a change comes along. Or in the case of Yelp, I'm sure there's small teams who are responsible for the mundane tasks of how to keep track of when a business closes, or reopens, or temporarily shut down due to virus situation -- how are the entries for those businesses supposed to be updated? We never had a field for "closed by mandatory government order" -- that's gonna take a refactor of xyz to implement, etc. etc. We have users who review things, and then those users someday die/go idle/get banned. What happens to the ranking of their reviews? It goes on and on. (and usually, the people who take the time to think about these things in advance set themselves up for much less pain, and far fewer people needed to fix it, later)
- throwaway55554 7y ago

firstfewshells 7y ago

I think you're way off. I interviewed with them last year and the number I got from them was close to 850 engineers globally.

subsubzero 7y ago

That number ~150 engineers seems way too small, at most tech companies I worked at, engineering comprises 40-50% of the staff, if it doesn't something would seem very off. Engineering in this case is product, platform, IT, hardware etc.

tuckernoia 7y ago

Even 2 years ago we had WAY more than 150 engineers.

altonzheng 7y ago

According to LinkedIn, Yelp has 8964 employees with top 2 being: 1. Sales (3799) 2. Engineering (1035)