4 ms·

I am curios why they need 1K people instead of 10? What changed on the server side of WhatsApp?

abrolhos 6y ago
I understand that the 1K+ engineer number comes from Facebook as a whole, when mentioning the use of Hack as a typed PHP. More like to give a perspective on the transition on how to come from a small company into a huge one.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- user5994461 6y ago
  WhatApps got audio and video calls after the Facebook acquisition. Usage increased by a few orders of magnitude too.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Yeah I think people get usage confused with number of users.
  - AzzieElbab 6y ago
    That explains it. I haven’t used WhatsApp until few months ago
user5994461 6y ago
No global service can run with 10 people. Just to have a good coverage 24/7 you're looking at a 50 people company.
- oblio 6y ago
  Yeah, just ops would be 3 timezones x 8 hours x 2 (ideally 3) people per timezone. So that's 6-9 people just for a barebones ops team.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ramraj07 6y ago
Scaling, reliability, support, dialects and localisation, accessibility, edge cases, device support, security, moderation (not just moderators but moderation tools) infrastructure, research and exploration, monetization, commercialization. Basically everything no one in a startup thinks about for years if not more. And to that add the simple fact that as the team grows the per engineer productivity just has to drop due to communication overhead among other things.
- eitland 6y ago
  > device support For the record I think the device support used to be better before when they supported pre-android Nokias as well.
  - octorian 6y ago
    Yes, in the early days it ran on 6-7 different platforms. Back then it was about 1-3 developers per platform, however. Small focused teams like that can have significantly higher per-developer productivity, but are far more limited in the breath and nuance of what they can work on. As a project grows in scale, there are a lot of development tasks that take a significant amount of time and effort for relatively little user-visible impact. However, in aggregate, there is a benefit to investing in those sorts of things.
    - eitland 6y ago
      For me WhatsApp has gone from my favorite app to something I won't touch except almost as last resort. I had no issues with old WhatsApp whatsoever and I'm not aware of anyone else having any either and I'm part of multiple groups that used to use it extensively. The only thing that has improved meaningfully since then is end-to-end encryption, but as much as I love that it is only nice-to-have for me and I would feel a lot safer with just ordinary encryption as long as Facebook wasn't snooping in my contacts and metadata.
yibg 6y ago
Do you know of any company that runs a product with this many users globally on 100 people let alone 10?
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  Old WhatsApp?

I understand that the 1K+ engineer number comes from Facebook as a whole, when mentioning the use of Hack as a typed PHP. More like to give a perspective on the transition on how to come from a small company into a huge one.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
user5994461 6y ago
WhatApps got audio and video calls after the Facebook acquisition. Usage increased by a few orders of magnitude too.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Yeah I think people get usage confused with number of users.
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  That explains it. I haven’t used WhatsApp until few months ago

user5994461 6y ago

No global service can run with 10 people. Just to have a good coverage 24/7 you're looking at a 50 people company.

oblio 6y ago
Yeah, just ops would be 3 timezones x 8 hours x 2 (ideally 3) people per timezone. So that's 6-9 people just for a barebones ops team.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ramraj07 6y ago

Scaling, reliability, support, dialects and localisation, accessibility, edge cases, device support, security, moderation (not just moderators but moderation tools) infrastructure, research and exploration, monetization, commercialization. Basically everything no one in a startup thinks about for years if not more. And to that add the simple fact that as the team grows the per engineer productivity just has to drop due to communication overhead among other things.

eitland 6y ago
> device support For the record I think the device support used to be better before when they supported pre-android Nokias as well.
- octorian 6y ago
  Yes, in the early days it ran on 6-7 different platforms. Back then it was about 1-3 developers per platform, however. Small focused teams like that can have significantly higher per-developer productivity, but are far more limited in the breath and nuance of what they can work on. As a project grows in scale, there are a lot of development tasks that take a significant amount of time and effort for relatively little user-visible impact. However, in aggregate, there is a benefit to investing in those sorts of things.
  - eitland 6y ago
    For me WhatsApp has gone from my favorite app to something I won't touch except almost as last resort. I had no issues with old WhatsApp whatsoever and I'm not aware of anyone else having any either and I'm part of multiple groups that used to use it extensively. The only thing that has improved meaningfully since then is end-to-end encryption, but as much as I love that it is only nice-to-have for me and I would feel a lot safer with just ordinary encryption as long as Facebook wasn't snooping in my contacts and metadata.

yibg 6y ago

Do you know of any company that runs a product with this many users globally on 100 people let alone 10?

AzzieElbab 6y ago
Old WhatsApp?