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That's what I thought, too. Amazon is a bad example, maybe for Twitter, you could make the case. But not for the reasons the article mentions: Sure, there's som
by planb 5y ago
That's what I thought, too. Amazon is a bad example, maybe for Twitter, you could make the case. But not for the reasons the article mentions: Sure, there's some overhead due to communication and misaligned incentives, but most of the work goes into the hidden complexity that even the simplest tasks contain when rolled out to millions of people. And I'm not only talking about technical complexity - I'd be interested how many people Twitter employs just for checking reported tweets.
- hunter-gatherer 5y ago> ...that even the simplest tasks contain when rolled out to millions of people. Wasn't this precisely the focus of the article?
- planb 5y agoMaybe I misread it, but I understood that the article said that the simplest tasks get complex when dozens of people are involved in solving it. I'm not saying that's wrong, of course working with a large team creates overhead. But giving the headcount of amazon and google as evidence for this is a bit misleading.
- handoflixue 5y ago> Wasn't this precisely the focus of the article? "A software developer could write a proof-of-concept search engine in a few days; Alphabet employs 130,000 people " This suggests that those 130,000 people are all software developers, and that they all work on the search engine. I think clarifying that ambiguity is a pretty appropriate response. The reason Alphabet employees 130K people isn't because "running a search engine at scale" requires it, it's because they're in 30 other lines of business.
- freewilly1040 5y agoI wouldn't really listen to the case on either FB or Twitter unless the person arguing the point is familiar with using the products as an advertiser. That is the core product, after all.