Granted, just keeping FB running requires a lot of work from smart and dedicated people. But we can’t really tell how well they do it. If my bank or cell provid

Granted, just keeping FB running requires a lot of work from smart and dedicated people. But we can’t really tell how well they do it. If my bank or cell provider or AWS fail to scale I notice right away, but I won’t even know if FB fails to deliver ads to me, or fails to show me something in my feed (assuming I used FB, which I don’t). FB could actually get away with scaling poorly as long as they keep the lights on because few of their users would notice. I don’t doubt that delivering an online service, even a crappy service, at FB scale presents some unique and difficult challenges, and I’m sure FB employs lots of smart and talented people. But given the number of supposedly “best” engineers they do employ the results seem underwhelming. I find it more impressive that Amazon manages to keep AWS up and reliable while constantly introducing new services, and that Apple manages to support a billion iPhone users without spewing ads in their face.