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For comparison, SpaceX runs an entire private space program on ~12,000 employees. Near-weekly launches. Rocket development+production. Building+deploying Starli

For comparison, SpaceX runs an entire private space program on ~12,000 employees. Near-weekly launches. Rocket development+production. Building+deploying Starlink. (Although that's just a number from a quick googling. Maybe they outsource a lot of manufacturing etc?)

esoterica 4y ago
Spacex also makes less revenue than Twitter with their higher headcount.
- parkingrift 4y ago
  It’s privately held so we don’t actually know that. However, SpaceX was valued at around $120 billion in their last funding round.
wildrhythms 4y ago
NASA has 18k permanent employees which I thought was surprisingly low. https://www.nasa.gov/about/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/about/index.html
- breezedream 4y ago
  Government typically has a whole ton of contractors, sometimes twice the number of FTEs, but a cursory Google indicates NASA has only about 1000 contractors. Interesting, but the contract money probably goes to acquisition and commercial partnerships (https://www.osbp.nasa.gov/docs/top20_2020_contractors-TAGGED.pdf https://www.osbp.nasa.gov/docs/top20_2020_contractors-TAGGED...). That said, their FY22 budget is “only” $30B, which is less than Elon just paid for all of Twitter. This number usually surprises people but a lot of other space-related work is within the USAF and NRO budgets.
  - acdha 4y ago
    About a decade ago I was working on websites for NASA and just the contractor I worked for had over a thousand contractors. They were far from the largest, too.
- mirker 4y ago
  That’s because recent focus on the space program is nonexistent. It’s been getting on life support since the moon walk.
threeseed 4y ago
That comparison is however completely irrelevant to Twitter. It may seem to ignorant people that a space program is more advanced than "just a website" but actually running these kind of websites is extremely complex. Especially when you're needing to compete with Facebook and Google at serving ads in a relevant and effective way. It is really interesting reading through their infrastructure challenges alone: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastruc...
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  > at serving ads in a relevant and effective way. Anyone ever seen a relevant Twitter ad? Just seems very dumb location based placement. Nowhere near the level of IG.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    > Nowhere near the level of IG Facebook and Google are in a completely different league which is why for most brands ~95% of online ad spend is spent there. Twitter has been slowly getting better until now when Musk's attitude has frightened the brands off i.e. GM, L'Oreal, Pfizer etc.
  - marsven_422 4y ago
- pushkine 4y ago
  It's crazy the number of people on HN somehow claiming that Twitter is this well run and well functioning tech company now that bad rocket man took the reigns and decided to lay off everyone... Isn't it a consensus among tech people that Twitter is the absolute worst tech company?
  - KaiserPro 4y ago
    Twitter was a bit shit. But its up and running more or less in real time for millions of users. Thats pretty impressive. Its business is shit, yes. Musk looks like hes done the classic: "the office is clean why do I need cleaners" dance. I am surprised he can fire that many people that quickly and still expect momentum. It doesn't help that he appears to be shitting out product ideas that he's just "dreamt" up. Rather than talking to people to see why twitter didn't do it in the first place. He clearly has a low opinion of the entire company.
petesergeant 4y ago
SpaceX has many fewer customers and users though
- wreath 4y ago
  But this is not a burger joint where you have to scale your number of employees as your number of customers increases.
  - petesergeant 4y ago
    Sure you do, just not linearly
jejeyyy77 4y ago
To be fair software at space X is likely much less complex than Twitter’s stack.
WalterBright 4y ago
For comparison, 400,000 people worked on the Apollo space program.
tqi 4y ago
And Walmart has over 2M employees, and they're just running a retail store!
- kulikalov 4y ago
  that's a labor intensive business

esoterica 4y ago

Spacex also makes less revenue than Twitter with their higher headcount.

parkingrift 4y ago
It’s privately held so we don’t actually know that. However, SpaceX was valued at around $120 billion in their last funding round.

wildrhythms 4y ago

NASA has 18k permanent employees which I thought was surprisingly low. https://www.nasa.gov/about/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/about/index.html

breezedream 4y ago
Government typically has a whole ton of contractors, sometimes twice the number of FTEs, but a cursory Google indicates NASA has only about 1000 contractors. Interesting, but the contract money probably goes to acquisition and commercial partnerships (https://www.osbp.nasa.gov/docs/top20_2020_contractors-TAGGED.pdf https://www.osbp.nasa.gov/docs/top20_2020_contractors-TAGGED...). That said, their FY22 budget is “only” $30B, which is less than Elon just paid for all of Twitter. This number usually surprises people but a lot of other space-related work is within the USAF and NRO budgets.
- acdha 4y ago
  About a decade ago I was working on websites for NASA and just the contractor I worked for had over a thousand contractors. They were far from the largest, too.
mirker 4y ago
That’s because recent focus on the space program is nonexistent. It’s been getting on life support since the moon walk.

threeseed 4y ago

That comparison is however completely irrelevant to Twitter. It may seem to ignorant people that a space program is more advanced than "just a website" but actually running these kind of websites is extremely complex. Especially when you're needing to compete with Facebook and Google at serving ads in a relevant and effective way. It is really interesting reading through their infrastructure challenges alone: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastruc...

whywhywhywhy 4y ago
> at serving ads in a relevant and effective way. Anyone ever seen a relevant Twitter ad? Just seems very dumb location based placement. Nowhere near the level of IG.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > Nowhere near the level of IG Facebook and Google are in a completely different league which is why for most brands ~95% of online ad spend is spent there. Twitter has been slowly getting better until now when Musk's attitude has frightened the brands off i.e. GM, L'Oreal, Pfizer etc.
- marsven_422 4y ago
pushkine 4y ago
It's crazy the number of people on HN somehow claiming that Twitter is this well run and well functioning tech company now that bad rocket man took the reigns and decided to lay off everyone... Isn't it a consensus among tech people that Twitter is the absolute worst tech company?
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  Twitter was a bit shit. But its up and running more or less in real time for millions of users. Thats pretty impressive. Its business is shit, yes. Musk looks like hes done the classic: "the office is clean why do I need cleaners" dance. I am surprised he can fire that many people that quickly and still expect momentum. It doesn't help that he appears to be shitting out product ideas that he's just "dreamt" up. Rather than talking to people to see why twitter didn't do it in the first place. He clearly has a low opinion of the entire company.

petesergeant 4y ago

SpaceX has many fewer customers and users though

wreath 4y ago
But this is not a burger joint where you have to scale your number of employees as your number of customers increases.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  Sure you do, just not linearly

jejeyyy77 4y ago

To be fair software at space X is likely much less complex than Twitter’s stack.

WalterBright 4y ago

For comparison, 400,000 people worked on the Apollo space program.

tqi 4y ago

And Walmart has over 2M employees, and they're just running a retail store!

kulikalov 4y ago
that's a labor intensive business