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As a non-tech guy who follows the tech scene: 87000 people to run Facebook sounds a little ridiculous. These tech companies sounds like colleges these days wh

As a non-tech guy who follows the tech scene: 87000 people to run Facebook sounds a little ridiculous. These tech companies sounds like colleges these days where the number of administrators has grown 10X and the amount of teachers has stayed the same. Use your money to hire people that directly contribute to your product. Use profits to "do good" after.

vxNsr 4y ago
it's not just facebook... they have oculus, insta, whatsapp, they were exploring mapping, and self driving cars at one point...
- krn 4y ago
  When you realize that WhatsApp had 450 million monthly active users and only 55 employees at the time of its acquisition by Facebook in 2014, you start to think that those tens of thousands of employees might be more needed for Meta's ad business.
  - whatever1 4y ago
    WhatsApp was bloated for what it was. Just a chatting app. People design and implement these things in a weekend. Many interviews casually ask you to implement a chatting app. By yourself.
    - rjh29 4y ago
      Not true. WhatsApp performed exceptionally well for its scale. The team was very talented and experienced at writing optimised code. But I agree that Facebook is significantly larger in scope.
      - ninth_ant 4y ago
        It's not just that they wrote some very optimized code -- though it's true they did. They also designed the app in a way that requires very little server infrastructure compared to other chat apps, especially in the per-acquisition days. For example, they didn't store contacts/images/messages server-side as you see in Telegram, Google ChatAppOfTheWeek, FB messenger, Twitter, IG, etc. All the infrastructure and the folks required to develop and maintain it, simply didn't exist. Similar with the limited amount of data collection they did at the time -- if you don't log it you there is no reason to have a team of people to analyze it. If you don't have ads you don't need an ad sales team. Etc.
    - phyrex 4y ago
      Scale matters
sidcool 4y ago
Facebook I believe does a lot of things, including their own infrastructure.
rjh29 4y ago
They managed with 7,000 in 2013. But a lot of things changed. To continue to grow they needed to buy Facebook and Instagram. They scaled up their infrastructure - lots of system administrators. They needed more sales people and corporate campaign managers to get advertising in. More moderation, because governments started passing internet content laws. Spam detection. Customer support. Automated content blocking. More legal teams, because they are constantly under legal attack. Don't forget all these laws and what is acceptable or not changes by country - so they need a team in every country to handle that. Then there's VR, Meta AI, the 'Metaverse', and their whole R&D division.
danielunited 4y ago
As far as I’m aware most of the people who’ve lost their jobs were headhunters. Makes sense to let them go now that FB stopped hiring.
adamsb6 4y ago
I left Facebook in March after having worked there for seven years. It was always a struggle to hire enough engineers to accomplish my team's goals, and it only got worse as time went on. We didn't have a terrible on-call or terrible team morale, we just tended to lose out to teams working on more visible projects. We could have doubled our headcount and still had a backlog of impactful work we couldn't get to.

vxNsr 4y ago

it's not just facebook... they have oculus, insta, whatsapp, they were exploring mapping, and self driving cars at one point...

krn 4y ago
When you realize that WhatsApp had 450 million monthly active users and only 55 employees at the time of its acquisition by Facebook in 2014, you start to think that those tens of thousands of employees might be more needed for Meta's ad business.
- whatever1 4y ago
  WhatsApp was bloated for what it was. Just a chatting app. People design and implement these things in a weekend. Many interviews casually ask you to implement a chatting app. By yourself.
  - rjh29 4y ago
    Not true. WhatsApp performed exceptionally well for its scale. The team was very talented and experienced at writing optimised code. But I agree that Facebook is significantly larger in scope.
    - ninth_ant 4y ago
      It's not just that they wrote some very optimized code -- though it's true they did. They also designed the app in a way that requires very little server infrastructure compared to other chat apps, especially in the per-acquisition days. For example, they didn't store contacts/images/messages server-side as you see in Telegram, Google ChatAppOfTheWeek, FB messenger, Twitter, IG, etc. All the infrastructure and the folks required to develop and maintain it, simply didn't exist. Similar with the limited amount of data collection they did at the time -- if you don't log it you there is no reason to have a team of people to analyze it. If you don't have ads you don't need an ad sales team. Etc.
  - phyrex 4y ago
    Scale matters

sidcool 4y ago

Facebook I believe does a lot of things, including their own infrastructure.

rjh29 4y ago

They managed with 7,000 in 2013. But a lot of things changed. To continue to grow they needed to buy Facebook and Instagram. They scaled up their infrastructure - lots of system administrators. They needed more sales people and corporate campaign managers to get advertising in. More moderation, because governments started passing internet content laws. Spam detection. Customer support. Automated content blocking. More legal teams, because they are constantly under legal attack. Don't forget all these laws and what is acceptable or not changes by country - so they need a team in every country to handle that. Then there's VR, Meta AI, the 'Metaverse', and their whole R&D division.

danielunited 4y ago

As far as I’m aware most of the people who’ve lost their jobs were headhunters. Makes sense to let them go now that FB stopped hiring.

adamsb6 4y ago

I left Facebook in March after having worked there for seven years. It was always a struggle to hire enough engineers to accomplish my team's goals, and it only got worse as time went on. We didn't have a terrible on-call or terrible team morale, we just tended to lose out to teams working on more visible projects. We could have doubled our headcount and still had a backlog of impactful work we couldn't get to.