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In Feb 13, exactly one year before Whatsapp sold to Facebook for 19 billion dollars, they had about 200 million active users and only 50 staff members. Firing

by vntok 4y ago

In Feb 13, exactly one year before Whatsapp sold to Facebook for 19 billion dollars, they had about 200 million active users and only 50 staff members. Firing half of the 7500 Twitter employees (most at $100k+ comp', lots at $300k+ comp') does not seem that erratic to me.

senttoschool 4y ago
Facebook, at one point, had 50 employees too. Doesn't mean Facebook today can run on 50 employees.
- vntok 4y ago
  Twitter has 396.5 million users globally today. That's about twice what Whatsapp had at the time when they had 50 employees. Yet catering to twice the users takes Twitter 150 times as many employees. There's a huge gap spanning two orders of magnitude there. > Facebook, at one point, had 50 employees too. Doesn't mean Facebook today can run on 50 employees. Indeed Facebook had 50 employees at one time, and indeed Facebook most probably can't run on 50 employees toay given they have 2.5 billion users. But I'm not sure what your point is?
  - senttoschool 4y ago
    My point is that you're comparing apples and oranges. My last company had 5,000 users and hundreds of employees. Does that mean we should reduce the employee count to 1 employee given that WhatsApp was able to sustain 200m users with 50 employees? How how about the fact that WhatsApp generated $10m in revenue when it had 50 employees or 200k/employee while Twitter in 2021 generated $5b or $677k/employee? Your logic is so bad that I didn't even want to reply.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    I think people are disagreeing with you because you show a fundamental misunderstanding of how larger companies work. There is not a simple "queries per employee" metric that makes sense as companies grow larger. Large sites with a lot of surface area have to solve different problems- and structure their business, which includes larger teams working on different problems- and if you got rid of them, you'd run a risk of serious problems with your infrastructure. At Facebook, if you fired all the UX designers, the site could stay up for years. If you fired all the SREs, the site would be down in two weeks.
papito 4y ago
While there is something to be said for tech bloat and obsession with pouring money into insanely complicated distributed systems, WhatsApp does not have to have a moderation system covering the whole planet and a confusing maze of government laws and regulations based on locale. Outside of encryption, it's by default non-controversial. Twitter is.

by vntok 4y ago

senttoschool 4y ago

Facebook, at one point, had 50 employees too. Doesn't mean Facebook today can run on 50 employees.

vntok 4y ago
Twitter has 396.5 million users globally today. That's about twice what Whatsapp had at the time when they had 50 employees. Yet catering to twice the users takes Twitter 150 times as many employees. There's a huge gap spanning two orders of magnitude there. > Facebook, at one point, had 50 employees too. Doesn't mean Facebook today can run on 50 employees. Indeed Facebook had 50 employees at one time, and indeed Facebook most probably can't run on 50 employees toay given they have 2.5 billion users. But I'm not sure what your point is?
- senttoschool 4y ago
  My point is that you're comparing apples and oranges. My last company had 5,000 users and hundreds of employees. Does that mean we should reduce the employee count to 1 employee given that WhatsApp was able to sustain 200m users with 50 employees? How how about the fact that WhatsApp generated $10m in revenue when it had 50 employees or 200k/employee while Twitter in 2021 generated $5b or $677k/employee? Your logic is so bad that I didn't even want to reply.
- dekhn 4y ago
  I think people are disagreeing with you because you show a fundamental misunderstanding of how larger companies work. There is not a simple "queries per employee" metric that makes sense as companies grow larger. Large sites with a lot of surface area have to solve different problems- and structure their business, which includes larger teams working on different problems- and if you got rid of them, you'd run a risk of serious problems with your infrastructure. At Facebook, if you fired all the UX designers, the site could stay up for years. If you fired all the SREs, the site would be down in two weeks.

papito 4y ago

While there is something to be said for tech bloat and obsession with pouring money into insanely complicated distributed systems, WhatsApp does not have to have a moderation system covering the whole planet and a confusing maze of government laws and regulations based on locale. Outside of encryption, it's by default non-controversial. Twitter is.