twitter is mostly run in their own datacenters, and does not have autoscaling. so capacity overall is more or less fixed, though how much capacity is given to e

twitter is mostly run in their own datacenters, and does not have autoscaling. so capacity overall is more or less fixed, though how much capacity is given to each service seems to be human adjusted. the lack of autoscaling at twitter, imo, is worrisome as it sort of hints that the system might not be as mature in the self-healing department as compared to other large tech companies. time will tell. you are right though, you don't need thousand of engineers to keep twitter running a few weeks. you also don't need a driver for a car driving a straight highway (until it bends). how many engineers are needed for maintenance? who knows. I don't think we have answers, we just have what elon decided. disclaimer: facts based on twitter threads/online reading, not a twitter employee or anyone with first-hand inside knowledge.