7 ms·

You mean to tell me that you can't actually run a tech company with three engineers and a Mac Mini?

by moose_man 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
WinLychee 3y ago
Sounds like a really interesting challenge, would be fun to see how far you can get.
- WJW 3y ago
  Without specifying scale, this seems pretty easy. Pieter Levels has been able to manage a tech company with just a single engineer and with some optimization he could probably fit it all onto a mac mini without too much trouble.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cogman10 3y ago
I mean, hat tip to the pie-acquisition engineers, Twitter has done better than I thought it would without maintenance.
- malfist 3y ago
  I'm not terribly surprised. General rule of thumb is you devote 20% of your resources to KTLO. If you fire 50% of your staff, you can still keep the lights on, just the portion of new development fell from 80% of your capacity to 60%. Now obviously firing entire teams changes that metric some. Probably why there's been some high profile outages like MFA. But most companies can sacrifice large portions of their workforce if they only want to maintain the status quo.
cubefox 3y ago
Have you checked how many engineers Mastodon has? https://joinmastodon.org/de/about https://joinmastodon.org/de/about Four.
- wilg 3y ago
  Just for my own interest, based on the latest data I could find and making ChatGPT's code interpreter doing the remedial math (https://chat.openai.com/share/3745dbcd-5be5-4af9-ae34-36845b2f3bc1 https://chat.openai.com/share/3745dbcd-5be5-4af9-ae34-36845b...) The Monthly Active Users (MAUs) per engineer for Twitter is approximately 600,000, while for Mastodon it's around 280,000.
  - lost_tourist 3y ago
    But if you count salaries in the amount of efficiency and uptime per employee per user per dollar spent is astronomically higher in favor of Mastodon
- albertopv 3y ago
  Managing servers/infrastructure also? AFAIK Twitter has a couple of data centers.
- rafark 3y ago
  Doesn’t take too many people to build a website like twitter. It’s not really hard and there are tons of mvc frameworks in pretty much any major language. Only one good programmer could probably create a clone. Of course the scale matters, but it’s not like you’d be writing an OS.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  They are not involved in running your instance
throwaway14356 3y ago
one would be ideal... until they leave...
GuB-42 3y ago
I think Twitter was definitely overstaffed. You don't need that much manpower to run a tech company, at least on the technical side. The problem is that Twitter organized itself as an overstaffed company, with complex structures, complex code, lots of R&D, etc... Than Elon Musk came in and did a Thanos snap and immediately fired half of the workforce, and I guess quite a few others left, especially among the best who would have an easy way finding a good job elsewhere. But while the workforce was drastically reduced, the complexity of the system wasn't reduced and probably never will. So, you get what happens now. It is possible to run a Twitter-like website with much less resources than Twitter had before Elon Musk bought it, but you can't run Twitter as it is now.
- berkes 3y ago
  Only Twitter was an advertising company. And for that to run smooth, you apparently need a lot of staff. From people that ensure your Kelloggs ads don't appear below literal neonazi movies, to people that close deals on large advertising campaigns, to people that ensure the place where those ads appear (Twitter, the product) actually keeps running.

You mean to tell me that you can't actually run a tech company with three engineers and a Mac Mini?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

WinLychee 3y ago

Sounds like a really interesting challenge, would be fun to see how far you can get.

WJW 3y ago
Without specifying scale, this seems pretty easy. Pieter Levels has been able to manage a tech company with just a single engineer and with some optimization he could probably fit it all onto a mac mini without too much trouble.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cogman10 3y ago

I mean, hat tip to the pie-acquisition engineers, Twitter has done better than I thought it would without maintenance.

malfist 3y ago
I'm not terribly surprised. General rule of thumb is you devote 20% of your resources to KTLO. If you fire 50% of your staff, you can still keep the lights on, just the portion of new development fell from 80% of your capacity to 60%. Now obviously firing entire teams changes that metric some. Probably why there's been some high profile outages like MFA. But most companies can sacrifice large portions of their workforce if they only want to maintain the status quo.

cubefox 3y ago

Have you checked how many engineers Mastodon has? https://joinmastodon.org/de/about https://joinmastodon.org/de/about Four.

wilg 3y ago
Just for my own interest, based on the latest data I could find and making ChatGPT's code interpreter doing the remedial math (https://chat.openai.com/share/3745dbcd-5be5-4af9-ae34-36845b2f3bc1 https://chat.openai.com/share/3745dbcd-5be5-4af9-ae34-36845b...) The Monthly Active Users (MAUs) per engineer for Twitter is approximately 600,000, while for Mastodon it's around 280,000.
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  But if you count salaries in the amount of efficiency and uptime per employee per user per dollar spent is astronomically higher in favor of Mastodon
albertopv 3y ago
Managing servers/infrastructure also? AFAIK Twitter has a couple of data centers.
rafark 3y ago
Doesn’t take too many people to build a website like twitter. It’s not really hard and there are tons of mvc frameworks in pretty much any major language. Only one good programmer could probably create a clone. Of course the scale matters, but it’s not like you’d be writing an OS.
ipaddr 3y ago
They are not involved in running your instance

throwaway14356 3y ago

one would be ideal... until they leave...

GuB-42 3y ago

I think Twitter was definitely overstaffed. You don't need that much manpower to run a tech company, at least on the technical side. The problem is that Twitter organized itself as an overstaffed company, with complex structures, complex code, lots of R&D, etc... Than Elon Musk came in and did a Thanos snap and immediately fired half of the workforce, and I guess quite a few others left, especially among the best who would have an easy way finding a good job elsewhere. But while the workforce was drastically reduced, the complexity of the system wasn't reduced and probably never will. So, you get what happens now. It is possible to run a Twitter-like website with much less resources than Twitter had before Elon Musk bought it, but you can't run Twitter as it is now.

berkes 3y ago
Only Twitter was an advertising company. And for that to run smooth, you apparently need a lot of staff. From people that ensure your Kelloggs ads don't appear below literal neonazi movies, to people that close deals on large advertising campaigns, to people that ensure the place where those ads appear (Twitter, the product) actually keeps running.