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What do they do to require 178 people to function? I have never used their app, but I have absolutely no idea what 178 full time, 40h/wk workers do at a niche d

by sph 3y ago

What do they do to require 178 people to function? I have never used their app, but I have absolutely no idea what 178 full time, 40h/wk workers do at a niche dating app company. Not picking on them in particular, you can ask the same question to pretty much any tech company. How many time do you need to rewrite your UI, your backend and redesign the logo to keep them busy day in and day out?

neerajk 3y ago
"How many time do you need to rewrite your UI, your backend and redesign the logo" Just one more time.
whalesalad 3y ago
funny thing is the app has not changed in like 100 years. at this point it could probably be maintained by like a team of 5.
- dylan604 3y ago
  That's what Musk thought about Twitt...er, X. How's that working out?
  - RankingMember 3y ago
    People underestimate how many are holding things together/putting out fires behind the scenes until those people are gone and the seemingly-reliable app is now a smoking wreck.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    twitter is arguably more complex than grindr lol. hate to sound like a cliche but grindr could be recreated in a weekend with rails or django. pretty sure the app is a webview. it's truly stuck in 2012-2014. the hard part of that app is just the scale... but a handful of servers running elixir/erlang would handle it without breaking a sweat.
    - slig 3y ago
      Why work on a weekend? Just buy from here https://codecanyon.net/search/dating https://codecanyon.net/search/dating
    - opprobium 3y ago
      My guess is that handling bots, spam and abuse is one of the harder parts of the app at this point. It's a constant moving adversary that only gets worse the more popular your social app is, and not handling the problem can really drive users away.
    - NickM 3y ago
      the hard part of that app is just the scale... but a handful of servers running elixir/erlang would handle it without breaking a sweat. Funny you should say that - I’m an Erlang dev and Grindr has tried to recruit me in the past. Apparently they already use it.
      - paradox460 3y ago
        Wonder if it's for their messaging stack, which probably has ejabberd buried inside
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Why not go to https://status.twitter.com https://status.twitter.com to see? (Whoever was responsible for renewing the certs apparently got fired...)
    - dylan604 3y ago
      that's hilarious. i was expecting something funny, but not utter fail
mrkeen 3y ago
All speculation: * I imagine massive amounts of legal compliance work are required, varying from state to state (internationally). * Support requests from customers, requiring varying levels of developer time * working on the matching algorithm * tempting getting former users back in * maintaining data analytics pipelines so the CEO has something to ignore in favour of gut feeling. * and the remaining 170 staff are agile coaches.
WhatsName 3y ago
50% of any large tech company are not engineers but people working support processes. Think lawyers, HR, controlling, compliance,... Now assume a third of the tech half is required to keep stuff running (sys admins, SRE, devops), one third doing the actual developmemt and one third make sure the app is actually aligned with user interests (testing, ui/ux, security) Split the app teams by platform and you end up with roughly 15 iOS/Android Devs.
- sph 3y ago
  I still don't know how you keep the schedule of 15 iOS/Android devs full on an app that's pretty much done. How many lines of code are they changing/features are they adding over 8 hours a day on average? I agree with your breakdown, but what's missing (and not very easily measurable) is that 80% of these 178 people are working at 20% performance. "Working with their hands in their pockets" I like to call it. This is how you keep around 15 mobile devs. Modern office work is a pile of wasted human time and nonsense, enabled by 20 years of free, low-interest money.
insanitybit 3y ago
Do they do advertising in their app? If so that can easily occupy a few teams of engineers at scale, maintaining the bidding and serving systems, among other things.
outworlder 3y ago
> What do they do to require 178 people to function? That's a quite low headcount for such a high profile app, to be honest. There's more to companies than just developers.

by sph 3y ago

neerajk 3y ago

"How many time do you need to rewrite your UI, your backend and redesign the logo" Just one more time.

whalesalad 3y ago

funny thing is the app has not changed in like 100 years. at this point it could probably be maintained by like a team of 5.

dylan604 3y ago
That's what Musk thought about Twitt...er, X. How's that working out?
- RankingMember 3y ago
  People underestimate how many are holding things together/putting out fires behind the scenes until those people are gone and the seemingly-reliable app is now a smoking wreck.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  twitter is arguably more complex than grindr lol. hate to sound like a cliche but grindr could be recreated in a weekend with rails or django. pretty sure the app is a webview. it's truly stuck in 2012-2014. the hard part of that app is just the scale... but a handful of servers running elixir/erlang would handle it without breaking a sweat.
  - slig 3y ago
    Why work on a weekend? Just buy from here https://codecanyon.net/search/dating https://codecanyon.net/search/dating
  - opprobium 3y ago
    My guess is that handling bots, spam and abuse is one of the harder parts of the app at this point. It's a constant moving adversary that only gets worse the more popular your social app is, and not handling the problem can really drive users away.
  - NickM 3y ago
    the hard part of that app is just the scale... but a handful of servers running elixir/erlang would handle it without breaking a sweat. Funny you should say that - I’m an Erlang dev and Grindr has tried to recruit me in the past. Apparently they already use it.
    - paradox460 3y ago
      Wonder if it's for their messaging stack, which probably has ejabberd buried inside
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Why not go to https://status.twitter.com https://status.twitter.com to see? (Whoever was responsible for renewing the certs apparently got fired...)
  - dylan604 3y ago
    that's hilarious. i was expecting something funny, but not utter fail

mrkeen 3y ago

All speculation: * I imagine massive amounts of legal compliance work are required, varying from state to state (internationally). * Support requests from customers, requiring varying levels of developer time * working on the matching algorithm * tempting getting former users back in * maintaining data analytics pipelines so the CEO has something to ignore in favour of gut feeling. * and the remaining 170 staff are agile coaches.

WhatsName 3y ago

50% of any large tech company are not engineers but people working support processes. Think lawyers, HR, controlling, compliance,... Now assume a third of the tech half is required to keep stuff running (sys admins, SRE, devops), one third doing the actual developmemt and one third make sure the app is actually aligned with user interests (testing, ui/ux, security) Split the app teams by platform and you end up with roughly 15 iOS/Android Devs.

sph 3y ago
I still don't know how you keep the schedule of 15 iOS/Android devs full on an app that's pretty much done. How many lines of code are they changing/features are they adding over 8 hours a day on average? I agree with your breakdown, but what's missing (and not very easily measurable) is that 80% of these 178 people are working at 20% performance. "Working with their hands in their pockets" I like to call it. This is how you keep around 15 mobile devs. Modern office work is a pile of wasted human time and nonsense, enabled by 20 years of free, low-interest money.

insanitybit 3y ago

Do they do advertising in their app? If so that can easily occupy a few teams of engineers at scale, maintaining the bidding and serving systems, among other things.

outworlder 3y ago

> What do they do to require 178 people to function? That's a quite low headcount for such a high profile app, to be honest. There's more to companies than just developers.