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Apparently reddit has 71 employees. I would really like to know why reddit needs that many employees. It looks to me like an operation of maybe 20 people at mos

Apparently reddit has 71 employees. I would really like to know why reddit needs that many employees. It looks to me like an operation of maybe 20 people at most. That includes devops, engineering, social stuff and ads.

dimino 11y ago
What's that quote about when Digg invited them to lunch awhile back? That Digg had a few floors, and were blown away by the fact that Reddit's staff could fit in a car? I'm guessing the old Reddit guys aren't touching this comment section with a 10 ft pole, but they tell it better than what I just wrote. I wish I could find the comment...
- eco 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9768166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9768166
- jedberg 11y ago
  > I'm guessing the old Reddit guys aren't touching this comment section with a 10 ft pole I'm a glutton for punishment. :) The comment was that they were shocked that the entire reddit team fit in a Toyota Yaris, including the beer we brought.
eco 11y ago
Alexa ranks reddit at 24. The other user content focused stuff high on the list are: 2. Facebook (10,082 employees) 3. YouTube (a lot of employees) 6. Wikipedia (~250 employees) 8. Twitter (3,900 employees) 13. LinkedIn (7,600 employees) 15. Sina Weibo (unknown employees) 24. reddit (71 employees) 30. Tumblr (306 employees) 32. Imgur (<50 employees) Given this, I think it's rather impressive that they only have 71 employees (imgur is impressive too).
- smrtinsert 11y ago
  To be fair, Facebook tends to hire 1 engineer per 1000 lines of php code.
- Keyframe 11y ago
  Given this, I think it's rather impressive that they only have 71 employees (imgur is impressive too). In that context, I agree it's impressive. I still don't understand why would one need so many people considering there's next to none (except AMA, and that's gone) interaction with users on site. Code definitely doesn't need that many people (I know this firsthand, because it took me ~two months (less) to make a complete clone from scratch with all of the functionality of reddit for internal use and I'm not much of a coder anymore). Devops might be hairy, I admit that - but even with shifts and redundancy... I've seen sites with much more monetization in ads run on 10 sales people or less. So genuine question is still here, what do these people actually do? I understand facebook is all over the place and is a lot more than meets the eye on their site, so I can understand their headcount. I can see that with youtube as well, especially if they curate some of the content. Reddit is, well, reddit - next to no interaction with userbase, third party ios app they bought (or something), no android app, codebase already built and not all that hard to build anyways, they did build reddit gold (how much of an effort is that anyways)... and we're left with devops. I'm sure most of those 71 people aren't even technical to begin with and they struggle with ads. I genuinely do not understand need for that many people on board considering the impression of what they do.

dimino 11y ago

What's that quote about when Digg invited them to lunch awhile back? That Digg had a few floors, and were blown away by the fact that Reddit's staff could fit in a car? I'm guessing the old Reddit guys aren't touching this comment section with a 10 ft pole, but they tell it better than what I just wrote. I wish I could find the comment...

eco 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9768166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9768166
jedberg 11y ago
> I'm guessing the old Reddit guys aren't touching this comment section with a 10 ft pole I'm a glutton for punishment. :) The comment was that they were shocked that the entire reddit team fit in a Toyota Yaris, including the beer we brought.

eco 11y ago

Alexa ranks reddit at 24. The other user content focused stuff high on the list are: 2. Facebook (10,082 employees) 3. YouTube (a lot of employees) 6. Wikipedia (~250 employees) 8. Twitter (3,900 employees) 13. LinkedIn (7,600 employees) 15. Sina Weibo (unknown employees) 24. reddit (71 employees) 30. Tumblr (306 employees) 32. Imgur (<50 employees) Given this, I think it's rather impressive that they only have 71 employees (imgur is impressive too).

smrtinsert 11y ago
To be fair, Facebook tends to hire 1 engineer per 1000 lines of php code.
Keyframe 11y ago
Given this, I think it's rather impressive that they only have 71 employees (imgur is impressive too). In that context, I agree it's impressive. I still don't understand why would one need so many people considering there's next to none (except AMA, and that's gone) interaction with users on site. Code definitely doesn't need that many people (I know this firsthand, because it took me ~two months (less) to make a complete clone from scratch with all of the functionality of reddit for internal use and I'm not much of a coder anymore). Devops might be hairy, I admit that - but even with shifts and redundancy... I've seen sites with much more monetization in ads run on 10 sales people or less. So genuine question is still here, what do these people actually do? I understand facebook is all over the place and is a lot more than meets the eye on their site, so I can understand their headcount. I can see that with youtube as well, especially if they curate some of the content. Reddit is, well, reddit - next to no interaction with userbase, third party ios app they bought (or something), no android app, codebase already built and not all that hard to build anyways, they did build reddit gold (how much of an effort is that anyways)... and we're left with devops. I'm sure most of those 71 people aren't even technical to begin with and they struggle with ads. I genuinely do not understand need for that many people on board considering the impression of what they do.