6 ms·

Yeah, I was just thinking few days ago how absurdly large Twitter's workforce seemed to be.

by vegai_ 4y ago

habinero 4y ago
People fixate on what looks like a simple frontend and don't see all the tech behind it, plus the even larger support structure behind it: sales, analytics, moderation, etc etc.
FartyMcFarter 4y ago
Obligatory link: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/
- blagie 4y ago
  I disagree with this link. Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5 years, and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a better Google, almost guaranteed. Including Arabic, a11y, spam filtering, and all the other messy stuff. You know the problem with that statement? No one will give me 10 motivated people, 5 years, and room to focus. First, any ten people you find will care about having fun, making money, preparing for their next career step. Beyond a pizza box team, finding people motivated by a common good is impossible. Second, if you give me room to focus, you won't know that I'm not playing video games all day. You don't want that. You'll want to monitor what I'm doing. My ability to keep collecting my paycheck will be based on keeping you happy (perhaps with false reports of progress, if you don't set things up right). And so on. Once you factor in the human constraints, I have no idea how to beat Google. If I did, I'd have a second unicorn on my belt. I'll mention: I've had that magical scenario -- money and room to focus -- exactly once in my career. I did built a unicorn in a few months. Once those dynamics kicked in, there was near-zero further progress, but the organization eventually sold for around $1B (and that was after losing a lot of further value). That was based on me having a few months with a 100% carve-out to focus completely, as well as to spend money as I saw fit. As organizations get bigger, these problems get harder. Right now, in a typical day, in my current job, I can code for at most 3 hours. Just as often, this is zero hours. I couldn't build the same unicorn with that level of split focus in any amount of time. I'm amazed at the difference in how much I get done. The technical problems to beating Google aren't impossible to solve, but the hard problems aren't technical.
  - ctvo 4y ago
    > Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5 years, and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a better Google, almost guaranteed. Including Arabic, a11y, spam filtering, and all the other messy stuff. This is 60 million USD paying those 10 handsomely to keep them happy. Having built your unicorn that sold for a billion+ you’d think funding would be straight forward for you. You don’t know a single VC? Self-funding isn’t an option?
    - blagie 4y ago
      1) Raising funding is easy for me. 2) Self-funding is hard for me, because I didn't take into account human, political, and organizational issues. I proposed and built an awesome technology, but that doesn't mean I was compensated for it. A few fallacies: - Keeping people happy isn't the same as keeping people aligned and productive. - Keeping funders happy means I can't give technical work 100% focus. - Keeping funders happy also constrains technical work; for example, showing progress is often in friction with not taking on technical debt. ... and many more.
      - ctvo 4y ago
        I see. If only you could be left alone to unleash your brilliance with your friends, you could make a trillion dollar company. Unfortunately it looks like no one believes you / believes in you enough to help you with this.
        blagie 4y ago
        While your comment is sarcastic, it is correct. It's also not specific to me -- there are trainloads of people who could build trillion-dollar companies if magically freed from human issues, such as trust. When I was young, I thought technical problems were hard, and made comments just like yours when more experienced people told me technical problems were easy and human problems were hard. I ignored them too. Unfortunately, there isn't any magic. We all compete on equal ground, having to solve both technical and human issues.

Yeah, I was just thinking few days ago how absurdly large Twitter's workforce seemed to be.

by vegai_ 4y ago

Yeah, I was just thinking few days ago how absurdly large Twitter's workforce seemed to be.

People fixate on what looks like a simple frontend and don't see all the tech behind it, plus the even larger support structure behind it: sales, analytics, moderation, etc etc.

FartyMcFarter 4y ago

Obligatory link: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/

blagie 4y ago
I disagree with this link. Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5 years, and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a better Google, almost guaranteed. Including Arabic, a11y, spam filtering, and all the other messy stuff. You know the problem with that statement? No one will give me 10 motivated people, 5 years, and room to focus. First, any ten people you find will care about having fun, making money, preparing for their next career step. Beyond a pizza box team, finding people motivated by a common good is impossible. Second, if you give me room to focus, you won't know that I'm not playing video games all day. You don't want that. You'll want to monitor what I'm doing. My ability to keep collecting my paycheck will be based on keeping you happy (perhaps with false reports of progress, if you don't set things up right). And so on. Once you factor in the human constraints, I have no idea how to beat Google. If I did, I'd have a second unicorn on my belt. I'll mention: I've had that magical scenario -- money and room to focus -- exactly once in my career. I did built a unicorn in a few months. Once those dynamics kicked in, there was near-zero further progress, but the organization eventually sold for around $1B (and that was after losing a lot of further value). That was based on me having a few months with a 100% carve-out to focus completely, as well as to spend money as I saw fit. As organizations get bigger, these problems get harder. Right now, in a typical day, in my current job, I can code for at most 3 hours. Just as often, this is zero hours. I couldn't build the same unicorn with that level of split focus in any amount of time. I'm amazed at the difference in how much I get done. The technical problems to beating Google aren't impossible to solve, but the hard problems aren't technical.
- ctvo 4y ago
  > Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5 years, and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a better Google, almost guaranteed. Including Arabic, a11y, spam filtering, and all the other messy stuff. This is 60 million USD paying those 10 handsomely to keep them happy. Having built your unicorn that sold for a billion+ you’d think funding would be straight forward for you. You don’t know a single VC? Self-funding isn’t an option?
  - blagie 4y ago
    1) Raising funding is easy for me. 2) Self-funding is hard for me, because I didn't take into account human, political, and organizational issues. I proposed and built an awesome technology, but that doesn't mean I was compensated for it. A few fallacies: - Keeping people happy isn't the same as keeping people aligned and productive. - Keeping funders happy means I can't give technical work 100% focus. - Keeping funders happy also constrains technical work; for example, showing progress is often in friction with not taking on technical debt. ... and many more.
    - ctvo 4y ago
      I see. If only you could be left alone to unleash your brilliance with your friends, you could make a trillion dollar company. Unfortunately it looks like no one believes you / believes in you enough to help you with this.
      - blagie 4y ago
        While your comment is sarcastic, it is correct. It's also not specific to me -- there are trainloads of people who could build trillion-dollar companies if magically freed from human issues, such as trust. When I was young, I thought technical problems were hard, and made comments just like yours when more experienced people told me technical problems were easy and human problems were hard. I ignored them too. Unfortunately, there isn't any magic. We all compete on equal ground, having to solve both technical and human issues.