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Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

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Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#171

Post by cookingrobot »

werber wrote: post #166
rndn wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they hope for startups that eventually will be tech giants like Apple and IBM, that actually do create jobs. It's only a fairly recent development that it's becoming evident that technology allows for a tremendous centralization and automation. Algorithms are invented by one person, implemented by ten and used by billions. Eventually, only a tiny elite will need to work, and at that point we will need some so…

I totally agree with the idea of a basic guaranteed income, but who's going to do the grunt work? When are robots going to replace all jobs?

Grunt work gets more expensive when people aren't desperate for work, and that seems fair.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#172

Post by aianus »

biokoda wrote: post #169
aianus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resent them because Whatsapp is terrible, terrible software compared to Facebook Messenger yet somehow made $19B. 1. No web interface, I'm forced to use a tiny mobile keyboard 2. Identity tied to my phone number which changes every month 3. Ugly (subjective) 4. My friends are already on Facebook, why have another service that does the same thing but worse. 5. No chat bubbles. 6. No meme search I could go on and on.…

Why does your phone number change every month?

Because I travel a lot and use local SIM cards.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#173

Post by rokhayakebe »

mdellabitta wrote: post #66
interpol_p wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of how we have been hiring engineers. We sit them down for a day with a fairly simple task (build a simple web or mobile app, about three screens with a basic data model) but we make sure to give them a language or framework they are unfamiliar with. They have Google, Stack Overflow, and other employees to use as a resource. It's a great way to get to know new hires while seeing how resourceful and in…

Does this interviewing methodology mean that you only hire devs that don't currently have a gig or have vacation days to blow on the possibility of getting a job with you?

My thinking is when you require a day of someone, or anything above 2 hours, you pay them. That is whether or not you hire them.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#174

Post by vostrocity »

Balgair wrote: post #155
USNetizen wrote: post #139

Here's part of what I don't get - there are so many government organizations, state and federal, jumping over themselves to provide funding, incubation and support to IT product/app companies across the country claiming it creates jobs when, as this shows, it is entirely possible to operate at incredible scale nowadays with a mere skeleton staff. So why do so many government-run and government-funded programs fawn ov…

Because most of those politicians think Google employs roughly the same number of people that GM used to. Google has about 55k employees [0] and GM at it's peak had about 350k employees [1], a 6 fold difference. GM also had high competition in the marketplace with Ford and others, so the number of autoworkers was likely in the millions for the country. Since the car and the computer are synonymous for 'mental space'…

Do people really equate Google and GM because of the amount of 'mental space' they take? I would imagine people look at market cap or revenue or pretax earnings etc.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#175

Post by chaosmonkey »

lotso wrote: post #160
smcl wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone commenting along these lines on HN is that ignorant. Everyone on here understands that anything executed at the WhatsApp/FB/Instagram sort of scale is going to present all sorts of tough problems and require software engineering know-how in spades. However of all the various applications you could conceivably scale to hundreds of millions of users this is one of the simplest. I do not think ackno…

>However of all the various applications you could conceivably scale to hundreds of millions of users this is one of the simplest. I do not think acknowledging that is cringeworthy at all. What other apps besides social networking and communication apps even get to hundreds of millions of user?

Search?

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#176

Post by BuckRogers »

Yup, Erlang. If I move on from Python as my main programming language of choice, it would be to Erlang. So many are enthralled by Go and I never saw it. The Google association helps for those that idolize the corporation. Others feel Java is all we need or C# is all we need. Or JS and C++ and call it done. Some want to JS all the things. Erlang is a bit niche but it's indispensable like C, and Python is just such a great gen purpose platform. The most value is in the C/Python/Erlang triforce.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#177

Post by joeyspn »

acconsta wrote: post #150
temuze wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the product! Are you making something that searches the entire internet for relevant documents based on a custom query? Or are you sending a picture to another phone that goes away in If you're talking "minimum" then theoretically it could be 1 person. It's very easy to scale static pages. Heck - you could host a static page on S3.

Sure, but what's the most popular application hosted on AWS? Does it approach 900 million users?

It was probably Instagram before they moved to FB datacenters, with around 150-200 million monthly users ...

http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/89992572022/mig...

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#178

Post by vvanders »

amorphid wrote: post #54
apexkid wrote: post #21

I wish there were some good online resources around Erlang. Most of the content is very theoretical and not explanatory. Its hard to find implementation of common algorithms like Sorting, graphs, link-list and other dataStructures in erlang.

I haven't taken the Erlang plunge yet, but if I did, I'd probably try starting with Elixir, a language written in Erlang. There is a growing amount of buzz, community, tooling, etc. A basic understanding of Elixir would probably make Erlang a lot easier to understand.

Yup, Elixir is fantastic.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#179

Post by acconsta »

joeyspn wrote: post #177
acconsta wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what's the most popular application hosted on AWS? Does it approach 900 million users?

It was probably Instagram before they moved to FB datacenters, with around 150-200 million monthly users ... http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/89992572022/mig...

Maybe Reddit now then? 200 million monthly uniques:

https://www.reddit.com/about/

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#180

Post by claysmithr »

rwj wrote: post #105

There are more than 50 engineers working to support WhatsApp. A complete count should include all of the work that was out-sourced, such as engineers at AWS (or whomever is supplying the computing), the engineers for Erlang, etc. If the government builds a bridge by using a construction company, no one says the government is capable of building a bridge with zero engineers. The app is still a remarkable achievement.…

> A complete count should include all of the work that was out-sourced

No, it shouldn't. A complete account should just be people employed by the company.

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