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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

#221

Post by aianus »

conorgdaly wrote: post #218
aianus wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I travel a lot and use local SIM cards.

Whilst abroad, I've used foreign sim cards in my phone and all Whatsapp does is prompt to keep the existing number or change to new number.

But how do you tell people to add you on WhatsApp? I don't even know my phone number. Phone numbers are a poor replacement for email addresses or usernames.

Edit: not to mention the security implications of having authentication tied to one's phone number. Any telecom employee, foreign government agent, or skilled social engineer can impersonate one on WhatsApp reasonably easily.

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

#222

Post by nilkn »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #215
nilkn wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence in this case is the fact that they built the company and product with 50 developers. Whether that evidence implies anything about the product's complexity is the speculative part. If the explanation is that every single programmer at WhatsApp is 10x more productive than programmers at similar top companies, then my first question is how did WhatsApp manage to hire such people but Google, Facebook, etc.,…

Would you rather be one of 25,000 engineers at google, or one of 50 at whatsapp? A ton of people would chose the latter just to be in a more important core role. And if we use the acquisition price as a proxy for current market value, the per engineer capita is 20 times better at WhatsApp. I don't have any inside info, but I'm betting any of those engineers that had options are very very happy with their current job.

That's very handwavy and not rigorous.

> A ton of people would chose the latter just to be in a more important core role.

Yeah, and a ton of people would choose the former just to be in a bigger company with more perks or because they want to work on something other than an IM app.

Who knows? This isn't nearly strong enough to form a conclusion either way.

> the per engineer capita is 20 times better at WhatsApp

Perhaps, but why? You can't say that they got better talent just because they were a startup, because then I can point out all the other startups that don't have such talent.

> I'm betting any of those engineers that had options are very very happy with their current job.

I'm sure they are. I'm also sure they're not oracles who can predict the future. So they couldn't have known when joining that WhatsApp would be acquired for such a spectacular amount. So why WhatsApp over all the other startups? What did WhatsApp do to attract such world-class talent? I'm looking for a real, concrete answer that couldn't equally be applied to every other startup out there.

The alternative explanation, of course, is that WhatsApp just isn't as complex as some here are proposing it to be. Then we don't have the mystery of how they beat every other company in the world at hiring the greatest unknown talent. Rather, they simply timed the market perfectly, probably partially through luck.

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

#223

Post by qyv »

chetanahuja wrote: post #202

Basically they're a silicon valley company who've done everything that's exactly the opposite of standard silicon valley advise -- bootstrapped for first few years, complete apathy or even aversion to silicon valley marketing (if you live in the valley and have no foreign connection, you probably didn't even know what whatsapp was before 2012 or so), built for all client platforms simultaneously (including blackberry…

To expand on this, I think a better question is why do other need so many more engineers for so many fewer users?

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

#224

Post by Shorel »

rdtsc wrote: post #109
bendtherules wrote: post #103

"WhatsApp doesn’t talk much about its engineering work" - Wrong as hell. They first talked about this in erlang conf about 3 yrs ago, in 2012. [Youtube Link]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDk6l3tPBuw ). I hate how tech blogs take a thing thats quite well known and old and spins into a "did you know?" post like it was just unraveled (Oh, maybe your staff just heard about it, doesnt mean no one knows shit.)

Reading through comments, I think there is an undercurrent of slight envy or resentment (perhaps unconscious) both towards WhatsApp and Erlang. We are rational people so we'll never admit to that, so it comes out in other objections "It is a simple system", "I could do the backend in a weekend"... There are a lot of startup people here, who work at a startup, bet their time, money, life? on one, and talking about a s…

They surely excel at picking the right tool for the right job.

One aspect of this trend of resentment you describe is that having comparatively less robust and using less efficient languages (like js with nodejs) in the servers would make them require more cloud resources.

We as humans tend to rationalize our past choices, probably a fair amount of the dismissal is from developers who think their "secret sauce" is using AWS with auto-scaling.

And the only one who wins something from this trend is Jeff Bezos and other cloud shareholders.

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

#225

Post by Shorel »

aianus wrote: post #162
rdtsc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading through comments, I think there is an undercurrent of slight envy or resentment (perhaps unconscious) both towards WhatsApp and Erlang. We are rational people so we'll never admit to that, so it comes out in other objections "It is a simple system", "I could do the backend in a weekend"... There are a lot of startup people here, who work at a startup, bet their time, money, life? on one, and talking about a s…

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.…

Number 4 means you don't have to use the service at all, and no one is forcing you.

The only reason I use Whatsapp is for contacts that don't have Skype (even your fancy Facebook is too new and webby for me).

Video calls are a must for me, but they seem to be a thing of the past now.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

aianus wrote: post #162
rdtsc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading through comments, I think there is an undercurrent of slight envy or resentment (perhaps unconscious) both towards WhatsApp and Erlang. We are rational people so we'll never admit to that, so it comes out in other objections "It is a simple system", "I could do the backend in a weekend"... There are a lot of startup people here, who work at a startup, bet their time, money, life? on one, and talking about a s…

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.…

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by aianus »

Shorel wrote: post #225
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.…

Number 4 means you don't have to use the service at all, and no one is forcing you. The only reason I use Whatsapp is for contacts that don't have Skype (even your fancy Facebook is too new and webby for me). Video calls are a must for me, but they seem to be a thing of the past now.

Of course nobody is forcing me, it just boggles my mind that they have any market share at all. It feels like watching a six year old randomly throw paint at a canvas and selling it at auction for $50 million.

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

#228

Post by throwaway437812 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #20

(Disclaimer: I teach this stuff) Good article. It's a keeper. Touches on a lot of things I've been telling clients for years. My takeaways: - Pure functions in little composable pieces. Screw the fact you can't find programmers. With 1/20th the staff, it's not important - Zero to few meetings. Keep focused on one thing. No playing around with WhizzBang Platform 7.0 because all the cool kids are using it. Mind your kn…

Could you elaborate what is is that F# taught you, and how it changed the way you work?

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

#229

Post by Shorel »

aianus wrote: post #227
Shorel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number 4 means you don't have to use the service at all, and no one is forcing you. The only reason I use Whatsapp is for contacts that don't have Skype (even your fancy Facebook is too new and webby for me). Video calls are a must for me, but they seem to be a thing of the past now.

Of course nobody is forcing me, it just boggles my mind that they have any market share at all. It feels like watching a six year old randomly throw paint at a canvas and selling it at auction for $50 million.

What boggles my mind is that MS could have it all but simply neglected Messenger until it died.

WhatsApp success is built more on MS failure than anything else.

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

#230

Post by sheepmullet »

aianus wrote: post #162
rdtsc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading through comments, I think there is an undercurrent of slight envy or resentment (perhaps unconscious) both towards WhatsApp and Erlang. We are rational people so we'll never admit to that, so it comes out in other objections "It is a simple system", "I could do the backend in a weekend"... There are a lot of startup people here, who work at a startup, bet their time, money, life? on one, and talking about a s…

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.…

> 1. No web interface, I'm forced to use a tiny mobile keyboard

Not a problem for most people. On the other hand it works well on pretty much every phone out there. In comparison Facebook messenger runs terribly on my iPhone 4. I'd hate to try and use it on a lower end android phone.

> 2. Identity tied to my phone number which changes every month

I've had the same phone number for over 10 years. Everybody understands and is familiar with phone numbers and have been for a long time. My 70 year old mother has no problems using whatsapp. Many more people have my phone number than have my email address.

> 4. My friends are already on Facebook

Good for you. Many of my friends aren't. Most of my family and relatives aren't. I'm thinking of leaving it myself as it's just a big time waster.

> I resent them because Whatsapp is terrible, terrible software compared to Facebook Messenger yet somehow made $19B.

Except it's really only bad for your particular use case. For most people Facebook messenger was late to the party and doesn't have any real draw.

Facebook messenger still doesn't have basic functionality I want. For example if I scroll to a particular point in a chat conversation and later come back to the conversation FB Messenger has not kept my scroll position. Basic basic usability problems.

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