Earlier quoted context omitted.
Different product. One is a social media network and one is a messaging app.
You say that now, but Twitter also began as a way to send a quick message to your friends.
But, it wasn't built to scale like WhatsApp.
WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
411–420 of 462 posts
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ensuring user privacy _from you_ can be an effective defensive measure for small companies who cannot afford to mount a meaningful legal defense. "Here's all the data we have, officers. We don't have the keys. Good luck."
Again, how does this connect with why Whatsapp won as an app? Consumers didn't follow this logic. At all. They went for the convenient and free option. I'm so confused by this thread. It's like you guys are pasting the output of an ML model with only the input "secure" at me.
Well, FWIW, the first people I knew using WhatsApp were my friends who were drug dealers or chinese nationals, and both lauded the encryption features.
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#413I remember reading they worked very hard to make their app available on many, many types of phones. Which is weird because they regularly announce they drop support for certain phone OS.
I was there from 2011 to 2019. We had pretty clear numerical guidelines for continuing support of a platform or OS. If the numbers are close, things like upgradability or difficulty of support make a difference: if all the devices running OS 1.1 can actually be upgraded to 1.2 and 1.2 fixes important things, then dropping support for OS 1.1 can happen with more users still there.
If builds need to be signed by the OS maker and they won't sign any more builds, user count doesn't matter (sorry Nokia S40 and iPhone 3G).
We did make some longer lasting builds for platforms we were ending support for, but there needs to be an end. Older clients don't support newer features and we didn't want to have a network where that was the status quo. I don't know what the current expirations are, but mandatory updates a couple times a year helps keep the feature support similar.
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> adequate business context, a decent design spec, and letting them figure it out. I wish more PM's thought like you.
Ditto. As an engineer, it feels like product managers often feel a need to keep cranking out new features as a way to justify their seat at the table. I would love to work in an engineering culture which found a way around that problem. If that means the job falls on me instead, so be it.
> If that means the job falls on me instead, so be it.
Precisely this. I don’t know when “engineer” turned into “order taker”. There’s no reason to have a Product Manager define and engineers work. Good engineers are more than capable of defining their own work.
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#415My experience is, # of engineers is directly related to # of product people, which is in turn related to quantity (not quality) of ideas that the founders/leaders are desperate to try out. Higher quantity of ideas == More engineers. Higher quality of ideas == Fewer engineers. WhatsApp success is not about what WhatsApp did, it's about everything they didn't do. No desktop, no browser (until after reaaaaaaallly long),…
It’s comical that all of the replies to what you’ve written claim you’re wrong, because you’re actually 100% right. And this is even more true when you remember that the company had fewer than 20 people for a long time, and that there was only one real goal , that seems to be forgotten: they needed to clone BlackBerry Messenger and get it working on every platform possible. That was it. That’s all they needed to do,…
Mike might have taken longer to get it than Jim but he eventually understood the existential threat they faced. He realized this at a time they could have possibly changed course but was unable to do so because the board did not have faith in such a drastic change. The plan to cannibalize device sales today vs promise of future software revenue did not sound so promising for the board, who I imagine were interested only quarterly profits and their stock price.
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heroes are a red flag for me, as a manager, trying to build a resilient team. Which is not to say that you can't have a range of experience levels. But what happens when those heroes are unavailable? Maybe they're out on vacation, or medical leave, or they eventually retire or leave the organization because they're tired of propping it up? Heroes tend to be a single point of failure.
> Heroes are a red flag for me, as a manager, trying to build a resilient team Heroes are your most powerful asset, but you have to use them responsibly. The best thing you can do when handed a 10x unicorn developer is to try to document 100% of the things they say & do, and also make it a requirement that the hero mentor others some % of the week. E.g. For 1-2 hours every Friday you force them to hold a "no stupid q…
will your 10x unicorn be willing to both write documentation and do mentoring?
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#417My experience is, # of engineers is directly related to # of product people, which is in turn related to quantity (not quality) of ideas that the founders/leaders are desperate to try out. Higher quantity of ideas == More engineers. Higher quality of ideas == Fewer engineers. WhatsApp success is not about what WhatsApp did, it's about everything they didn't do. No desktop, no browser (until after reaaaaaaallly long),…
this
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#418They not only used FreeBSD for their servers, their CEO at the time Jan Koum donated $1 million dollars to FreeBSD foundation too. Talk about giving back! The only thing they failed at was making money. I really wished they had. They knew what Whatsapp meant to the world. Look at WA now. https://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2014/11/freebsd-found...
WhatsApp was successful only because they had no intention of ever making money. Simple lightweight app, no tracking, no ads, no upsell. Yet they were funded by VCs who would want a return on their investment at some point.
> WhatsApp was successful only because they had no intention of ever making money.
IIRC they had 450M users when they sold to FB. Their plan was to charge $1/user/yr. A $450M ARR company run by 50 people would have done fine.
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#419You can very easily build your own WhatsApp server today by simply deploying https://www.ejabberd.im/ on a box and using https://conversations.im/ on an Android phone.
And talk to yourself on it?
I decided to delete all proprietary messaging apps and use XMPP exclusively in Janurary this year. It took some time to explain but now most of my friends and family can now be reached via XMPP.
Re: WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But consumers are increasingly demanding an app-like experience from the web This seems tendentious. Which average user was looking for these changes? Can you point to a site that shifted to an "app-like experience" and became successful because of it?
How about Google Maps and Docs
Google Maps was successful from the start, and in my view, has become worse over time. Docs started off "app-like", though I haven't used it in such a long time it may be different now.