What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#1

Post by RBr » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 3:11 AM UTC

What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week
quora.com

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#2

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 3:56 AM UTC

Seems like kind of an overwhelming amount of attention.

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#3

Post by flashgordon » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 3:56 AM UTC

for some reason this feels a bit skimpy on the details compared to the "first month at facebook" (or may be 6 weeks) item that came about a few weeks ago...

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#4

Post by ck2 » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 3:58 AM UTC

How can over 100 people be needed for basically a scaled blog system that consists only of 140 character titles (not even any article content) and RSS feeds? It doesn't even have a search feature (past the previous week) or html, or tags, etc.

Doesn't WordPress.com do it with like a dozen people and their system is way, way, way more complex?

update: no, wait, in December 2010 they announced it's over 350 people now

http://blog.twitter.com/2010/12/stocking-stuffer.html

What on earth are they all doing?

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#5

Post by dustineichler » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 4:07 AM UTC

What does the engineering onboarding involve?

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#6

Post by noahlt » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 4:09 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #4

How can over 100 people be needed for basically a scaled blog system that consists only of 140 character titles (not even any article content) and RSS feeds? It doesn't even have a search feature (past the previous week) or html, or tags, etc. Doesn't WordPress.com do it with like a dozen people and their system is way, way, way more complex? update: no, wait, in December 2010 they announced it's over 350 people now…

iPhone, Android, and Mac clients. Maintaining as well as improving the web interface and the API. Lots more scaling - people check Twitter way more than they do Wordpress-hosted blogs.

I'm sure there's more, this is just what came off the top of my head.

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#7

Post by shaunxcode » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 4:11 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #4

How can over 100 people be needed for basically a scaled blog system that consists only of 140 character titles (not even any article content) and RSS feeds? It doesn't even have a search feature (past the previous week) or html, or tags, etc. Doesn't WordPress.com do it with like a dozen people and their system is way, way, way more complex? update: no, wait, in December 2010 they announced it's over 350 people now…

I initially upvoted you because I agree - it is mind boggling but really I think the reality is that scaling at levels like that is a much bigger job/problem than you/I can imagine. Also I doubt all of the people are technical?

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#8

Post by sahillavingia » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 4:22 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #4

How can over 100 people be needed for basically a scaled blog system that consists only of 140 character titles (not even any article content) and RSS feeds? It doesn't even have a search feature (past the previous week) or html, or tags, etc. Doesn't WordPress.com do it with like a dozen people and their system is way, way, way more complex? update: no, wait, in December 2010 they announced it's over 350 people now…

I upvoted you because I have no technical proficiency in the (engineering) challenges they face and would love an explanation by someone from Twitter about their apparently ridiculous employee numbers.

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#9

Post by ck2 » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 4:22 AM UTC

shaunxcode wrote: post #7

ck2 wrote: post #4

How can over 100 people be needed for basically a scaled blog system that consists only of 140 character titles (not even any article content) and RSS feeds? It doesn't even have a search feature (past the previous week) or html, or tags, etc. Doesn't WordPress.com do it with like a dozen people and their system is way, way, way more complex? update: no, wait, in December 2010 they announced it's over 350 people now…

I initially upvoted you because I agree - it is mind boggling but really I think the reality is that scaling at levels like that is a much bigger job/problem than you/I can imagine. Also I doubt all of the people are technical?

I just have to start wondering when it's over 100 though and now they are at 350.

They don't have an ad sales force right?

They don't have a billing department right?

Maybe they have housekeeping and food prep people included in that 350?

I honestly don't know and my instinct could be very wrong, but 350 seems crazy high.

Re: What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

#10

Post by scarmig » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 4:23 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #4

How can over 100 people be needed for basically a scaled blog system that consists only of 140 character titles (not even any article content) and RSS feeds? It doesn't even have a search feature (past the previous week) or html, or tags, etc. Doesn't WordPress.com do it with like a dozen people and their system is way, way, way more complex? update: no, wait, in December 2010 they announced it's over 350 people now…

Quora to the rescue:

http://www.quora.com/Twitter-Inc-company/Why-does-Twitter-ne...