Ah, you see from what I read on reddit I understood that the staff shortage was simply part of Conde Nast's unwillingness to spend money on reddit and that constant downtime issues were another facet of that same problem.

It's not making money and those looking after reddit don't want to ruin it with a huge money grab - instead taking a soft approach, first just begging for money, then adding in a subscription model (freemium anyone?) and more subtle advertising by way of sponsored reddits (/r/yourCompany'sProduct type stuff).

I understand they've been hit with more staff problems just recently despite having a new [systems?] engineer start with them.

So in your view EBS is the problem regardless of finance? That was the nut I was attempting to crack. TBH I didn't expect someone at reddit to stick their neck out and say "yeah Amazon sucks" but they might have confirmed that the converse was true and they were simply lacking the necessary finance to support the massive userbase they have.