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Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by bottlepalm on Friday December 02, 2022 @02:47PM (#33835829)
Twitter had almost the same number of people as SpaceX. One of those companies launches a rocket a week, multiple manned missions a year to the ISS, operates a global satellite internet constellation, and is building a ship that can go to Mars. The other company.. does what?
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by themitigating on Friday December 02, 2022 @02:55PM (#33835943)
I don't see how you can compare two unrelated companies staffing levels. You are simply implying complexity has a direct correlation to the correct workforce amount.

Walmart has 2.3 million employees but it's just a store. Why do they need that many when SpaceX has N employees and is launching rockets

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by bottlepalm on Friday December 02, 2022 @02:58PM (#33835998)
I guess probably a third of SpaceX is technicians, and Twitter doesn’t really build anything or operate any store fronts.
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by shagie on Friday December 02, 2022 @03:35PM (#33836516)
How large of a sales team does SpaceX have (or need)? How about SpaceX's privacy compliance and data governance? Red team to try to see how a feature could be used nefariously? Internationalization of the content? Moderation and content teams to make sure that the sales or marketing doesn't have to answer awkward questions about why advertisements are showing up in disreputable parts of the site?

Yes, Twitter doesn't build physical things or operate any store fronts... but that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of complexity that is within the company and the way that it maintains its funding.

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by Mikeb85 on Friday December 02, 2022 @03:19PM (#33836313)
> Walmart has 2.3 million employees but it's just a store.

This is a terrible example and you know it. Walmart has physical stores everywhere.

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by kllrnohj on Friday December 02, 2022 @03:36PM (#33836530)
That's exactly the point - Twitter had sales reps & SpaceX didn't. Twitter had moderators and SpaceX didn't. The companies have different external-facing relationships at every level, even ignoring the obviously massive unrelated engineering differences.
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by Mikeb85 on Friday December 02, 2022 @04:14PM (#33837008)
5000 salespeople and moderators? Please... They don't need that.

Besides, my comment was about Walmart, which has over 10,000 stores... So of course they have more employees than Twitter by a huge margin.

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by test098 on Friday December 02, 2022 @05:40PM (#33837947)
Wow, you seem to know a lot about running multibillion dollar companies in completely different industries!

So let's imagine you run Twitter and you're operating in every western country on the planet. Now, all those countries have different laws and regulations. Are you, the genius CEO/coder/whatever going to be the one who sits down with regulators and discuss the nuance of their laws? Or are lawyers one of those salespeople/moderators?

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by themitigating on Saturday December 03, 2022 @07:39AM (#33843024)
You don't know what they need, you don't have any useful information.

The only reason you think they are over staffed is because you don't like the political views of the majority of employees and you disagree with their content moderation policy. That's it and it's so obvious.

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by Mikeb85 on Saturday December 03, 2022 @01:14PM (#33845786)
> The only reason you think they are over staffed is because you don't like the political views of the majority of employees and you disagree with their content moderation policy.

No, it's because they haven't done anything innovative in a decade and their product is much simpler than a ton of tech companies with half the staff... Their stock price was super depressed and they were losing what, $4 million per day?

It's super obvious for anyone remotely financially literate that they were way overstaffed. Any buyer would have laid off at least half the staff...

Even Jack Dorsey admitted it: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/05/jack-dorsey-speaks-twitter...

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by toast0 on Friday December 02, 2022 @03:07PM (#33836142)
> The other company.. does what?

Has hundreds of millions of users and had an awful lot of advertiser accounts. How many accounts does SpaceX have? Yes, a lot more now that they've got their Internet service, but managing users is labor intensive, even if you don't provide many means of contact. Advertisers, especially large brand accounts, is labor intensive too, and if you lose half your big accounts because you cut staff willy-nilly, there goes a lot of revenue.

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by smoldesu on Friday December 02, 2022 @03:15PM (#33836255)
Managing satellites is labor-intensive. Setting up a really big database and talking to advertisers is not rocket science. Both companies could probably operate with a lower headcount, but Twitter is fat and everyone knows it. They're not worth $44 billion in their wildest dreams, and they've already been hemorrhaging revenue for the better half of a decade. An operationally viable Twitter does not include 7500 employees, unless ~6000 of them are working on something other than Twitter.
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by themitigating on Saturday December 03, 2022 @04:20PM (#33847483)
This statement

"but Twitter is fat and everyone knows it"

Everyone knows it because it's what everyone on the right has been stating without evidence for weeks. You've heard it so much it's become like an obvious fact even though you can't point to any hard evidence. I say this because you make statements like that. As if you are saying "The capital of France is Paris".

You also said

"Twitter does not include 7500 employees, unless ~6000 of them are working on something other than Twitter."

How do you know how many employees it takes? How do you know 1500 is all they need? You just keep making statements without any backing them up nor do I think you can unless you're C level at Twitter

Also any company might be losing money with staff being the main reason but still need that level of staff.

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by mandeepj on Friday December 02, 2022 @03:34PM (#33836507)
> Twitter had almost the same number of people as SpaceX.

Nope! Spacex has 9500 employees

> multiple manned missions a year to the ISS

Over 100k people worked on Crew Dragon Crew-2 mission from three different locations in making sure it's a success. But, here you are drinking cool-aid

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by bottlepalm on Friday December 02, 2022 @03:55PM (#33836764)
I mean if you count the farmers who grew the beans that the astronauts ate then you could say 'we all' worked on Crew Dragon.
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by mandeepj on Friday December 02, 2022 @04:07PM (#33836928)
> I mean if you count the farmers who grew the beans that the astronauts ate then you could say 'we all' worked on Crew Dragon.

But, that's not what happened or I implied. Read for yourself -> http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by bottlepalm on Friday December 02, 2022 @05:09PM (#33837620)
If you count all the programmers who wrote all the libraries, platforms, operating system's that Twitter is built on, that would also be over 100k.

A great example - Boeing had more money, more people and the same external support and they STILL haven't launched a vehicle yet. SpaceX has beat them by almost 4 years and counting. You'd think with '100k people' they could do it by now right?

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by test098 on Friday December 02, 2022 @05:35PM (#33837905)
> If you count all the programmers who wrote all the libraries, platforms, operating system's that Twitter is built on, that would also be over 100k.

Again, OP didn't do that. In the article, Elon Musk's quote didn't reference "all the programmers who wrote all the libraries, platforms, operating system's that [SpaceX] is built on."

Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by coffeeblack on Friday December 02, 2022 @02:52PM (#33835901)
*launched and landed
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by mikeyouse on Friday December 02, 2022 @02:49PM (#33835865)
Had $5b in annual revenue and served hundreds of million of tweets daily?
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by dpkirchner on Friday December 02, 2022 @02:57PM (#33835990)
Got itself valued at $44B with that revenue and with substantial annual losses. In a way, Twitter has been hugely successful.
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by ilyt on Friday December 02, 2022 @04:32PM (#33837211)
Certainly to people that sold Musk stock lmao.
Re:Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned ou... by bottlepalm on Friday December 02, 2022 @02:56PM (#33835960)
Those 280 characters must generate some immense traffic.