Their costs went up about 100%. The cumulative inflation over those 6 years was about 25%. The US averages 6% salary growth yearly, which over six years is about 42%, and would have been much higher in the tech industry. California averages a cost of living increase of about 8% annually, over six years that's 58%.

So if you adjust for the rising costs of doing anything in tech, their operating budget has increased by much less than would seem - only about 20%.

In those same six years, they've had to deal with a rise in misinformation campaigns, spam, infosec threats and recently ML models.

Call me crazy, but dealing with all of the extra complexity 2022 has over 2016 on a 20% budget increase is pretty great.