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0 pointsSebguer4y ago0 comments

Does this account for how much those companies offload to contractors / staffing agencies?

0 comments

The economy of scale - at FAANG(MAANG?) scale you can have extremely efficient money making features that only takes a few engineer to support thousands.

For things that are completely software, it does not surprise me that millions per employee in earnings is realized - that's just what happens when you operate at that scale. And that's accounting for all of the overhead in personnel that scale entails.

selcuka4y ago

True. The number of engineers is not linearly correlated with the number of customers, but the number of features. If you have a relatively simple product and you can somehow still compete (niche market, patents etc), you can get away with a very low head count. WhatsApp famously had only 35 engineers and ~450M users when Facebook acquired them.

Aperocky4y ago

If they wanted, they can expand easily to a lot more - which is probably what happened to them inside facebook anyways.

Even then, they can still be insanely profitable per engineer.

1 more reply

robbedpeter4y ago

Given recent name changes, MAANG works, but it can be MANGA or MAGNA now.

I like "MAGNAM" if you include Microsoft.

gorgoiler4y ago

Ahem, and the G stands for Alphabet? :)

adeelk934y ago

I can’t believe there was a time where Microsoft wasn’t considered as big of a tech company as Netflix.

3 more replies

da39a3ee4y ago

If F => M then doesn't G => A? Which is good, we don't want to have to go around calling them MAGNA!

2 more replies

denysvitali4y ago

OT: if you want to start with M, then the correct name would be MAANA

gorgoiler4y ago

I don’t know. I do know that “number of employees” metric is a shorthand way of measuring the operational weight of an organisation. As long as it is measured consistently, it’s a good proxy for size-of-tech-company. It might not work so well when comparing a pharmaceutical manufacturer to a main st retailer though.

michaelt4y ago

Depends if you count Facebook's moderators, Uber's drivers, Apple's shop assistants, Netflix's film crews and so on.

Some of these measures make it look like Google's zero-customer-support approach is the 'efficient' way to run a business but for a lot of companies it'd be a false economy.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

Aperocky4y ago

The economy of scale - at FAANG(MAANG?) scale you can have extremely efficient money making features that only takes a few engineer to support thousands.

selcuka4y ago

Aperocky4y ago

If they wanted, they can expand easily to a lot more - which is probably what happened to them inside facebook anyways.

Even then, they can still be insanely profitable per engineer.

1 more reply

robbedpeter4y ago

Given recent name changes, MAANG works, but it can be MANGA or MAGNA now.

I like "MAGNAM" if you include Microsoft.

gorgoiler4y ago

Ahem, and the G stands for Alphabet? :)

adeelk934y ago

I can’t believe there was a time where Microsoft wasn’t considered as big of a tech company as Netflix.

3 more replies

da39a3ee4y ago

If F => M then doesn't G => A? Which is good, we don't want to have to go around calling them MAGNA!

2 more replies

denysvitali4y ago

OT: if you want to start with M, then the correct name would be MAANA

gorgoiler4y ago

michaelt4y ago

Depends if you count Facebook's moderators, Uber's drivers, Apple's shop assistants, Netflix's film crews and so on.

Some of these measures make it look like Google's zero-customer-support approach is the 'efficient' way to run a business but for a lot of companies it'd be a false economy.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse