Telegram's founder Pavel Durov says his company only employs around 30 engineers. Security experts say that raises serious questions about the company's cybersecurity.
To be fair, in a large company, there is usually only about 30 people who are actually good and know what is going on, and hundred of others who are checking in trash.
30? Sometimes very less, 2 or 3. It’s incredible that some piece of software used by milions/billions of people, have been written and sometimes maintained by 2 or 3 guys.
I see this parroted now and then. Often the people I’ve heard it from are the type of folks who would drastically underestimate the complexity and effort needed to make things. I’ve also seen and worked on codebases made by such folks and usually it ain’t pretty, or maintainable, or extensible, or secure, or [insert fav cut corners here].
Even if every employee was equally competent, decision making needs to be consolidated enough that it can be decisive and shared throughout large companies. Complex systems that need to change rapidly gain no benefit from having too many people wanting to make decisions, you only need most of them to be competent enough to complete the work based on the decisions of a small group or the work will end up getting too convoluted and unmaintainable.
There really isn’t a benefit to have everyone understand all of the parts of a large and complex system, if they only have time to work on a portion or to facilitate decisions that take into account the knowledge of the people in the different parts.
To be fair, in a large company, there is usually only about 30 people who are actually good and know what is going on, and hundred of others who are checking in trash.
30? Sometimes very less, 2 or 3. It’s incredible that some piece of software used by milions/billions of people, have been written and sometimes maintained by 2 or 3 guys.
https://xkcd.com/2347/
I see this parroted now and then. Often the people I’ve heard it from are the type of folks who would drastically underestimate the complexity and effort needed to make things. I’ve also seen and worked on codebases made by such folks and usually it ain’t pretty, or maintainable, or extensible, or secure, or [insert fav cut corners here].
There’s an aphorism, “give me 10 engineers and I’ll build it in a year, give me a hundred engineers and I can get that down to just five years.”
Even if every employee was equally competent, decision making needs to be consolidated enough that it can be decisive and shared throughout large companies. Complex systems that need to change rapidly gain no benefit from having too many people wanting to make decisions, you only need most of them to be competent enough to complete the work based on the decisions of a small group or the work will end up getting too convoluted and unmaintainable.
There really isn’t a benefit to have everyone understand all of the parts of a large and complex system, if they only have time to work on a portion or to facilitate decisions that take into account the knowledge of the people in the different parts.