When they said Reddit has 2000 employees I was shocked. what could they possibly do onto a website that is basically run by users (and sysadmins) and that is basically feature-wise mature? I really can’t figure out 2000 people working every day on Reddit… on what? just for a quick comparison, the whole IAmA was run by a single person (Victoria), so… what are they doing?

  • redcalciumEnglish
    26•1 year ago

    Let’s see. Reddit right now has:

    • NFT
    • real time chat
    • image and video hosting (imgur used to handle these). needs manpower to make sure they’re not hosting something illegal like cp
    • various one-off functionalities (r/place, polls, etc)
    • react-based frontend (and the mobile counterpart)
    • mobile apps for Android and iOS (seemingly a separate codebase)
    • ads/marketing departments that case around big companies to place ads on Reddit
    • various virtual goods (gold awards, profile pics customization)
    • probably a community team that monitor what’s reddit users currently up to, like banning subreddits that breaking TOS or insulting spez.

    and perhaps many more I’m not aware about. With those whole sets of “features”, 2000 seems to be quite reasonable IMO. The marketing stuff is especially all about numbers.

    • WhoisJohnGaltEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Yeah, add in the “support” functions as well (you mentioned Marketing but HR, Finance, Legal, etc) and #s can add up quickly.

    • golliEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      I really feel like that instead of just focusing on running a lean and efficient site, perfecting the fundamentals, and outsourcing the other stuff to their users (third party apps, content creation, the bulk of moderation). They’ve truly become bloated trying to expand.

      I guess this was ultimatively due to them taking on venture capital and thus having the pressure for rapid growth and profitability. They really want to transform themself into a social media site, gathering as much user data as possible and keeping them on their site as long as possible. All with the goal to be able to sell more adds. Which also means pushing out unmarketable content.