zlacker

>>mikece+(OP)
I'm seeing all the comments about the $6m Twilio expense, but nothing commenting on how their cost per employee is $380,000 totaling $19m. I think they could optimize this easier if the will was there. I know HN is very SV/tech centric, and that number makes sense there given the run up of VC money, etc. but I'm willing to bet they could source talent from cheaper places and slash this in half; if they wanted to. Just an observation, not my place to tell anyone how to run their business, but for a nonprofit that is trying to drum up donations to fund their operations, I'd think they would want to be leaner.

>>conduc+5Q
This number includes taxes, benefits, etc, not just raw salary.

Notably Signal employees do not get equity, so the salary must be higher to remain competitive.

Signal is probably the hardest class of product to build. Name an optimization/distributed systems problem, they probably have it. And quite literally, a Signal bug could jeopardize an activist/journalist’s life.

So for a <$200k salary and no equity, how many world-class engineers do you think you could hire?

I simply wouldn’t trust the product, if it had mediocre engineers.