zlacker

>>rexree+(OP)
I thought the headline meant that this was going to present Signal as an example of the bloat, but it's the reverse: the article says Signal has only 50 employees but still successfully operates a major communications service, where other companies have thousands of employees.

Apart from Signal just generally doing a good job here, I see a few other possible factors:

* Signal doesn't see user content, so it doesn't have a content moderation team

* Signal is designed in such a way that it can't comply with most kinds of legal requests for user data, so it doesn't need a large team responding to those requests

* Signal gets some amount of pro-bono legal help, so it might not have as large an in-house legal team as other organizations

* Signal isn't trying to directly profit from user activity, so it doesn't need to study user activity or engagement metrics with a view towards profiting from them; similarly, it doesn't need to manage relationships with advertisers

* Similarly, it doesn't need to try hard to grow its user base (that would be desirable, but it doesn't necessarily increase revenue much)

* Similarly, it probably doesn't need to try hard to expand into other business areas

(I think these things are generally great. Yay Signal!)

>>schoen+K2
I agree - this shows Signal in a good light. But it does beg the question what is the real financial incentive discussed in the article for the large tech companies to have such employee bloat? You'd think that employee bloat would be a hindrance to company value but it seems to be the opposite? The more employees it seems the better from a shareholder perspective? It does lead to wild hiring / firing swings but there must be a market logic to it somehow?

>>rexree+33
Shareholders want to see businesses grow their profit. Once you reach a certain point, it's easier to scale by doing lots of things rather than one thing better and better, and doing lots of things requires lots of people to do them. This creates a weak signal of "more employees -> more future profit". People buying shares (who effectively set the price) care about future growth, which makes looking at revenue enhancement directly a stale signal.

From the company perspective, this is still an alright state of affairs, because even when investors get skittish and less overtly speculative, the company can still improve profit numbers by cutting excess staff. Meanwhile in times of plenty, the hiring of that glut of employees drives the company value higher due to the speculation that they're going to be able to do all the things.

It's dumb, but investing is often a web of self-fulfilling prophecies. If investors think a company will increase in share price, they buy, driving up the share price, allowing the company to sell shares at a higher price, giving them more money to grow.