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
Well, the logic is/was that an engineer you hire on for 300k is now unable/less incentivized to go launch the startup that would threaten 20 million or whatever of your revenue. Now these employees are rare, and hard to find, so the 300k is what you pay knowing you also end up hiring duds.

It's also better from a managing perspective because if you have 10% of bloat and then have a bad quarter, you then have a lever you can pull to show you are getting stuff done. Its how managers smooth their performance, you overhire in good quarters to lower the profitability comps, and then fire to buffer up bad quarters.