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Comment by cmiles8 | Hacker News Reader

Honestly the most interesting thing to me here is that to took nearly 500 people to run Patreon.

That doesn’t super shock me. They claim to have sent over $150M to creators in 2017, which is probably several million transactions. I think they do video and image hosting as well, not sure. It’s probably way more now but that’s the most recent number I saw.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were over a billion in revenue at this point.

I would imagine big chunks of the company also aren’t technology. They seem like they have a sizable PR and marketing presence, community liaisons (read: support), HR to support it all, legal for dealing with illicit content that ends up there instead of OnlyFans, etc.

Make me always question what is going on in these companies. They are essentially a middle man reoffering payment providers services. Host some content. Lot of time just links to external platforms. There is some marketing but not really that much.

They really should be running sustainable service for like tenth of that many employees... If even that. Most of the people don't care about them just the creators on their platform and less cut they take better for patrons or patronees.

I never understand these replies. Has nobody ever worked for a medium sized, yet global-reach company? I think a lot of HN has a very narrow view of how many different roles are required to run a company bigger than a local diner. Feels like a weird confirmation bias where “I only see a dozen engineers around me every day, therefore companies only need engineers to function.”

> Has nobody ever worked for a medium sized, yet global-reach company?

I have, but it also publicized seven completely different business units. It is easier to reason about why what are effectively seven different businesses need so many employees. Each unit did not have all that many people, however. They would all be considered small businesses if the company broke up those business units into individual companies. Patreon, on the other hand, seems to have only one obvious business unit.

But also most haven't. Across most of the western world, 70% of workforce work for small businesses and in Asian markets that rises to 80%+. Medium-large businesses are unusual. The USA is a curious outlier where only around 40% of the workforce works for small businesses. Some HN accounts forget it’s a big world out there.

Whatsapp had 55 employees until the buyout (of reported 19B).

And how much money did they make and distribute at that time?

My point is that pure tech-plays are relatively easy as far as headcount, right?

Hard disagree, the concrete evidence is that that can delete 20% of that bloated workforce and operate just fine.

If we don't run a business then we're running a business of a single employee. You are your own employee with 100% concentration risk. All of your income depends on one employee (you) with 1 source of income. If you had a business with 1 single revenue stream, then you would really focus on the health of that stream (Patreon). If you look around and realize most people are coasting and you can't really point any specific action you've taken that's boosted the numbers then you need to start preparing for that client (Patreon) to end its deal with you.

There's a lot of nice to have time and responsibility that an extra 20% of people get you.

Elon cut 80% of twitter staff and...well it's still there.

Every tech CEO was watching that closely, and it didn't come out in the workers favor.

Twitter is nothing like it used to be.

True. Your comment prompted me to take a trip down memory land and look at the accounts I followed. A few are still at it, but the vast majority of them stop posting around 2016, which matches my recollection of the timeframe when most everyone stopped thinking about Twitter.

However, that doesn't answer why a company that wasn't what it used to be still needed so many people for so long.

It's gone up in the ranking of most-visited websites [1]. I'm not even a Twitter/X user but that's a far cry from what the pundits were saying was inevitable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites

Unfortunately the litmus test wasn't a vibe check, but a technical check.

Yea Twitter is a terrible example. It’s not even a shell of what it used to be.

They are not a “pure middle man.”

You should talk to someone who works at Patreon. Or a larger creator on their platform.

To me it's always mindblowing how the headcount of a startup can massively increase and the company still be considered a "success story".

I really don't get.

Twitter used to have 7500 employees and now it is working perfectly ok with 1500~

What am I missing from business perspective?

Twitter had a lot of side projects and people that were not needed to run their core business. E.g. they used to have a Linux kernel engineering team [1]. They argued their value, but I was always a tad skeptical. Even if they earned their keep in terms of ROI, Twitter can definitely be run without kernel engineers.

[1] https://danluu.com/in-house/

Ok now do the other 5990 employees.

no really, search is appalling, web version for mobile is full of bugs

Twitter does not work at all lol

It works as well as it ever did. Or the same level of not working.

> Twitter does not work at all lol

Can you point to some specific instances? I've seen it working just fine.

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