this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Wait. Why is Reddit losing so much money? (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Reddit kind of anticipates this critique in its investor docs, and argues that it didn't really start operating as a serious business until 2018 when it finally started "meaningful monetization efforts" — that is, trying to make money for real.

But that's still six years ago. What has Reddit been doing since then?

One big, obvious answer: It has been hiring a lot of engineers and spending a lot of money on their salaries...

...What am I missing? I asked Reddit comms for comment but they declined, citing the company's quiet period before the IPO.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (37 children)

They're spending over 400mio a year on RnD. I was downvoted for stating this somewhere else, but tech workers are drastically overpaid and tech companies are structurally incapable of allocating resources properly.

I'm 100% sure, that reddit has a bunch of technologies, frameworks, components, that were developed inhouse for no other reason than a bunch of engineers trying to reinvent the wheel for the 100th time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (20 children)

Why do you think tech workers are overpaid? I think other workers are underpaid.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

From a software engineering view: Lots of rebuilding the wheel, now with Internet Explorer dependencies. Large tech firms are more and more bureaucratic rather than innovative. Startups slurp up VC funding for the next 200 or so unicorn investments. NVIDIA is THE ENTIRE S&P 500 at this rate with SERIOUS "Peak of Inflated Expectations" valuation. Elon Musk.

All the while the majority of the job is fixing the mistakes of the past, of yourself and of some code monkey in 2003. There's this theory that code replicates the structure of the design team. When that team spans an entire corporate hierarchy with SCRUM standups every 2.5 milliseconds, you wonder if you could do the equivalent of the ending of Office Space to the codebase.

I'm sorry, I'm just... anyway, a sage piece of advice. For the love of all that is holy, write requirements BEFORE doing validation for Aerospace applications, and DO NOT OUTSOURCE THE REQUIREMENTS WRITING. That is all.

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