Beyond spez (and the fact that he is a greedy little pig boy), I’m curious about the corporate dynamics that prevent a company like Reddit from being profitable. From an outside perspective, they make hundreds of millions per year via advertising, their product is a relatively simple (compared to industries that need a lot of capital to build their product), and their content is created and moderated for free by users. Could any offer some insights or educated guesses? Additionally, I’m curious how this all ties into the larger culture of Silicon Valley tech companies in the 2010s.
A company of Reddit’s size might make hundreds of millions in ad revenue, but they also have hundreds of millions in costs. For example, spez said recently they have ~2000 employees. If we make a conservative estimate that the average salary is $50k, that’s $100 Million a year just in payroll (and given that they’re based in San Francisco, it’s definitely higher than that). And if you consider all the computers, servers, electricity and other utilities, marketing, etc, etc, it adds up quick.
I wonder what the hell are those 2000 employees even doing? Brainstorming new awards?
I assume some of them are doing ad sales, which is revenue generating. Probably a lot of HR (which 80%+ of those positions are a grift, IMO), and a lot of other make-work positions. Their product team is like 200 people and they don’t even have any accessibility engineers.