I hope I didn't come across as though I was criticizing at all. I meant to point out that having 50 engineers build something today means something different than it would have a decade ago, although in retrospect my age/career are getting away from me and 15-20 years ago would have been a much better example.
I should emphasize that the accomplishment is incredible, regardless of how much we outsource things today. I know you didn't outsource crucial talent or the ability to deliver a good core product; you can't do that as far as I know.
I apologize if it seemed like I was putting down the accomplishment. I'm only meaning to reflect on how much more technical and infrastructure work happens outside of our teams these days than it has in the past. Perhaps though it isn't how much _more_ happens, but how _different_ what happens is. Building these products has changed a lot in some ways.
Edit: Also thanks for overview, that was a cool cursory look at how you operated.
I mean, honestly the way we built WhatsApp 10 years ago is pretty similar to how we would have built it 20 years ago... except that we'd probably have had to move towards dedicated colo space, instead of 'managed hosting' bare metal. I think we may have ended up going that way if we didn't get acquired and move into FB datacenters.
SMS aggregators were certainly around in 2000, just as well as in 2010 and 2020 ... although they've got fancier webpages now.
I mean, you can outsource a bunch of stuff, but we just didn't use very much. You can't outsource the core product and deliver reliability, and we didn't have much that isn't the core product. SMS verification was only reliable (ish) because we used several providers with real time statistics guiding the choice. (Of course, some of the providers use the other providers, so it's very messy)
I should emphasize that the accomplishment is incredible, regardless of how much we outsource things today. I know you didn't outsource crucial talent or the ability to deliver a good core product; you can't do that as far as I know.
I apologize if it seemed like I was putting down the accomplishment. I'm only meaning to reflect on how much more technical and infrastructure work happens outside of our teams these days than it has in the past. Perhaps though it isn't how much _more_ happens, but how _different_ what happens is. Building these products has changed a lot in some ways.
Edit: Also thanks for overview, that was a cool cursory look at how you operated.