I guess this is applicable to any social media platform or other similar systems. Is it because there are always bugs to address, so it’s never really running smoothly, or other reasons?
In: 153
There are almost certainly errors / false assumptions / bugs that would remain uncorrected. A common example: a server unintentionally designed such that if there’s too much load on it, it drops in performance, actually lowering the total load the site can handle and spreading the load to other servers, which might drop in turn, leading to a cascade failure. You need a human to diagnose and correct such a problem. Or: a database was designed in such a way that collisions are unlikely instead of impossible, and that wasn’t detected during development, and a collision happens, breaking something. Or: the site uses another site’s API to interact with it, but the other site changes its API, and now the interaction is broken.
Simple sites _can_ run on autopilot, but big sites like Twitter are usually a big mess of many international servers, load balancers, CDNs, meta servers that manage dev credentials and other servers, whatever. You need intelligent troubleshooters, or at least you need complicated troubleshooting programs robust to handling many kinds of error. The usual solution in modern webshit is “if something seems to malfunction, restart it” instead.
As for HR, moderation, lawyers, “reps”, consultants, etc.: Contrary to their self-flattering claims, those parts don’t actually matter one bit, and can go.
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