&gt; Large scale distributed systems aren&#x27;t that simple.<p>Nobody&#x27;s debating that. If it weren&#x27;t a &quot;large scale distributed system&quot; then the debate would be about 3 employees vs. 10. The core experience without scale could be made by a single engineer.<p>But running a service like Twitter doesn&#x27;t require 4,000 employees, even at scale. Facebook has &quot;only&quot; twice as many employees, despite a 10x more complicated product and 12x as much revenue.