[tucnak]

Interesting that this comment is down-voted. I think it's worth noting that Telegram LLC—as organisation itself—is anomalous to the point where it's consistent with Russian "cover" doctrine. For example, you wouldn't find ex-Telegram employees on Linkedin, Telegram itself seemingly doesn't invite people for interviews, there's no ex-Telegram people in the industry. Their open source software is developed using fake-umbrella accounts such as John Preston, DrKLO, Ilya Laktyushin (Telegram Desktop, Android and iOS clients respectively.) There is no executive layer in the company, too. Telegram doesn't seem to compete for engineering talent on labour market, Telegram employees don't go to conferences, are never seen on mailing lists of open source projects, etc.

We're simply led to believe that Telegram (a 950M user base) is developed by a Pavel, his brother, and their "friends" in Dubai. There's no evidence of any physical office in Dubai, too.

In short, there's very little evidence to corroborate their story.

[Shank]

> Telegram doesn't seem to compete for engineering talent on labour market, Telegram employees don't go to conferences, are never seen on mailing lists of open source projects, etc.

Isn't the whole narrative that Durov, who is essentially extremely rich as a result of building VK, bankrolled the whole creation? For all of the criticism, Telegram remains one of the most highly polished and well-designed apps I've ever used. It doesn't get bogged down with lots of messages, and has regular feature-rich updates. It seems to me like Telegram has one of the best development teams on the planet in terms of sheer output. Maybe they don't need to compete on talent simply because they're paid well by Durov?

[dools]

> Maybe they don't need to compete on talent simply because they're paid well by Durov?

Or because they're staffed by the Kremlin!

[NayamAmarshe]

Any source on that?

[anon373839]

Be real. You’re obviously not going to be able to find a source for that. I think the facts stated above (about the lack of a visible human footprint for this company) easily raise a presumption that something is not right.

[NayamAmarshe]

Then you probably don't know the history of Telegram enough to make such claims.

[rightbyte]

Whatsapp had 55 employees when Zuckerberg borged it.

[gdsfg534]

It's hilarious that what you impute to them is, essentially, that they don't have enough bullshit: useless management that hires endless hordes of bootcamp graduates for no reason (then lays them off when cheap money are over), no BS conferences without any substance, no hires of overpriced American "talent" when they have a tremendous pool of much much much more affordable and no less qualified people from CIS countries. Also, let's not pretend that a chat app is some kind of rocket science that requires a company of gazillion engineers and other stuff characteristic of VC funded special Olympics.

[anon373839]

> Also, let's not pretend that a chat app is some kind of rocket science that requires a company of gazillion engineers

You cannot be serious. A service with a billion users and Telegram’s feature-richness and complexity cannot be maintained by a few people. If it’s true that there are no Telegram alums on LinkedIn, etc., that is deeply suspicious.

[fakedang]

Apart from the WhatsApp example (which itself is enough to suffice, because WA hasn't changed much on positives post-acquisition), it's very much possible that Telegram is just a bunch of 50 or so people. They do not have a Dubai office afaik, but it's not that hard to get CIS talent to move to Dubai for highly paid but less than US salaries.

FWIW, I co-run a quanty multifamily investment office, and all of our employees (including partners) are expressly forbidden from listing their workplace on LinkedIn - which is the norm for family offices. We simply write Family Office and call it a day. In return, the firm will take care of you and your family for generations - extensive compensation but also other perks that you will never get in other jobs at any level.

[rightbyte]

Whatsapp had about 50 employees at half a billion users before Facebook. What could that mean. 15 programmers and 10 sysadmins?