[jebarker]

> We’ve grown to a team of over 300 engineers, researchers, designers, and operators

That last word, operators, I have seen used multiple times over the past couple of weeks to refer to managers and politicians. Is that the usage here too? If so, is this a new trend in the tech world? I’ve certainly heard of “political operators” in TV shows about Washington DC, but the usage in tech is new to me.

[xvedejas]

I've only heard it used in tech when you have actual operations, in my experience that meant lab managers and technicians. I'm not sure what it is supposed to mean in this context.

[sa46]

Trickle-down titles? I’m familiar with operator to refer to tier-1 special operations personnel like Seal Team 6 and Delta Force.

[viraptor]

I believe in their case it means operations people as in sysadmins. Ops like in DevOps.

[bouk]

HR, finance, sales any non engineer is called an operator these days basically

[swyx]

i think its a bit of a VC lingo that i dislike seeing adopted by actual... operators. it casts the world into two: either you own a business, or you operate one. that makes it look like a 50-50 choice that is usually a valid option for a privileged few. also if the world actually looked like that then we'd have a lot less building going on and there are too many VCs already.

instead I propose to call VC's "non-operator characters" and see how they feel about that