I could do that in a weekend (2016)

8 days ago

Many people underestimate the complexity of building large-scale systems like Google Search, assuming off-the-shelf tools like Lucene can easily replicate its capabilities.
Optimizing performance and adding features (e.g., handling internationalization, security) require significant engineering effort beyond an MVP, often justifying large teams.
Organizational inefficiencies, such as miscommunication and delays, are far harder to manage than technical problems, making it unrealistic to assume perfect team efficiency.
Large companies invest in features, security, and sales because marginal gains (e.g., revenue increases from small tweaks) outweigh costs, leading to multi-thousand person teams.
The misconception that a small team can replace a major service ignores the hidden work like error handling, internationalization, and optimization, which exceeds the core service work.

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