The founder of messaging platform and social media network Telegram has revealed that the entire company is staffed by just thirty engineers, with no human resources (HR) department.
Pavel Duvrov made the comments (via TechCrunch) on one of those particularly wretched interview podcasts they have now, presumably hoping we'd see his posturing against basic things like HR, Legal, and security audits as a good thing.
On the podcast, Durov claimed he was the only product manager at Telegram, and boasted he employs only “about 30 engineers” - but that this was OK as the team was "super efficient."
Telegram needs staff
Perhaps unsurpisingly, security experts have reacted to the news negatively, with Telegram already notorious for not enabling end-to-end encryption by default, having a proprietary algorithm for that, and having servers located in the UAE (it being a Dubai-based company).
However, you don’t need to be a great big business brain to know that having your only employees be a skeleton crew devoted to maintaining critical infrastructure is a terrible idea, particularly if you own Telegram, a service known to be no stranger to cybercriminals.
Speaking to TechCrunch, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)’s Director of Cybersecurity, Eva Galperin, noted that this would only spur cyberattackers on. “[...] if I was a threat actor, I would definitely consider this to be encouraging news. Every attacker loves a profoundly understaffed and overworked opponent.”
Another is that engineers might keep the ship running, but they’re not very good at everything else involved with running the business. “‘Thirty engineers’ means that there is no one to fight legal requests, there is no infrastructure for dealing with abuse and content moderation issues,” Galperin continued.
Obviously we’re meant to go ‘yes king, eradicate woke’, but you do have to wonder whether things like lawsuits and subpoenas have ever occurred to Duvrov at all, and whether any of his Bootleg Elon Musk performance will come back to bite him.
TechRadar Pro has contacted Telegram for comment.
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