Why doesn't WhatsApp hire many people?

Isn't it a surprise that a company that has over 900 million users is being controlled by just 50 engineers? In fact, the number just rose to 50 as against the 35 engineers that started when the messaging app was acquired by Facebook. The reason for such a very small population of employees cannot be unconnected to the fact that WhatsApp is not a tangible product where you will need thousands of workers for its production and distribution.

Making more copies of software doesn't always require more employees to get the job done. What will make you believe this is the fact that WhatsApp was formerly a product of two ex-yahoo workers. This means for just two persons to come up with the original software of this messaging app, making millions of copies won't be a huge problem or a huge task. Another reason could be because of the programming language (Erlang) used in building this service. This programming language, although not very popular, can be used to manage or control messages from a huge number of users.

I am guessing WhatsApp doesn’t hire many people for two reasons. The first and most obvious reason is because WhatsApp is actually now part of Facebook and so Facebook has complete control of WhatsApp. Facebook purchased WhatsApp from its co-founders, Brian Acton and Jan Koum for $22 billion in 2014.

I suspect Facebook already has enough talented people on their payroll and they really didn’t need to hire a lot of extra people after the purchase. (Maybe after paying $22 billion, they couldn’t afford to hire any more people? It’s possible, don’t you think so?