Right, I think this is a good analysis. But, I challenge that they actually got these returns. Specifically from this effort. It is popular among the type of crowd that posts here in HN. I would be surprised if any of my non-tech family even knows it happened.
I think I would push on the ~5% of 500 people's employment decisions. With the sizes of the teams that competed, I'd not be too surprised that the teams involved were largely the extent of who was directly impacted by this contest. Everyone else was as happy as those of us that read any of the blogs/articles that they would publish about their infrastructure. Which is not nothing, but probably hard to spot the difference. (Ironically, I would argue that the raised morale of the people that publish the articles are probably more measurable? Which, I confess I don't think is a consistent position from me.)
And I stress that I agree it was a safe thing to do. I am even glad that they did it. I just don't know that you could really convince me they would not have had the revenue that they had without doing this contest.
I think I would push on the ~5% of 500 people's employment decisions. With the sizes of the teams that competed, I'd not be too surprised that the teams involved were largely the extent of who was directly impacted by this contest. Everyone else was as happy as those of us that read any of the blogs/articles that they would publish about their infrastructure. Which is not nothing, but probably hard to spot the difference. (Ironically, I would argue that the raised morale of the people that publish the articles are probably more measurable? Which, I confess I don't think is a consistent position from me.)
And I stress that I agree it was a safe thing to do. I am even glad that they did it. I just don't know that you could really convince me they would not have had the revenue that they had without doing this contest.